Friday, January 14, 2011

Lesson Planning Hurts my Head.

Okay, so I lied. I enjoyed break entirely TOO much to want to come back to blog about school! But now I'm back to share a story about one of the aspects of teaching that I find most challenging: lesson planning.


At school we have a "protocol" for lesson planning which consists of the basics, like an objective, materials, warm-up but also about 20 or so questions for creating a "work period task", opening and closing (my school is a workshop model school... don't get me started). It's all very overwhelming. I'm not a fan. I am down with the writing an objective and thinking of a warm-up, beginning, middle and end of a lesson that ties to and helps my students meet the objective. But "crafting" an opening that will be short enough to set up for the work period task in approximately 8 minutes and creating tasks that challenge my higher learners, scaffold for my lower learners and meet my middle learners all at the same time seem incredibly, incredibly time-consuming. And this job doesn't allow me enough time for proper sleeping, eating, working, and playing. Additionally, most of my students are so dependent that I can't imagine being able to have all of them working on different challenging tasks and being able to support them all at the same time. Not to mention, ideally I should perform all the tasks myself first and edit them as necessary.

I grew up in a teacher teaches you how to do it, then you do it system. I liked it. It worked. It was mostly what I was planning to do when I became a teacher. I would say that it works okay in the environment that I'm teaching in. However, we are supposed to teach on the basis of student discovery. I am all for inquiry (especially in science) and I am proud of my students for their progress, but when I try discovery-based lessons, they move slowly because they are not willing to or cannot think of what to say to participate. And honestly, I don't feel like it helps them remember the information any better. What does help their memory of what they learned is moving around and doing hands-on activities.

As you can guess, I don't like the protocol or the model my school uses. I agree that planning is important, but some of my best lessons were ridiculously unplanned. (And some of my planned lessons were great, too, but good planning doesn't always lead to a good lesson, I've found.) So why all the whining?

Prior to winter break, I was called into conference with my principals. They stated that they were concerned about my level of planning, because for formal observations, I provided them with hand-written (brainstorm, jotting thoughts-style) plans. This is how I plan. With pen and paper and thoughts inserted. They were not pleased. Understandably, I should have provided a nicer copy, but my administration wanted to see me use the protocol.

Most of the teachers in school do not use this protocol. (I don't think they know that.) (And I don't think I'd be on the radar had I pretended for the observation that I use this protocol. But I was foolish and naive enough to believe that honesty is the best policy. Last time I'll ever go down that path again.)

Why I'm peeved is that my administration did not have many negative things to say about my teaching. While they did have suggestions for growth (and admittedly, there is A LOT of room for growth), they said that besides the plans, they felt I was a teacher with good potential. Anyway, I have been told to use the protocol for all of my lessons and to send in my lessons. Which further cramps my style of planning day to day or sometimes, 2 days to day. Which I have been told is acceptable, but I am now supposed to be planning week to week. I am okay with proving that I'm using the protocol, but having to change my method of operation to plan a week's worth of lessons for three different classes by Monday of each week? It's a good thing we teachers have so much free time on our hands...

And while some of my administrators gave great constructive criticism, can I just put it out there that my mentor has always had great things to say about the several classes that she's sat in on? And she is the only SPED-specialized observer I've ever had. I don't think it's a coincidence. I think she gets it. SPED is a different kind of world. For PC reasons we may like to pretend that these kids are just the same as gen ed kids. And in many way they are, but as students... the similarity is much less. (And for the record,  don't think that SPED kids can't achieve as much as their gen ed counterparts. I just think that some cannot due to physical constraints and that while my kids are capable of many things and often capable of learning what I teach them in math or science, they are often not capable of recalling those things the next day. And that's what SPED is, kids who learn differently from their gen ed counterparts. So why non-SPED people keep telling me to do what the gen ed teachers are doing with their students puzzles me. Also puzzling is why my admin continues to suggest that my kids are all college-capable when cognitive skills as low as theirs would make college extremely unlikely and difficult. Again, I love my kids, but I think it's important to be realistic. Sometimes the most frustrating thing is wanting to take time to teach them how to add instead of the pythagorean theorem.

Since I want to keep this relatively short (and this is kind of dragging on!), I just want to say that a lot of the time, I feel flustered by the lack of support and understanding teachers (especially new teachers) receive from the higher-ups. I don't want to use my being new as a crutch, but you can't as a new teacher to know all the things that a veteran teacher knows (like the curriculum back to front - in which I teach three). And while lesson planning is important, I think that the lessons should be written to each his own. If I am able to sculpt lessons in a way that makes sense to me, I think I would plan better lessons, benefiting the students, rather than learning to deal with this protocol which is unattractive and cumbersome. Even more frustrating is that one of my administrators suggested that my job should be "easier" because I teach special ed and thus fewer students. (Oh, no s/he didn't!)

Special ed is not my calling, I know that, but being involved with it is going to keep me respectful of the profession for years and years to come. When is there going to be a SPED-specialized administrator? When are we going to stop being the dumping grounds? :(

Anyway, so that's my rant! In summary, I think that lesson planning is important. I would love to make beautiful, complete lesson plans all the time if I could. I am a perfectionist and love color coding the sections of my lesson plan. :) But good gosh, where is all the time for this much attention to detail? I'm just trying to survive and teach my kids what they need to know! (And that does NOT consist of how to make a circle graph!) And... I wish my school would not suggest for me to "pick" 10 children I teach to "move to proficiency" and "leave" the rest, because I won't be able to "reach them all."

Side note - I went to a training yesterday and everyone at my table fell asleep. Sometimes, I have no hope for the uprising of this county.

Hope everyone has a great weekend and if you have any tips on making lesson planning bearable, leave them here! :)

2 comments:

  1. Yep - that's pretty much it in a nutshell.

    I found that my second, third, and fourth years planning were very different from my first. Also, teaching the same subject for a second and third year in a row makes A HUGEEEEEEE difference.

    All in all, I agree that your admin shouldn't be making you use that template for every lesson. It might work well for some, but it's not appropriate for all. And anyone trying to force it on all their teachers probably did not spend much time in the classroom or wasn't very reflective on the time they did spend there.

    I also found that I only ever became effective as a planner when I began my units by creating the summative assessment, doing the summative assessment myself, creating outcomes and essential questions around my product, and then creating activities - which (depending on how much energy I had left), might be followed by lesson plans. But that amount of work is frankly not realistic in your first year. Doing it well in my fifth year takes between 35 and 50 hours of work.

    My best piece of advice, ask yourself what the kids need to learn and think critically about what you can do to get them to learn it. I feel like scripted lesson planning templates and observations are primarily about helping teachers teach, not helping students learn. They're about management and control. So play the game, but make the game secondary.

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  2. Two years ago, I spent the entire summer planning for my 10th grade English classes. I planned by advisory, month, week, and day. I found this curriculum map online somewhere and listed everything--text, assessments, essential questions. I showed it to my administrators, who promptly tossed it. Not enough emphasis on the NCLB test. Too much focus on grammar and writing. Go figure.

    I share your consternation with excessive planning. There is an organic component to learning. Sometimes I think the best teachers are the ones who can sense when the "conversation" is shifting and can move on their feet.

    For more on my experiences this year with two new preps, please visit my blog at teachermandc.com. Good luck.

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