There is a certain comfort that comes with routine.
I am a pretty tech-savvy teacher. I mean, I have my own blog, after all. Over the past couple of years I have gained a reputation as someone people can come to for tech support with all sorts of programs. I was an early user when my school adopted Office365 as our “approved” cloud, I have actively maintained a class website, and last school year my students and I embarked on a video project that took up almost all of fourth quarter. So far this school year, I have been typing away on my tablet (it has an attachable keyboard) at every PD and meeting, usually updating my various OneNote binders.
So it might come as a surprise that I am one off the few people who still actively uses one of these lesson planners:
I looked all around until I found one of these bad boys. We have digital lesson plans that we are supposed to submit every week, and, of course, I do that. But I feel completely lost if I don’t sketch out basic plans by hand.
If it’s not in a lesson plan book, I do my “lesson plan doodling” on any scrap of paper I can find. I don’t know why I need to do the basic outlines like this, but based on the educational philosophy class I took as a sophomore in college, I think it has something to do with my creative process being kinesthetic in nature. That in and of itself is interesting because I am generally a visual learner, and my content area specialties are reading and language arts, so I’m also text-based.
Learning is weird.
But seriously, there’s nothing quite so awesome as breaking out the good pens and organizing my spiral-bound, mint-green lesson planner. For all the tech in the world, it’s far more satisfying to scribble out where I make mistakes and designate the areas in which I will map out the future directions of my life and the lives of my students.
To all you teachers out there, I hope you’re embracing your own start-of-year
.
Don't Panic: I'm a Teacher 
August 26, 2015 at 3:47 am
My favorite: Modern” is ironic, I think…
A couple years ago I looked for an online planning guide and I am still looking for one I might like…I finally made a spreadsheet on Google Drive because I’m trying to be tech-savvy. But I can admit to you that I REALLY miss my “modern” plan book.
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August 26, 2015 at 3:00 pm
This is the way I like to do my lesson planning too, even though I am also an advocate of technology use. I recently read something about how writing by hand supports processing and retention of information. Technology is great, but old-school ways have their place, too!
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