Lesson Planning.

I cannot stress enough how important lesson planning is. I agree with the text in that it makes me feel more confident, helps me learn the material better before I present it, and makes everything just go so much more smoothly. The reason is because you have a plan, know exactly what you are going to do once you finish an activity, have the materials you need to implement the lesson, and most importantly, you have the lessons set up in an order that is of benefit to the learners. Just this summer, I had a cooperating teacher who did NOT plan anything at all before she came to class. Literally, she would arrive 5 minutes late in a rush and ask me what we did in the first class, then ask me to go make copies of any of the work sheets we used during the class period. It drove me crazy, because she had no idea of how to teach the material that she was presenting because she wasnt sure of the validity of what she was saying since she did not even know the rules to the material she was teaching. Also, you could tell that the students knew and realized that she did not have anything planned at all for the period, they knew that she was just winging-it every single day. You could tell that this took a toll on the kids, because they probably thought, "Why should I come to this class prepared and put in time and effort, when you are not even coming here prepared and putting in time and effort into educating us." And I could not believe it because it was a 3 hour class period, and she did not come prepared with a thing to do, she choose to just wing-it instead. Not only did it make the students have no respect to pay attention to what she was teaching, it made the material she taught extremely boring because she did not come up with creative and engaging ways to teach it. Instead it would LITERALLY be her giving around 50 vocabulary words from the reading, writing the definitions of each and every single one on the board, forcing them to copy in their notebooks each definition, and then MAKING them for homework write sentences using each word word correctly. It was the most boring hour and I could imagine it was the most boring homework for the students as well. I would walk around and try to get them to work, but I couldnt blame them: I would be dragging on getting to work if I had to write 50 sentences with words that I never used before.

So whenever it came for my turn to take over the instruction, I always made sure that I was prepared. I did do lesson planning, and it truly helped my lesson to go as smooth as butter. In the beginning, I even did scripted lessons so that I wouldnt get lost in what I wanted to get across. There was a goal, there was a target for the students to reach, and the ways of getting to that target. It also made it easier, because I was able to come up with activities to do in class before hand, meaning I could buy all the materials (posterboard, tape, markers, rulers) etc. before coming to class and have a clear idea of how I was going to execute the project. Lesson planning truly made my day go by better. Even though part of my internship was not to make and implement lessons, I felt it necessary because how could I just sit back and watch the poor students go through learning in the way they were from that specific teacher, day in and day out? I almost needed to do it to stop even myself from going crazy. And actually, whenever I taught, the students all payed attention and participated in the work. Maybe because it was more meaningful that just regurgitating 50 sentences of words that had no meaning to them. Half the time they would just make horrible sentences that didnt even make sense because they just wanted to get the completion points for having what appeared to be 50 sentences on their paper. It just wasnt an effective way of teaching or an effective way of learning for the students, and it drove me crazy.

This lesson planning that I did was day to day. I mean, I did not come into the internship expecting to plan lessons. I guess I just did so anyways because I was an over achiever and neither of my cooperating teacher had any idea what the AP Exam for Spanish was like, so I felt the need to teach the grammar necessary to take it.  When I become a teacher in the future, however, I plan on making my lesson plans for the entire year, so that the material can be taught in a natural flow that is natural to the SLA of the students, and that is organized in a manner in terms of themes, etc, etc. I am somebody who prefers to be prepared, and on top of that this is MY profession. I have no idea how somebody can just not care enough to even plan what they are going to be teaching for THEIR OWN job. It just inspires me that much more to be ready to teach in urban areas, because I know my dedication and determination will really make a difference on these kids lives since I actually care about their education.