What I will say is that despite the concept of methodically placing lessons with dates and times, I am constantly planning. I like the freedom of allowing the now to take over rather than writing a plan weeks in advance and sticking to it. I think that challenges us to stretch our brains and reinvent the assignment two or three times before we settle on something that we think will grab our kids.
In the 2015 educational world, a lesson plan and a curriculum map are like the bible. Only the bible is left open for some interpretation. Lesson plans are more like the 10 commandments. They are to be chiseled in stone and hung next to the door for any willing, or unwilling, observer's guidance to what he or she will be watching in your classroom.
I have, to an extent, conformed to the masses and lesson planned each of my five unique preps for the powers that be will be satisfied. I will admit that many are as vague as humanly possible. I suppose I can understand the warm and swaddled feeling an observer must get when the plan reflects exactly what is going on in the classroom. I get that for my AP English Lang class or Journalism I it's not a big deal.
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| Artwork by Mark A. Hicks, illustrator |
My role resembles a hockey goalie more so than a teacher. They have a question, I bat them back into play. They might be working on any of the million or so skills that journalism requires. So what do I do? Write a lesson plan for each of them?
When we talk about real student directed learning, I think they should be writing their own. My job should be to not let them get stale and to constantly pursue new learning and opportunities.
I can't say that any administration will agree with me, but it's a battle I'm about to fight. I'm tired of wasting hours writing down stale generalizations about what really happens in the journalism room.
Larry Steinmetz
Bullitt East High School
Mount Washington, KY
I am curious about the summer training that you do with your students. Do the students attend a camp? Or is it conducted at school? I'm in the process of trying to plan a retreat day before school with my two classes of journalism. I tried the hands on approach to learning this year, thinking that my students will learn through practical practice and some skills based lessons - hey, that's how I learned. I don't know that I was all that successful with it this year though. As much as I tried to be fluid with my approach, I think the students were more successful when my plans were more structured. I think there definitely needs to be flexibility with lesson plans (I had what I thought were great ideas that ended up being awful) it needs to work for both the teacher and student.
ReplyDeleteJill Cavotta
Mater Dei High School
Santa Ana, California
Larry,
ReplyDeleteI just posted a 'lesson' that I have planned over and over and over again, but it's never officially planned. Even though that makes little sense, I think you'll understand. I change the clip every time depending on the class. I change the activity to whole class, pairs, small groups depending on what I'm feeling that day. I saw your title and knew that I was going to relate to your post. That is all relative to my Intro to Journalism class. I am the only one who teaches it. The teacher before me piloted it for a year. No one has ever asked me for lessons, and they just let me teach. It's a beautiful thing! My yearbook adviser may begin teaching a section or two this upcoming year, but she's great and I don't mind sharing or collaborating.
Jill, I'm also interested to know what others do in the summer. I meet with my staff in the summer. I send them a list of things to think about and brainstorm and they have to email it back to me. I'll use blogs from now on thanks to this experience. It's awesome. After that, we meet at a coffee shop or my house and get to know each other and come up with big ideas for the year. Sometimes we can't get everyone on the same day, so I'll do two groups. I also have a day where all my new students come in to the lab to play around with and get a feel for InDesign. We get a heck of a lot accomplished just by meeting for a few hours here and there in July. It's also nice to just get to know each other.
Andrea Lyons
Marietta High
Marietta, Georgia
Larry would you like to borrow my derby gear? I totally get it. I am in the middle of creating course guides and curriculum maps for our journalism classes as we speak. Sigh. I figured it was just my ADD kicking in but I soon realized how on earth am I going to write all of these lessons, things, standards, things, activities, things, and more things ...and get them to make sense? it makes me exhausted just thinking about it. I love controlled chaos and that is what my room looks like at any given time during my journalism classes. I would love to have a conversation about creating student lead plans if you will so that they are in charge of their learning and goals.
ReplyDeleteHeather Eaton
La Joya Community High School
Avondale, Arizona
I don't know how long it will last, but I've appreciated my freedom even as a professor of practice who isn't on the tenure track to be flexible with short- and long-term plans, down to ripping up my syllabus every semester as technology and students' skills develop. ASNE wants a lesson plan as a return on its investment. I've been proud through the years to see plans by so many ASU participants featured by ASNE so other teachers can benefit.
ReplyDeleteSteve Elliott
Arizona State University
Phoenix
My struggle, like Larry's, is that I don't have time to teach "lessons" in a traditional sense. I've mentioned this elsewhere, but our school newspaper does not meet as a class. We are strictly extracurricular, and most students on staff have put other extracurriculars above the newspaper. We actually only meet as an entire staff twice a month. The rest of the time includes daily emails to various editors, clarifying instruction, explaining edits, etc. It's exhausting to do it this way, but unless an entire group of students can make an even bigger commitment than they already do, I'm not sure what to change.
ReplyDeleteThe first step, I guess, is to implement more summer training, as some of you have talked about above. This summer, I am running a three-day "Crier Camp"--well, that's the plan, at least. The struggle I am facing is deciding what, exactly, to teach over these three days. We need team building, we need clearer explanations of job responsibilities, we need interviewing practice, we need lead instruction, and so on. I'm hoping that this week's experience helps me focus my plans for summer instruction so that our team can start a little bit ahead of where we were last year.
David Gwizdala
James B. Conant High School
Hoffman Estates, Illinois