On the unimportance of the "lesson plan."

There is an emphasis in education on the importance of the lesson plan. Educators focus on how to open a lesson, how to progress monitor, balancing teacher and student talk time, and finding the perfect balance of engagement protocols to lecture to work time. We're asked to turn in single-day lesson plans as part of our professional evaluation. All those things are important parts of teaching, but I would argue that by emphasizing the lesson plan for a single day, teachers, students, and the field of education in general is missing out on the bigger picture. This outline will be augmented by explanations, images, anecdotes, and examples in additional posts in the near future, but at least you'll know what's coming!

Level 1: "What am I doing tomorrow?"

• Planning timeline:
  • Last minute: making tomorrow’s copies, today… or today’s copies today after leaving the meeting early...
• Planning focus:
  • Finding “enough” resources related to the content and skills to “fill time.”
  • Hoping lessons work & don’t run short.
• Source of lessons and materials:
  • Google
  • File cabinets
  • Teachers pay Teachers
• Students spend time:
  • Listening to the teacher talk.
  • Repeating rote skills.
  • Doing the cutting, folding, and other prep the teacher didn’t have time to do.
  • Engaging with pre-made and packaged software.​​

Level 2: "What's the best way to teach this content, concept, or skill?"

• Planning timeline:
  • 3-5 days, there is a logical, prepared progression of teach-practice-perform (or any such other logical practice.)
• Planning focus:
  • Creating or finding materials that work for this skill, this week, with this content.
  • Writing questions specific to this skill, this week, this content.
  • Improving teaching practice and “catching up,” or even “getting ahead” a few days.
• Source of lessons and materials:
  • Google searches for materials, file cabinets, and Teachers pay Teachers.
  • Self-created to match exact instruction in content or skill.
• Students spend time:
  • Learning important content.
  • Practicing purposeful skills.
  • Working towards a short-term goal (under a week away: a paragraph prompt, a lab write up...)​

Level 3: "How should I organize my unit?"

• Planning timeline:
  • A month, or a unit, whichever comes first.
  • Day-to-day planning occurs within the context of unit goals and “fits” intentionally.
  • Becomes easy to plan by weeks instead of days.
• Planning focus:
  • Planning skills, content, and weekly assessments into a cohesive unit.
  • Refining, removing, and creating lessons and materials cohesively.
  • Writing repeated questions that allow students to apply skills across content and sources of an entire unit.
• Source of lessons and materials:
  • Existing, semi-self created curricula augmented by other established curriculum sources.
  • Some student exemplars and work are used to drive instruction.
• Students spend time:
  • Learning important content.
  • Practicing purposeful skills
  • Working together towards unit goals using unit-specific materials.​​

Level 4: "How do students learn?"

• Planning timeline: 
  • Practicing, collecting data, tweaking, and refining year long learning structures.
  • Day-to-day planning occurs within the context of year-long goals, and several strong, well-developed lesson plans are used strategically in the same location of units all year long:
    • Universal vocabulary lesson early in the unit.
    • Universal discussion protocol after each movie or documentary.
    • Universal, structured 5-day lab procedure.
    • Universal, gallery-walk math review before a test at which each station represents one of the types of equations students will need to solve.
      
    • Universal peer-review or peer evaluation after each major assessment.
    • New lessons are made to fit in with existing data protocols, and data protocols are slowly refined to reflect new lessons.
• Planning focus:
  • “Simplify, then add lightness.” -Colin Chapman
    • Refine and augment the most important learning structures of the year.
    • Remove day-to-day plans and materials that are only used once.
      • A well-defined “reading day” protocol with a series of universal close-read tools can demonstrate understanding and be just as engaging as a series of 37 question worksheets, each with questions specific to a few pages of each text.
      • This is more possible in some subjects (English) than it is in other subjects (math). Math teachers will NEED worksheets filled with problems forever, but fear not, they can still structure year-long learning for themselves and their students.
        
  • Emphasize life-long learning for students, and career-long refinement of teaching practice, not day to day busy work or worrying about the exact verb posted in your daily learning target.
• Source of lessons and materials:
  • Entirely self-created or carefully refined through data-driven teacher practices to reflect student needs.
  • Teachers at this level will be able to explain the exact development of font, color, spacing, etc. of every material they use, and how the materials have slowly developed with their practice based on student need.
• Students spend time:
  • Engaged with each other, and using well-practiced learning protocols to grapple with difficult content.
  • Self and peer evaluating work.
  • Setting goals and tracking progress.​

Like all other "leveled" descriptions I publish here, please don't think that by reading this outline, and the posts soon to follow, that you can jump to level four in your first year. You can't. No one can. Teaching is a field that requires DECADES of actual classroom practice and reflection to master, and level four always describes a level of mastery that very few teachers, myself included, ever really attain, or that we attain fleetingly before dropping back down to level one because we start using an awesome new book, or article, or theory.