I hinted at this in my last post. I am not even sure that I fully understand what I want to convey with this post, so please accept my apologies for my "published" rough draft.
Every teacher I know works hard at their craft. They are trying to create new and exciting lessons for their students. We're all well aware that the days of writing a lesson and implement it for the next 10 (or maybe more) years are gone and with good reason. We've done a great job of making education more exciting, more engaging and much more about the learning than compliance. Why then do we feel like we're bumping up against the ceiling when it comes to innovating our practice? I will submit to you that if you want innovative lessons then it's time we innovate the lesson planning process. As I wrote in my last post "Do something innovative like plan WITH your students, not for your students." I think that this is a starting place for just about anyone and everyone. I am hesitant to outline too many other steps because I have always been a firm believer in the idea that what works for you may not work for me. The inverse would also be true. You are a professional. You know what your kids need, what works for them and what meets them where they're at. What I will say is that it's time to think long and hard about the conditions in which we lesson plan. Including kids in the planning process is just one idea. What if we stopped sitting around in groupings that are homogenous by subject area when we plan? Another idea, what if we put our teacher work days in the middle of the school year, so we could have entire days during the school year to make the adjustments we need to make to the ever-changing needs of our students? There could be an infinite list of ideas to try. The bottom line, changing what you do is hard if you never change how you do it.
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January 2020
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