To plan or not to plan...
im a planner. I plan my weekly meals before I go food shopping each week. I plan my holiday itineraries meticulously. I plan what I want to say to people before I say it. I even plan what
so far, this natural tendency to plan for everything has suited me in my career as a teacher. We are encouraged to produce timetables and plans for every moment of the day.
i trained and spent my first 2 years of teaching in a school where my timetable had to displayed outside my door. The leadership team would look at it before entering the classroom and question me if I was not doing what was displayed. We were expected to email our plans to the assistant head teacher by 9am on a Friday morning. She would scrutinise them and then come to see us at the beginning of lunchtime, everything crossed through in red, and we were instructed to rewrite them by the end of the day. This happened every week. You would think that at some point, they would have explained what it was they were or weren't looking for and trained us how to do that. I mean, we don't mark a child's writing in their book every day with the same EBI without eventually realising they will need extra help to achieve this...do we?
the next school I worked at was similarly rigid. You were expected to be teaching exactly what they told you to, at the time you were told to, in the way that you were told to. I have learned how to create the most detailed concise plans. I have had to. Out of fear, necessity, or just because that's what I was taught was 'right'.
But once that plan is printed out, I've lost it. I'll admit I've rarely ever looked at a plan again after the actual planning.
Im not trying to make some big confession here that I'm winging it every day in my class. I don't want to lose my job (I hope my head teachers aren't reading this....) but the reality is that we can't plan for what a 4 year old might do or say at any moment. Now through another 24 of them in the mix and you have a high level of uncertainty and unpredictability. I've spent so long thinking that I needed to stick to plans that I have always feared going off tangent. Or more accurately, I have been brainwashed by previous institutions to think that this is a bad thing.
but slowly I am starting to realise that the real learning is happening during these unplanned moments. The relationships are being deepened with the children. Their ideas are being listened to, developed and questioned. They are learning how to have conversations instead of just being talked at.
i still stuggle at times to be spontaneous. Don't send me to a supermarket without a list, I'll crumble. But I don't need to plan for great learning in the classroom because I'm allowing it to happen naturally.
so far, this natural tendency to plan for everything has suited me in my career as a teacher. We are encouraged to produce timetables and plans for every moment of the day.
i trained and spent my first 2 years of teaching in a school where my timetable had to displayed outside my door. The leadership team would look at it before entering the classroom and question me if I was not doing what was displayed. We were expected to email our plans to the assistant head teacher by 9am on a Friday morning. She would scrutinise them and then come to see us at the beginning of lunchtime, everything crossed through in red, and we were instructed to rewrite them by the end of the day. This happened every week. You would think that at some point, they would have explained what it was they were or weren't looking for and trained us how to do that. I mean, we don't mark a child's writing in their book every day with the same EBI without eventually realising they will need extra help to achieve this...do we?
the next school I worked at was similarly rigid. You were expected to be teaching exactly what they told you to, at the time you were told to, in the way that you were told to. I have learned how to create the most detailed concise plans. I have had to. Out of fear, necessity, or just because that's what I was taught was 'right'.
But once that plan is printed out, I've lost it. I'll admit I've rarely ever looked at a plan again after the actual planning.
Im not trying to make some big confession here that I'm winging it every day in my class. I don't want to lose my job (I hope my head teachers aren't reading this....) but the reality is that we can't plan for what a 4 year old might do or say at any moment. Now through another 24 of them in the mix and you have a high level of uncertainty and unpredictability. I've spent so long thinking that I needed to stick to plans that I have always feared going off tangent. Or more accurately, I have been brainwashed by previous institutions to think that this is a bad thing.
but slowly I am starting to realise that the real learning is happening during these unplanned moments. The relationships are being deepened with the children. Their ideas are being listened to, developed and questioned. They are learning how to have conversations instead of just being talked at.
i still stuggle at times to be spontaneous. Don't send me to a supermarket without a list, I'll crumble. But I don't need to plan for great learning in the classroom because I'm allowing it to happen naturally.