A year at a glance calendar for teachers

Step 1: Connect Google Calendar

Start with the Google account you already use. Connect Google Calendar to Glance so your existing events appear in your year at a glance view without having to recreate your schedule somewhere else. Explore our quick start guide for more guidance.

Step 2: Decide how to organize your calendars

Before adding everything to your year view, think about how you’d like to organize your events. Do you want to see all types of events together? Will you ever want to view events from only one type of event, for example, just one class? Could it be helpful at some point to only see exams and projects? Your personal plans?

Google Calendar lets you create separate calendars for different types of events, and Glance lets you toggle those calendars on and off independently in year and day views. The best setup depends on how you teach and your personal preferences.

If you teach several classes or subjects, you might create one calendar for each class. Put everything related to that class in the same calendar, including lessons, exams, projects and other important dates. When you’re planning for one class, you can then turn off the other calendars and focus on just that class. Depending on the rules at your school, you could even decide to share these specific calendars with students or parents so they have visibility into these major milestones, too.

If you teach fewer classes or have one main class, it may make more sense to organize calendars by type of event. For example, you could have separate calendars for exams, projects, school events and other important dates. Or you could simply leave all school-related events in one calendar category, and then your personal events in another.

There’s no single right way to organize it. The important thing is to choose categories that make it easy to switch between the big picture and the specific view you need.

Step 3: Add your school’s important dates

Map out the fixed dates that shape the school year. These might include:

• First and last day of school
• Holidays and school breaks
• Professional development days
• Teacher workdays
• Exam or testing periods
• Grading and report-card deadlines
• Parent-teacher conferences
• School trips and major events

Once these dates are visible across the year, you can start to see the natural rhythm of the school year and the periods when your available teaching time is more limited.

Step 4: Add your recurring teaching & personal commitments

Next, you can decide whether to add the regular commitments that affect how your weeks are structured, such as recurring classes, department meetings, staff meetings and other regular obligations. We’d recommend added these types of events to their own calendar category (for example, called “Recurring”) so that you can easily toggle them off in the year view and only see them in the day view. This way your year view stays focused on only major events but you never lose availability as you look at your schedule.

Step 5: Step back and look at the whole year

Now comes the part that a traditional calendar doesn’t make particularly easy: step back and look at everything together. Start with all of your calendars visible, then toggle different categories on and off in the year view depending on what you’re planning. We recommend keeping all calendars “on” in the day view.

Looking at one class? Hide everything else. Planning your exam schedule? Show your exam calendar alongside your school dates. Planning your next vacation? Turn on your personal calendar and see what your work schedule looks like around it.

Then ask yourself:

• Where are my busiest periods?
• Where do exams, grading and major projects cluster?
• Where could I realistically plan a trip or time off?

You don’t need to predict everything that will happen over the next year. The point is to understand the shape of the year well enough to make better decisions about what’s ahead and protect what’s important.