Planning ‘you’ is not teaching ‘you’

 

Have you ever noticed when you are on the road that planning you is different from travelling you?

Planning you thinks ‘hey I’ll save that extra $100 by flying at 6am.’ Travelling you is thinking  ‘what the heck?’ when setting the alarm and ‘what the actual heck’ when trying to extricate yourself from a deep slumber at stupid o’clock.

Planning you is different from teaching you.

Plans seldom go the way intend them to. Sometimes that’s good, other times not so much. Sometimes you can control the detour, other times you’ve just go along for the ride. And sometimes plans will go exactly the way you intended them.

Planning needs to be a work in process, not just something at the start of the week/unit. How often do we re-visit our plans as we are teaching?

Planning for the future without reflecting on the past will never lead to improvements in practice. Celebrate what’s going right. But think about what needs to go better. What do you need to be doing? What do you need to not to be doing?

Planning isn’t just what you put down on paper. It’s the judgements you make before, during and after you teach. You can borrow the other teachers ideas but you will put your own twist on them. Others will put their twist on your plans.

Be ok with that.

But always remember planning you, is not teaching you.