Becoming a Teacher VIII

70s39 Becoming a Teacher

In the seventies and eighties teacher’s were required to write lesson plans and turn a copy in each week. The idea was that if something happened to you, whoever took your place would be able to start where you left off. It was useful for substitutes if you didn’t get a chance to write up specific plans. Many teachers resented having to turn a copy in because they felt the administration didn’t trust them.

I really didn’t have a problem with making a copy and turning it in. In those days we used a piece of carbon paper so it was just remembering to use it and put it in the right way when you did it. A few times I put the carbon in backwards and the copy ended up on the back of the page. I found my own lesson plans very useful and didn’t feel I could teach well without them.

I still have every one I wrote, even the ones I did when I was a student teacher. They are full of all kinds of interesting things. I wrote detailed plans about what I would do each day of the week in each subject. There are also notes and comments about specific students or events. I usually crossed out things when I completed them and drew arrows to the next day if I didn’t get to it.

I also had a full school year plan for each subject I taught. It laid out what I would do each month for the year. I never got everything I thought I would do done because I tended to over plan. I didn’t want to not have enough to do when I wrote the daily and yearly plans so I always put in more than I knew I could get done.

Writing the lesson plan required me to look very carefully at the material I was using to determine how best to present it to the students. Most of the reader and math series were scripted and told you exactly what to do and say. You really only needed to know how to read to teach that way. Many times the scripts were way off and written by someone who didn’t know kids, learning, or hadn’t been in a classroom for a long time.

I have heard of principals that expected teachers to follow those scripts and to be exactly where they said they would be each day in their lesson plans. I never had an administrator like that and I don’t think too many of that type exist anymore, at least in Iowa. That practice is still prevalent, unfortunately, in some states. Generally, they are places where teachers typically are not highly trained.

Most training now focuses on teaching teachers to be instructional decision makers and how to tailor instruction to meet the needs of all of their students. Sometimes teachers can do that as they plan the lesson and sometimes they do it on the fly if they feel the need to make adjustments to help the students learn.