Erin Condren Focused Teacher Planner Review 2020

It’s that time again…time to get next year’s teacher planner for my homeschool planning! And this year I surprised myself by going with the Erin Condren Focused Teacher Planner instead of the traditional coiled planner! Join me for my 2020 Erin Condren Focused Teacher Planner review – I’ll show you the inside of the focused planner, my pros and cons of it, and why I ultimately picked the focused over the coiled.

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(scroll to the bottom for a video walkthrough and review as well)

I am heading into my second year homeschooling. Last year I also used an Erin Condren Teacher Planner but it was the coiled, colorful version (you can see my review of that here and a video about how I used it specifically for homeschooling here). This year after a large internal struggle (I know…I know…over a planner…#lame) and watching a lot of videos in YouTube I decided to go with the Focused teacher planner this year.

The focused teacher planner is a softbound planner with one cover option – this camel-ish brown, faux leather. Though this picture doesn’t do a good job of showing it because of the planner being at an angle, the focused planner is smaller than the coiled planner. (you can see a better size comparison in the video I linked at the end of this post)

The focused planner is very neutral inside with only a smidge of color and it doesn’t have as many extras (pockets, page protectors, etc.) as the coiled planner. Let’s take a look inside and then I’ll share what I liked and didn’t like about it as I was making my decision!

Erin Condren Focused Teacher Planner Flip-Through

Inside the front cover
All About Me and Events and Volunteers pages – same basic layout and info as the classic teacher planner, just less colorful
Communication Log
Year at a Glance. Erin Condren also sells little round translucent stickers (they come in the Cool for School sticker book) that fit perfectly over the dates and you can use them to mark holidays, school breaks, etc. That’s what I used last year for this page to mark our Classical Conversations community days and plan to do that again this year.
I don’t like how this next section goes January – December instead of July – June. In my mind it makes sense for a school calendar to go July – June. If I were going to use this to map out field trips, units, books to read each month, etc. it would be weird to start on right page and then go back to the left! But if you wanted to use this for something like birthdays or holidays I guess it would seem normal for it to be this way.

Last year I used the Metallic Sticker Sheet to change the months but honestly I didn’t use this page at all so I’m not sure I’ll go through the trouble to change them this year unless I think of a use for this page.
Some graph paper
Each month has a layout like this at the beginning of it – one and a half pages of lined paper and a spot at the bottom for dates to remember.
Then there’s the monthly calendar view. If you’ve noticed in these pictures, there is no color in the focused teacher planner other than some gray/blues and golds sprinkled throughout.
I also got this magnetic bookmark to use to mark each month since the focused planner doesn’t have tabs
Weekly view. Less color than the coiled planner and also not quite as much space to write since the planner is smaller (there are 6 lines per box instead of 7)
The focused planner comes with two ribbon bookmarks – a lighter blue/gray and a darker blue/gray.
At the end of the planner after all the monthly/weekly layouts there are several notes pages
And then the very end of the planner has the student checklists. I use one of these for keeping our attendance for the year. The student checklist in the focused planner has fewer lines than the ones in the coiled planner, fyi.

Pros and Cons

Like I said, I had a hard time picking this year!

The pros for the focused planner were

less expensive (only $34 compared to $55 for the coiled planner)
smaller and easier to carry with me
no coils (I don’t like trying to write around the coils)
less bulk – since I’m only homeschooling one child and he’s only 6 I really don’t need a ton of space for planning so a lot of the planner went unused anyway last year

The cons were

It’s not colorful. I love the colorfulness of Erin Condren planners and would much prefer that over the neutral, plain design of the focused planner
No tabs marking the months (I’m going to try using it without the tabs and if I miss them terribly I’ll either make some with washi tape or buy these from Erin Condren to use)
No pocket or page protector in the back
Also, and I didn’t know this until I got it, the Student Checklist page has fewer lines which isn’t a huge deal except that it kind of messes up how I record our attendance (see the video below for more about that)

How I finally decided

Ultimately, though I love the color and fun of the coiled planner, all the other features of the focused planner (small, portable, no coil, price) won out. As my kids get older I can see needing more of the features of the coiled planner but right now since I don’t need tons of space to write lesson plans or use the pocket or page protector much it seemed I was basically deciding based on the prettiness of the inside pages. If Erin Condren came out with the focused planner that had a prettier cover and the colorful inside I’d be in planner paradise! Until then I’m going to give the focused planner a go – while I’ll miss all the fun and color, I think I’m going to like the smaller, more compact version.

I’m excited to get started using my focused planner to prepare for next year!

If you have never ordered from Erin Condren before you can use this link and get $10 off your first purchase. (they will send you an email with a code that you can then use when you purchase)

Check out my video review as well for more thoughts on this planner, a live flip-through, and a side-by-side comparison with the traditional coiled teacher planner: