How Teachers Can Use Trello to Simplify Their Lives

Okay, I know this post is going to sound like an advertisment for Trello, but I promise you it’s not. I am in no way sponsered by or affiliated with them. I just freaking love how streamlined my life and to-do list is when using them.

There’s a few other similar services available you might like to look into as well. I know people who like Asana and Monday. For me, I looked into all three, but ultimately liked Trello’s ease of use and layout best for what I was looking for.

Make Various Boards

The best thing about Trello is that you’re able to create different boards for various things. I create boards for every little category I can think of, because it helps me to distinguish my priorities.

For example, I have boards allocated to work, home, and finance. This way, I can separate all the tasks I have to do and better manage my work vs. home schedules.

I do time blocking, so this is really effective when I’m working on one specific area and can see everything I need without becoming distracted.

Create To-Do Lists

My favourite thing to do on Trello is to create various to-do lists all in one place. Within each board you create, you can create further sub-boards, which act as to-do lists. This is fantastic because all the tasks you need to complete in a project are listed in one place.

I like to have everything I need to complete listed in one place, because I’ll often have different to-do lists all over the place. Rather than having one at work, another in my planner, one at home, and so on, I have everything al on Trello and don’t forget a task, no matter where I am.

Organize Your Out-of-School-Life

As I mentioned above, you can have so many different boards (and even more on the paid version, which I don’t have as the free version has everything I need) that you can create boards for several areas in your life.

I find having boards not just for my work life helps me stay sane and organized in my life in general.

For example, if you’re always stressing about what to have for dinner, you can create a board with meals, shopping lists, and recipes. This can save you mega time when you’re planning for the week – everything is in one place and you can just pick what you want from there.

Link in Other Team Members

If you have others helping you out, you can add them to your Trello board so that they have access to to-dos and can help out.

This is great for adding a spouse, who’s splitting cooking, cleaning, and so on with you. Or an educational assisstant, who may be printing and cutting centres, and so on.

The seamless ways in which people can work together and have access to the materials needed is fantastic for those with “teams”.

Attach Files

Finally, I find one of the best things I’m able to do on Trello is attach different files to tasks. I use this feature to attach tons of different things!

For example, I’ll attach recipes I like or want to try, I’ll add PDFs of worksheets for upcoming classes, forms I have to complete, and so on.

You can also add in things like links. This is great for me when I want to use Canva to create something, because I can just attach a link to a template, rather than scroll through all my designs to find what I’m looking for.

This feature is especially useful if you do most of your work digitally, or if you have team members you need to share things with (like a spouse going grocery shopping).