The Myth of Lesson Plans

I love to design courses; even more, I love to plan individual classes. I might as well admit it: I love lesson plans. I was forced to think about this the other day when I overheard administrators complaining about their teachers' reluctance to write out their lesson plans.

Too often, when administrators and department chairs require lesson plans, they supply a sort of template--goals, objectives (what is the difference?), methods, assessment, and so forth--for all disciplines and levels in a school. That 's not what I have in mind. In fact, my lesson plans more closely resemble football plays than what teachers have to fit in those little boxes in the Lesson Plan Book.

As I lay awake pondering the issue, I realized that there is a benefit to writing lesson plans that hadn't occurred to me til now. We teach our students that one reason to write is to understand what we know--in other words, to create knowledge. Lesson plans work that way for me too. How often have I begun to think/write about a class when I have an inspiration about how to begin or how to end or how to involve students? In other words, the benefits of writing lesson plans parallel the benefits of writing . . . period. Just as long as they don't make me fit it all into those little boxes.