Year Plan - How to teach - Articles about education

Your life as a teacher will be much easier if you plan out the entire school year before you start teaching.

This of course differs from the usual way that most teachers work which is on a day to day basis. Before every class the teacher usually decides, "I wonder what I'll teach today," and they wind up doing a lot more work.

If you know what for the entire school year and you have it all written out in front of your, then you can distribute the work in a logical manner so that there are no periods that have more pressure than others. Your teaching will be more organized. The students will feel that it's more organized and that they learn more and you will do a better job in addition to being able to get on with the rest of your life without having the pressure of planning every single day for the next day.

There are many reasons for teacher burnout. This day to day planning is unquestionably on that list. You can prevent it yourself by planning out the year in advance.

True, you don't like to spend your summer that way and you want to have a break during that time and you don't want to think about the school year. That's understandable. But it may be worth taking some of your time during the summer to make the whole year much easier and more organized.

Imagine coming in the first day of school and announcing to the students what will be accomplished during the entire year. They know what they have to do. They know it all up front. They understand that you organized and planned and that will unquestionably help them to accept the work that they have to do all through.

How do you go about it?

List all of the things that need to be done during the year. If you have a nationwide or statewide test, put it down there and put down how many lessons you're going spend beforehand preparing for that test. If you have to put on a skit, put it down and write down how many lessons before you're going to have to spend on it. Be generous about the number of lessons because it always turns out to be more.

Be careful not to fall into the trap of denial. Many teachers have this problem thinking that some unwanted chores or jobs such as that skit will go away by themselves or that they won't exist. Well, they won't go away and you should plan them in advance.

At worst, the skit is cancelled and then you have more time than you expected. It's better to have it go that way than not plan for it.

Are you going to be observed and you have to plan for the observation? Put that in. Are you going to have to prepare one or more English Days or English Rooms? Will you have to make a learning center or prepare a fair? Put it in. How about preparing for PTA meetings? How many PTA meetings will there be and what will your preparation be? Are you going to follow the steps listed in the section on PTA meetings? If so, how much time will you need to prepare the handouts for the teacher? Have you accepted some chores or assignments from the school? How long will they take? Are you going to have to get people together for a meeting to discuss things? Put in that time also. How many report cards does it take and how long does it take to mark the tests? How many tests do you plan to have? How many homework assignments? And when are you going to have them? How are you going to scatter them so that it's easier for you to do your work? Build in some reserve time for sicknesses and snow days and the like which will take away some time and the important thing is not to get involved in denial of things. Put in things. Put in things even if you're not sure of them. It's better to have them there and to cancel them than not to have them at all.

You can then take all of these things and scatter them throughout the year so that you have a consistent load during the year instead of a teaching semester in the beginning and a heavy load in the second semester in which you try to push in all of those things that didn't get handled earlier in the year.

Plan Ahead

It is a good idea when you're actually doing the work to try to finish it up in less than the amount of time than you expected to take.

In other words, if you are putting on a skit, then do everything possible so the skit is completed including the backgrounds and the final rehearsals a few weeks before the actual show.

In this way the last minute concerns about whether you will be able to have everything done on time, the late nights as you make the backgrounds, and the problems with children who are not ready with their parts are eliminated.

Of course, this is related to teaching style.

Some teachers like to build up the excitement towards the end. They think this encourages the students to do their best. If this is your teaching style, then go ahead and do it.

However, even if it is your teaching style, you should try - just once - to work according to this method. It may be that it's your teaching style only because you've never tried anything else or anything different. This leaving yourself a buffer at the end may actually work better for you, even though you don't think that it is your teaching style.

Give it a try - just once. You might like it.

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Most teachers live in a world of denial. They figure that if they put things off long enough some of those things will go away. A staff coordinator puts off the meeting and sometimes indeed the meeting does go away because it's too late to do it. If the teacher is supposed to put on a skit or a play, then sometimes the planning is put off and sometimes it does indeed go away. However, this life of denial is not healthy and it raises tension because the teacher never knows whether she will be attacked by the principal or the powers that be for not doing the work that she should be doing, and she's always looking over her shoulder to see if she can get away with it.

That's only part of the problem, however. In most cases it turns out that the denial didn't work and the teacher does indeed have to carry out these jobs or functions. That happens most of the time. Not all of the time but most of the time. As a result of that the teacher has to quick come up with a skit or quick come up with a play or quickly prepare a meeting at the last minute.

In many cases this comes out at an inconvenient time or when several other things are being planned.

In some cases the teacher has to compensate for several things that got put off all of them because of this denial syndrome and has to take care of a number of things at once and this can lead to situations in which nothing is done well. The teacher is worn out. This does lead to teacher burnout and a tremendous amount of stress which can have an impact on the family and much more.

In other words denial and putting things off works but only up to a point and the negative aspects of it frequently outnumber the positive aspects.

In other words, it just doesn't pay. It's not a good idea. to put things off.

A far better way is to create an honest appraisal of what awaits the teacher during the course of the entire year and then to distribute that work throughout the year.

That means that a realtive share of the work will be accomplished in the beginning of the year when most teachers are in denial.

If you as the teacher distributes the work, then you are in control of the situation and you are making sure that a number of things don't accumulate at once to put you in a difficult position. By distributing the work according to the calendar and according to your own convenience, then you decide what to do in each class and you can arrange your own home life. You can be a person. You can live the way you want to live.

By arranging your own life you will have to make some changes. Your year plan means that you are going to be doing a lot of things in the beginning of the year instead of postponing them.

However, you will have no pressure, nobody looking over your shoulder, and you will have a feeling of being efficient, well organized, and getting things done.

When you realize that this year plan also means coming to school on the very first day knowing exactly what you're going to be teaching the entire year, the implication is that you are going to be doing the plannning during the summer. Yes, some of your summer will be stolen for this effort and while you want to take off, you are going to have to work on your plans for the whole year.

However, when you look at the whole picture, you will see that it is well worth it.