I also find myself planning mini lessons in my head, which is a little lame, but I like to come up with creative ways to explore readings and writing. But after reading the chapter in Early Career English Teachers in Action, I have a few fears about being a first year English teacher down the road. Reading the introduction to the chapter alone made me wonder what my experience will be like, blindly planning weeks before the first day, unsure if the assignments will fit the criteria or the students. Because blindly preparing lesson plans seems intimidating because the students are the most important part, and that first year I won't know what to expect. But I agree with the book when it states "Making sure that the curriculum is actually useful to students and how they learn." Having the curriculum fit the students is a big deal and I think the best way to ensure this is too get help from other teachers and wait to do some planning till you are adjusted to the classroom environment.These fears of curriculum also are from this fear that as a teacher I will over or under plan, but these issues can be address as the experience of actually being a teacher begins, Later on in chapter an essay about the determination of importance is brought up, whether or not something should be taught and who should make that decision. I think that as an English teacher they should have the most say regarding what is taught because as an English teacher you have to expose students to new material and new styles whether in reading or writing. Planning a curriculum should include what is important, even if certain subjects are sensitive, like the whole issue of banned books, certain material should be explored because of content and the impact it can have.
Curriculum is something that needs to be discussed by not only English teachers a collective but also with students and administration because it is such an important and fluid subject.
One one hand, "blindly planning" is better than not planning at all! If you have the time, you can at least read all of the books (I was surprised when I got hired that I had only read one of the books that I would be teaching my 12th grade students!) and start thinking about project ideas. You might also get contact information from someone in the English department (assuming there is another English teacher who will likely have helped interview you) and that person might share some assignments. On the other hand, you are right: it's hard to plan without any students in mind! I always spent the first couple of weeks on creative writing with my English classes. It helped me get to know the students, and I didn't want to jump into a novel in the first week. By the time I was ready to start a novel, I at least knew all of the students' names and had a better sense of who they were. Plus, I wanted them to know that writing would be just as important as literature, so I always started with lots of writing. I used some of the stuff we're going to see next week in Linda Christensen's Reading, Writing, and Rising Up :)
ReplyDeleteAnd overplanning vs. underplanning? I would overplan for every day of the week and then underplan for Fridays, knowing that some of what I didn't get to during the week would carry over to Friday. Then, if I realized on Thursday afternoon that I had actually finished everything I wanted to do all week, I would take the time to plan something extra on Friday. Usually, there was enough "leftover" stuff from earlier in the week that Fridays were pretty full!