Maintaining clear, well-documented professional records is as important as maintaining your grade book and lesson plans. Want a fair evaluation? Proper placement on the salary schedule? A fair solution to misunderstandings or disputes? The records in the following checklist can help you answer questions and resolve conflicts.

• Teaching licenses and/or certificates
• Transcripts of credits and degrees
• Record of inservice or advanced academic credit
• Letters of appointment or hire
• Employee contracts, including any supplemental contracts
• Record of hire from the employer's official minutes (board meeting minutes)
• Proof of union membership
• Record of accumulated sick leave and other personal leave days
• Copies of current and past assignment schedules
• Log of tax-deductible job-related expenses
• Copies of insurance policies
• Information from the retirement system
• Documentation of commendations, awards and honors
• Employee salary or wage schedule; pay stubs
• Performance evaluations and your responses
• Letters of praise or reprimand
• Correspondence with parents and students
• Correspondence with administrators/supervisors and department heads
• District policies on student discipline, suspension, expulsion, corporal punishment
• Record of incidents involving student discipline, violence or other disruptive student behavior, including date and witnesses involved
• Record of assaults, violence or workplace thefts
• Written personal reconstruction of events surrounding student injuries
• School calendar
• Fringe benefit information; records on insurance claims