Lesson Planning

I need to refuel. A school nearby uses Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People as their school philosophy. They also use  The 7 Habits of Happy Kids. One of Stephens philosophies is "Sharpening your saw." This simply means if you have a dull blade you're working twice as hard for the same outcome. Sometimes you have to stop and sharpen your saw. I have been thinking my blade is pretty dull and I'm getting pretty worn out.  What I'm going to do about that I'm not sure yet. On Friday I went to my a.m. class then in exhaustion went home and took a long nap. Then I worked on lesson plans from the afternoon into the evening. I did the same thing most of the day Saturday. Sunday I spent at school attempting to get ready for the week.

 Am I whining? Yes Probably. I am frustrated. We are supposed to be doing this as a team effort not alone. My team's lesson plans have been a mess. A complete mess. Something you can't even use as a planning tool mess. We are supposed to do a grade level lesson plan. The theory is if you work together on it you can collaborate and get a good plan, using quality resources, and quality strategies. This has NOT been happening. It was my turn to type up the lesson plans. After meeting three different days to work on them I was completely fed up with my grade level. I met with my friend to get some help. I keep wondering "WHY IS THIS SO HARD?". Well my blade is dull, and I'm not sure my grade level ever had a saw let alone a blade to sharpen.

Am I going to have to clean up our lesson plans every week? Probably. Yep. I can't keep this up that is for sure.  The format we do our lesson plans in is different in many ways than what I have done in the past. However, a lot of it is the same.  It shouldn't take this much effort. If I worked with others who were doing their part it would go much faster. The way the lesson plans have to be done are not "teacher friendly". The principal doesn't want how we are going to execute the plans,  just  a brief overview of the standard, the strategy, the objective, and the assessment. It sounds easy in theory right? The problem is we spend so much time typing all of this in we don't get to spend enough time thinking about the quality resources we want to use, or time to look for other strategies, or is this going to be part of our reading lesson, or writing lesson. It is just a pain.  I don't know what else to do to make it better. I've pushed my grade level, and asked, and asked, and pushed.

Today I realized. You may be asking something of someone who isn't capable of doing what you need them to do.  Maybe my student teaching, and education gave me more structure than I realized.  I literally don't see the evidence in their classrooms they are doing what they say they are doing. On our planning day they've matched strategies to standards incorrectly, they've chosen standards we aren't even teaching yet, they've messed up again and again and again. How can I make this better and not burn myself out? I don't know.

I have a couple more weeks of my ridiculously time consuming but silly online course. I started the Singapore Math course which is going to be very informative and helpful.  I will be glad to have one class done so I can focus on the others. I didn't get any cooking done this weekend. This week is the end of our grading quarter. So I have a lot of grading to enter and things to get done. The principal claimed we would not have any meetings this week after school. I am praying she holds to that so maybe we will have a little breathing room.  I do meet with her in the morning for my evaluation. I hope that goes well.