plans for a garden

Ever since I went back to school for a degree in education, I have heard about teachers who spend time during the summer planning the entire year. They think about activities, they make the tests, and they know exactly what they will be doing each week. More power to them, I thought; I could never do that. It's just not my style and I can't see that far ahead. The most I could manage was reading and reflecting about the summer reading books.

Well, I have just typed out a weekly plan for my entire year for the first time. I thought about what and how, anticipated scheduling problems, and mapped out the units week by week. If I had not taught the course before, I don't think I could have done it. I have not made up any tests, but I have thought about the format I want to use.

I also see that some old ways of doing things will have to adapt to make room for new ways of doing other things. This mega-plan has been a useful exercise in space utilization, a sort of floor plan for furniture that has to fit into a house. Hmm, now that it occurs to me, I think of my garden as having rooms (thanks to Joe Eck's book on garden design), and I think of my classroom as a garden, so I like this idea that my course has rooms that need to be furnished.

The stakes were never this high before for making everything fit. I have to implement a new curriculum, top down, and I have to make it work. Now that I see it coming together I feel pretty good about the whole process, and, hey, it only took 24 years of practice.