Going off road

Veering off the beaten track is something I often do. Beaten tracks are too 'safe' and restrictive for me. I like to go off road and explore, and I often find myself down some backstreet in a city I've never visited before, chatting to locals or taking photos of strange new sights.

I can't help it. I have never been comfortable when I'm confined. Nor have I been happy simply 'towing the line' where important things like teaching and learning are concerned. I suppose that's also why I've always been uncomfortable with lesson plans. I always have an idea of what I'm going to cover in my lectures and seminars, but I rarely write anything down, preferring to keep several ideas in my head so that I can respond quickly and flexibly if the situation demands it. As a result, my teaching is now more responsive than it was when I was less experienced, and used strict frameworks and defined resources to conduct my lessons.

This kind of free-wheeling approach to teaching isn't for everyone, of course. We show our education students how to create lesson plans, schemes of work and other closely defined documentation to track and manage teaching, and they are trained to adhere to these. I wouldn't encourage any teacher to depart from them... unless of course they see a need to do so. In such cases, I advocate flexible, agile lesson plans from which teachers can change direction, when they need to, or when they sense they have to. That flexibility should extend to the introduction of ideas you may not be familiar with (learning together with your students), the sequence of the content, and also the learning outcomes you have identified. Ultimately, it should also embrace assessment of learning. If you come up with a better (or more appropriate) way to assess than the method you have outlined in your lesson plan, do it.

Lesson plans are a little version of the curriculum. They are created to provide suggestions and should not be treated like stone tablets. They should be used to interpret content and activities, and as a guidelines rather than as rules to follow regardless of whatever is happening. Ultimately, it's your students' learning that is the most important element of teaching, and if the lesson plan gets in the way of that, ditch it.

Image/graphic text by Miot Sheremeti


Going off road by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.