No more lesson plans
October 1, 2006 am31 2:33 am
I really think so. For new teachers.
I am tired of hearing how hard new teachers work on lessons. They should be learning how to teach, how to cope with difficult classrooms, with abusive and incompetent administrators.
Someone should hand new teachers a stack of lesson plans for the first year. Plans exist. Good teachers have developed them. Why shouldn’t new teachers use them? Why should new teachers reinvent the wheel, and badly at that?
The first year is stressful enough. Let’s give these guys a break, so they have a greater chance of reaching the second year.
Who should do this? Our union? The administrators? Individual teachers?
Really, any school where new teachers are writing lessons should be penalized.
JD2718 
Our district has an on-line site that has lesson plans for basically every unit in all middle and high school courses. They aren’t all great and some sections have more plans than others, but it is growing everyday.
Honestly, as a newer teacher, sometimes is really is a lifesaver.
Absolutely.
As a first year teacher I could spend sometimes 2 or more hours writing something worse than what takes me 15 minutes today. What an incredible waste of effort! And I needed so much to work on other aspects of teaching. Lousy on-line lessons would have been just fine to start with, thank you.
I have to say, as a high school principal, I agree with you. When I started my administrative career, it was in a large district as an assistant principal. My boss wanted me to call in lesson plans, one department at a time, and go over them. I tried to argue that it was a waste of time, anyone can write beautiful lesson plans that don’t translate into good teaching. So he called them in for me and I had a huge stack to go over for the weekend. As a principal, I want to see planning, but I don’t dictate what it looks like on paper. I know what a great lesson looks like by watching our students rather than by reading a plan book. New teachers need whatever help they can get to be successful, our Math department shares lesson plans and I think it’s terrific.
Writing lessons is hard. It is a skill that is picked up with time. To have beginning teachers write them…. why??? Far better to let them learn how to deliver good plans (since they already exist). Then later they can learn to modify existing plans. And if needed, at some point in the future (not the first year unless they want to) they can begin to develop some of their own.
But I think both commenters agree.
The internet saved me my first year! Plans I found online were far more successful than the ones I developed myself. There are so many lesson plan sites out there, but the problem is that many of them charge. There should definitely be a FREE central location for plans that’s searchable for teachers. Maybe the UFT could do this.
This year, my new principal provided us with curriculum that is excellent. Just having something to start with, even if I end up modifying it, saves me so much time. Now I can concentrate on things like, um, really looking at student work, calling parents, and creating a lively classroom environment with bulletin boards, etc. that administrators love.