I know it's hard to believe, but back-to-school season is here again. My social media feeds are full of teachers setting up their classrooms, and while I don't head back for another week, I'm already thinking through my own setup. Over the years, I've developed a process that helps me stay organized, avoid feeling overwhelmed, and make sure my classroom is ready for students—not just decorated for the first day.

When setting up a classroom for English language learners, it's easy to focus on decorations, bulletin boards, and making everything look perfect. But the classroom systems you build matter far more than how your room looks. Simple, consistent classroom systems help ELL students spend less time figuring out procedures and more time learning mathematics.

Getting my students to do homework this past school year was tough. They didn’t see the value in it, and honestly, why would they? They could plug the question into AI, get the answer in seconds, and move on. By the end of the year, it got so bad in one class that some days I stopped really checking homework altogether and just gave a completion grade.