Have you ever
seen the Sonic commercial? The one with the two guys sitting in the car outside
of Sonic, and one of them is recording every time he’s had his mind blown in a
notebook- he’s on like number 46 or something…
Well, that
was me this past week.
This semester
I have REALLY been struggling with my lesson plans, they weren't making sense,
and were coming out not at all how I envisioned them in my mind; This week it
all changed when I experienced multiple “booyah!” epiphanies, and boy they were
major. For all of you Education majors out there, please let me explain.
All this time
I have been trying to manipulate what I already had figured out, in order to
fix in the templates predetermined structure: the “I do, you do, we do” and the
“reading the text/ensuring comprehension, collaborative or individual
interpretations” and so on, when my
thoughts didn't necessarily align with these perfect little boxes.
Some other
pretty dandy learnings; I have always thought the “review/reflection” and the “extension” was something carried out at the end of the
lesson- I was creating these whole other activities, and frankly, I couldn't understand why… then after a conversation with my teaching partner, Kayla, she
told me something amazing. That this was the things you do when a student needs
help DURING the lesson, or when a student breezes through it, what I would say
to him/her. I've been doing these things all along! BOOM! Mind Blown!
So… needless
to say, I’m a lot calmer person here and now, then I was about a week ago- when
I was pulling my hair out and LOATHING lesson planning; something that as a
teacher, I’ll be doing a lot of, and should make friends with. Already, we are
getting A LOT more comfortable together…
I agree that peace of mind comes with realizing that you need to blend the "predetermined templates" with your own comfort area. I think I've come to realize that sometimes it's okay to start with what you want and then use those structures as a means of attaining your personal objectives. I can relate to your loathing of lesson planning but I think you are super creative and have really cool ideas.. the template was just bringing you down. I'm glad that you mind-blowing experiences this week!!
ReplyDeleteFaith, I'm glad that you were able to see that the boxes present guideposts, and don't capture all the different aspects of planning. I love planning because it's a creative, dialogic process, in which I have to bring together who the kids are and what they need right now with what I want them to learn. Happy future planning!
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