I found this comment tonight while catching up on some reading. It’s a well-articulated statement of how I think lesson planning, and teaching, should happen: #
But the best classes, for me, always seem to be the ones that goYep. Couldn’t agree more. #
sailing off in some direction I hadn’t anticipated. I used to worry
about having to pull the kids "back on track." In recent years I’m more
interested in trying to explore with them where the new track is
leading. Truth to tell, a great deal of my lesson "planning" is
actually done after the fact, trying as you say, to figure out, given
today’s surprises, what would be a good thing to do next. #And
all of that connects to the objection that I think we both share to
curriculum design driven by standardized testing. There’s no room there
for side tracks, we’ve got to get to page 48 by Thursday. #The
#
artfulness of teaching is about knowing when and how to respond on the
fly to things you hadn’t anticipated. And if you don’t provide room for
those things to happen, if you don’t give the students room to make them happen, education devolves into something mechanical and soul-deadening.
I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I think a natural flow is a key element to a good classroom atmosphere. On the other, curricula are intended, in part, to try to ensure that everyone in a given geographic area (generally the state, I suppose) has a similar eduction.
I suppose it depends on just how much tangent following we’re talking about.
A problem arises when too much “sailing off in some direction I hadn’t anticipated” happens too often and is done by too many. In most cases, I would reject curriculum design driven by standardized testing. But what happens when certain sub-groups fail to meet AYP and the grim reality is that they have to? Would you agree to a more prescribed curriculum that would target the issues the kids were having so that they could be successful on the test as a last option? Nothing else has worked, including leaving it up to regular/traditional types of classroom instruction. What if your school district, as a result of the failure of these subgroups, was to be remediated. Would you still reject that type of curriculum?
I favor a guaranteed and viable curriculum (from the work of Marzano); for example, every kid in a biology class gets the same curriculum, and its viable-we have the time and resources to make sure it happens. This certainly does not equate to a curriculum defined by standardized testing, but does require a little more rigidity to guarantee that every kid is ensured the same type of education. And certainly there is latitude for exploring serendipitous topics.
There’s a major difference between going off on a tangent and allowing the kids to really explore the ideas. The best classes for me have been the ones when something really caught them and they wanted to talk about it for awhile, and really understand what it meant. I certainly didn’t get to page 42 that day, but I think the kids understood better than if I had.
Bud, what you refer to I always heard called “the teachable moment”. If the “moment” was time sensitive content, related to process, important and motivational, and not static information, and if it matched my future goals… I’d run with it and link it to other tasks.
But there is nothing more unsettling to a teacher than to prepare a static “content” unit only to find that last year’s teacher had digressed and imparted that information already.. to half of the class. This unsettling, however, may reflect a lack of creative and dynamic and individualized instruction. Curriculum, if it fosters dynamic activity with open-ended learning, won’t impede the “teachable moment”. However, curriculum that requires the teaching of static “content” – which is sometimes necessary to impart to a whole group – will impede such moments.
So.. an experienced teacher usually can tell the difference, and make the right choice.. to diverge, or not to diverge. That is part of what we all learn through experience, but not often through teacher training courses!
Some good responses here. Thanks. I’m certainly not saying that planning and preparing is never about sequences and scopes. I do, though, resist the scopes and sequences that are designed and clung to in the absence of actual students.