I’m a planner. Seriously. I find things like spreadsheets and calendaring and color-coding to be freakishly satisfying. Plans help me to get my thoughts organized, and allow me to feel prepared and confident standing up in front of a group of wily students. But…
Things change.
I had a writing activity planned for Thursday, but other things took longer than expected and I knew we couldn’t finish it in the eight remaining minutes of class. So I did something else.
Also, sometimes your plans to plan fall through.
Agatha and I usually take a few minutes after class to discuss what we’d like to cover in the next class and divide up who’s planning/leading what. We didn’t get to this on Thursday, then campus was closed on Friday because of a massive snow storm, then Agatha got sick over the weekend and didn’t come into work yesterday. There was no time to plan today’s class until about an hour before it this morning, so that’s what we did. We prepared bits and pieces asynchronously, then figured out how to make them flow together in the ten minutes before class started… Then Agatha remembered that a colleague would be observing during the second half of the class, so we completely rearranged things again three minutes before class. Then things took longer than expected, so we rearranged things on the spot throughout the class.
Lesson learned: Planning is nice, but not planning or not following the plan can be okay too.
This is Sarah from class :)
ReplyDeleteYour planning and re-planning sounds so crazy, just like real life. If only students and teachers could be just like we plan them to be...but they never are exactly. That's one of my favorite things about teaching: it can be challenging at times, but it's never boring!
Yea I would be really frustrated if I had to change the plan right before the class. Even though I'm not a planner, still, I won't feel comfortable standing in front of my student (and not even a group, just one student for tutoring) without plans.
ReplyDeleteI just remembered that I got really frustrated when things didn't go as I planned... when I gave presentation for Pronunciation class with Ruth... sometimes, technology could be very.. tricky. So I think having backup plans are helpful too :)