Welcome to the Teachers Need Teachers Podcasts, the podcast for teachers who don't want
to just survive but actually thrive. So this is another episode of Candidly Kim
where I'm just going to be speaking to you a little more off the cuff
about something that I noticed today and I wanted to discuss this so on Instagram
on the We are Teachers' Instagram account. The question that was posed is what's
something that you had to do for your degree program that you don't ever use
as a teacher. And I would have to say that a surprising number of
teachers discussed writing a lesson plan, especially one of those ten plus page lesson
plans, and that got me thinking about that because I do remember both when
I was getting my teaching credential and then also when I was in my master's
program having to write these really long lesson plans, and I can even visualize
the template that I had to use, and it was really complicated. And
I think I also found it difficult to write these lesson plans because I didn't
really have any context, like I didn't even know what I was doing,
and so writing the lesson plan was hard for me because I i didn't know
if what I was planning would actually work or even like what a good lesson
plan looks like, especially because I this is back in like the late nineties
when I was getting my teaching credential two thousand and so I just didn't have
like teachers made teachers or anything to work off of, and I didn't have
just like all of the resources available online to help me contextualize what a lesson
plan should be. Like, here's the thing. I know that a lot
of teachers are like, lesson plans are unnecessary. Why do we need to
write all these things out? Why ten plus pages? And I get that
part in terms of the breadth and the depth in terms of writing these plants,
like they want you to write a million of them, one for every
single day that's ten pages long. And the part is relatively unreasonable to have
to write ten pages for every day of the week for one hundred and eight
or five teaching days or whatever your contract is. However, and this is
where might get a little bit controversial depending on who you talk to. I
do think, especially when you were starting out teaching, that there is definitely
value in writing out a lesson plan. Writing out the plan for an entire
period. And here's why. So let me just tell you this based on
my experience. So when I transitioned over to teaching English, I don't know
if for those of you that have been following me, I taught band for
the first ten years of my career and then I switched over to teaching middle
school English, and delivering a lesson for band was different. Obviously, or
at least I thought it was different. Now that I look back, I
bet if I use the same techniques, my band would have been better,
But that's for another conversation maybe, But delivering a lesson when teaching English,
it just it didn't make sense to me. When I started out, like
I did have all of the resources that I needed, and the lesson plans
and worksheets from a colleague of mine who I really trusted dearly and respected so
much. She's just an amazing English teacher, and so I was lucky to
have those resources. But even then, when it came time to delivering the
lesson and actually delivering an effective lesson, that's where it got tricky, because
there's so many layers to a lesson that you have to think about. And
so that's why I definitely found that planning my lessons every day, every day
it really made it so that eventually I became somewhat effective. I definitely wasn't
effective that first year. I mean I would just go and look at the
worksheet that I had to teach, and that I would teach it, and
then the kids would complete it, and then that would be the end of
the class period, and the next day it would be here's the worksheet,
I give the lecture, we practice and then so I didn't really know what
I was doing because I didn't build in all the other things that a more
detailed lesson plan would have. So I didn't have things like the anticipatory set,
and I didn't have things like figuring out the objectives. I basically just
followed the curriculum. I didn't even really know what it was that I was
teaching and why I didn't necessarily plan for checking for understanding or the worm up,
or what I was going to do in terms of whole group work versus
individual work the formative assessment. How was I going to know other than the
blank looks on their face whether or not what I was teaching was actually sinking
in. I mean, you know, the feeling of raise your hand and
then like no one raises their hand or calling on a student and they don't
know the answer. It's like, how can I tell they were actually learning
what I taught them and figuring it out. And then also, in addition
to the formative assessment, what was going to be the summative, Like what
was I aiming towards? How was I going to determine whether or not they
understood this particular unit before moving on? And then could I move on or
did I have to go back and reteach. So these are all things that
didn't come naturally to me, especially in the beginning. And that's why planning
out all of those elements of a lesson, especially like let's say that you
have students with IEPs in your class, You've got to plan for accommodations for
them, you have to plan for scaffolding. But when you're a new teacher,
those are things that don't necessarily come naturally to you. So that's why
I definitely think that learning how to write an effective lesson plan is something that
they should teach you when you are in a teacher prep program. Now I'm
not saying that the fact that they required you to write a lesson plan means
that they effectively taught you how to do that, because again need some context.
