Lesson Plans

Lesson Plans are vital to the success of a teacher and their students. However, I believe some districts and teaching colleges go overboard in the detail required in lesson plans. I have been teaching for 11 years and have used small boxes for my lesson plans in a book and have recently changed to an online format that uses a similar box set-up. In the day's box the objective, precedure, do-now, instructional strategies and assessments are listed. I agree that all teachers need to be organized and have a plan but with some formats the work can be much too time consuming! Teachers have lives outside of school and families to attend to. Some lesson plans requires hours of work just to satisfy school guidelines. Think about the poor elementary school teacher who is responsible for multiple subjects a day. Those who are required to utilized detailed lesson plans for each of their subjects will spend their entire weekend creating them! I have taught for 11 years, not to sound like an "old dog" but I have never had to do a lesson plan for school that was as detailed as the ones I had to do when I was in college doing my student teaching and I think I am very organized and prepared for every lesson I teach. Let the teachers put more effort into the actual performance of the lesson and less into meaningless paperwork that looks good in administrations eyes!

"Introducing the Book" Video

This was a very funny video! However, relates directly to a lot of people in society learning and struggling to use technology today. In school I have encountered many people who have a fear of computers and technology. I hear comments all of the time "I haven't had a computer for 30 years, why do I need it now?" I have a department member that I need to help him check his email almost daily and still doesn't know how to send an email! I also help another faculty member almost weekly put her lesson plans onto the schools L-Drive! She can't get the concept of Microsoft Word of saving the file with the proper date and opening up the correct drive to save it on! So this I can see what this video is getting at. In reality, the book was a big step forward in relation to the scroll and technology has soared to unforeseen hights. The sky is the limit with what can be done with technology. The only problem is getting everybody on board with this belief and open to the idea.