Math Post Week 8

                One of the things that I still find difficult as a teacher candidate is the issue of preparing a good lesson plan. There are a number of things that sprout confusion on this issue, for starters, I am not entirely sure whether it is a good idea to try and ‘jump the gun’ so to speak and prepare lesson plans far into the future, for example, to prepare ahead of time lessons plans for the month. An even more extreme example would be that of a veteran teacher who, after a couple of years of teaching, has already made enough lessons for the year and might therefore try to simply re-use those lesson plans. The rationale behind this might be that, if it was successful in the past, why not use it again; or as the common saying goes ‘If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it’. In this case the teacher could have potentially organized his or her lessons in a way that covered all the curriculum expectations and allotted an appropriate time to each topic. I am wondering if instead the better option would be to simply make lesson plans as you go along each day. I think the fundamental question I am grappling with is whether a teacher should base lesson plans on the level of their student’s abilities in each particular situation, or whether lesson plans should set a standard that students should try to live up to regardless of the situation.
                On the one hand, I find myself attracted to the idea that a teacher should be able to adapt and customize their teaching in order to meet the needs of each student, in each classroom, each year. On the other hand, there is a side of me that agrees with the notion that sometimes teachers may be ‘spoon feeding’ students and that this might be detrimental to the students because it doesn’t allow them to reach for, and realize their ultimate potential in life. By analogy, I think that there are without a doubt situations where students will need the helping hand and compassion of a teacher, and I understand that. So, there will need to be times where a lesson plan must be flexible, because not every group of students you teach will comprehend lessons at the same speed as others, there might be times where they need a little more time, or there might be situations where they understood the concepts really quickly, so you might want to move on to the next lesson. However, there might also be situations where students have within them a potential for greatness, yet that greatness is not realized due to a lack of motivation or lack of effort (laziness). And this is where having a lesson plan prepared before-hand that sets a standard may be beneficial, because it will hopefully force students to try and live to the standard you set forth for them. I mean that if teachers are always gauging where their student’s stand and then proceeding to make a lesson plan after the fact, they might make a lesson plan that is tailored to mediocracy because what they see isn’t necessarily students who are struggling intellectually, but rather students who are simply not putting forth the effort. Instead if there was a lesson plan made before hand it might cause students to ‘rise to the occasion’.
                I hope I will be able to gain advice from educators with more experience than I and that’ll help me strike the perfect balance.