Instruction Should Be Everyone’s Thing
From the Couch of Monica…
Sometimes in education, in the day-to-day grind, we forget that reflection is a powerful starting point and an invaluable tool when we think about what kids need from us in the classroom. It is an easy thing to do these days, when there are many responsibilities and tasks imposed on educators that we forget the importance of taking time to reflect in our planning.
Once, someone said to me, annoyed with my persistent argument that instructional time is more important than anything else, “I can see why you’d feel that way, instruction is your thing.” As I considered those words, I realized that in today’s classroom, instruction may NOT be everyone’s thing. Teachers may be overwhelmed and overworked and moving mechanically through the instructional day may be the only way to get through it. We’ve all been there, and taking the time to reflect is the key — reflection makes it possible for instruction to be everyone’s thing.
I work in a Title 1 elementary school in the 4th largest school district in Texas. As an Air Force spouse, I’ve never been anywhere long, and sometimes feel like I have seen it all. I have taught Common Core, Sunshine State Standards, North Carolina Standard Course of Study, and the Hawaii Content and Performance Standards. Through all the different standards and expectations, I have learned one thing.
INSTRUCTION should be everyone’s thing.
It must be the center of what we do. Everything that happens in a school must stem from instruction as the priority.
And really, doesn’t it all start with lesson plans?
When I worked in Florida, I was required to turn in lesson plans weekly that I wrote myself for my class, considering standards, district timelines, instructional models and the needs of my children from week to week. There was a required reflective piece of our plans that was really what our principal was interested in reading. I hated it at first. Just one more thing to do. My plans already took me hours to write. But I quickly learned that there is a certain beauty to being required to reflect authentically on a weekly basis. What worked? What didn’t? What would I change? What did I not expect? What skills do my kids need to have as a prerequisite to these lessons? How am I going to address re-teaching? What kinds of formative assessments did I use to know whether or not my kids get it? It was hard, and tedious to write those plans every week and reflect, but you know what? It made me a better educator.
.
I am much more reflective today than I was the day I walked into that school building in Florida. In my school now, there is one set of team lesson plans submitted weekly for each grade level. One person writes the Reading plans, one person writes the Math plans, and so on. Where is the reflection? Where is the differentiation between classes? How do we know that my class is going to grasp a concept on the same day, using the same lesson, as yours is? The answer is, we don’t know, because we aren’t writing our own plans for our own classes. And the answer is also that when we don’t write our own lesson plans, we are giving away our opportunity to be truly reflective and make instruction “our thing.” Instruction should always be our thing. Instruction should be everyone’s thing.
If you are lucky enough to be an educator, seize this opportunity to be reflective in your planning. If you aren’t writing a reflection section in your OWN lesson plans, the ones you write yourself for your own class, I challenge you to try it. I promise, you won’t feel like it is just something else to do in our already busy schedules. It will change how you plan and teach. I don’t live in Florida anymore, but I still put reflection in my plans, and I refer back to those reflective notes to help me intervene when my kids need something else.
Yes, instruction is my thing. In our schools, instruction should be, must be, everyone’s thing.