And I feel like ideally it would help to learn this process while you
are apprenticing or doing student teaching. However, you will probably run into a
mentor teacher who doesn't plan lessons at all. It's up in their head.
So then that wouldn't be very effective. Like there are a lot of teachers
are like, oh, lesson planaged, lesson plan whatever, you don't need
to do that, and so they're not actually going to teach it to you.
And I really really think that it's important to know the process and how
to plan and how to anticipate all the things that you need to do that
you need to look for, that you need to bake into a daily lesson
because you really don't have that much time with them for what it is that
you need to teach. Those are all things that you need to have planned
out for you. So do I still use lesson plans today? Yes?
And no. So before I started doing the Modern Classroom project, yes,
I planned out at least my week, if not two weeks, because I
had a goal. I finally learned after a long long time. You need
something to shoot for. It's something that I probably should have known a long
time ago, but it actually took me a good part of my career to
figure this out. You need to know what it is that they need that
they need to know so, and it just beyond the standards or objectives.
Like in my mind, I realized that I need to actually teach them skills.
I couldn't just teach them content. I had to teach them skills so
that they would know how to apply the content. So you need to plan
out the objective and then you're going to have to figure out backwards, like
how many lessons is going to take? What are the skills that I need
to teach them in order for them to accomplish that, in order for them
to be able to be successful on this summative assessment sumative meaning kind of like
this culminating assessment that you give them to see if they actually got it.
What are all the things that I need to teach them leading up to that?
And then when you figure out those skills, what do I have to
do to break those down for them to get them to grasp that? How
can I access prior knowledge? How can I build upon the skills that they
already know so that they can level up to where they need to be to
successfully do this summative assessment. So again, planning this out is really important
and I can't stress that enough. And maybe you're surprised to know that I
do plan. I plan every day. Well I did. Now my planning
is a little bit different because I am planning out entire units and filming the
videos, and in that sense, I still am planning for every day if
you think about that. But it's because I don't want to leave anything to
chance. Like I said, I would teach a lesson and I would just
forget something like scaffolding. I would forget to check for understanding and just go
through the motions, and I would wonder why they were doing so poorly unassessments,
or why their writing wasn't getting any better, or why they were getting
bored. I wasn't building in any group work, or I would use to
use group work as an excuse to not have to stand in front of the
room and teach. Like I'm real with you guys here, Like I was
not a good teacher when I first started teaching English because I didn't have everything
as organized, like, yes, I had a lesson plan in terms of
tomorrow, we're going to do this worksheet, and then on Tuesday, we're
going to do this worksheet. But I didn't have a sense of the big
picture. And that's where I think lesson planning is really valuable. Now my
lesson plans aren't as detailed. Sometimes they could be as simple as just like
a checklist of things that I need to do in a class period, because
I inherently know how to teach that lesson and how to deliver it, the
things that I want to say, the questions I'm going to ask. But
I've earned that right because I've taught that lesson so many times, and I've
done the proper troubleshooting to make sure that I don't make those same mistakes.
I've done the reflection and taken notes and written down how I would teach it
differently the next time. I've earned that right to not have to have as
detailed of a lesson plan. But in the beginning, after I fumbled for
a couple of years because my lesson plans were not detailed, then I definitely
went to a very detailed lesson plan so that I could eventually make sure that
I captured all the things that I needed to do on top of classroom management
and things like that. So I don't know. I agree and disagree with
the comments about lesson planning during your teacher prep program. I think it should
be taught by people who are in the classroom and by people who are using
these lesson plans, and not just on a surface level, because I don't
know. Maybe this happened to you at your university, but where I went,
the people teaching us how to be teachers didn't teach for very long.
It's just kind of hard to have someone who hasn't had that experience in a
really long time teach you how to effectively write one and implement a lesson.
So I can see why there's some skepticism on that, but I definitely see
value in lesson plans. If you have many comments on this, I'd love
to hear about it. I really wish, like with podcasts, maybe I
need to find this, but I really wish there was a way for us
to have a conversation about this, like the way that you can in the
comments on YouTube. But as far as I know right now, there's not
a way for that, and if you do know one, please let me
know. You can email me at Kim at Teachersneed Teachers dot com. You
can also go to my Facebook group Teachers Need Teachers and comment on how you
feel about lesson plans and if you agree or disagree about their importance. Thanks
for hanging out with me today, you guys, and I will talk to
you next time.