[mkingston]

Curriculum change is relatively frequent in some places. Different classes take to different material at different paces. Different resources are available to different schools and different classrooms (think science experiments). In the UK there are online platforms for purchasing and selling lesson plans. My partner has saved much time purchasing lesson plans from these platforms. They are available.

Teachers aren't paid very well in many places and, at least here, funds aren't made specifically available for purchase of lesson plans; teachers spend their own money buying lesson plans. It's easily worth it when there's a second income in your household. Perhaps not in places where teachers are very poorly paid and for those who are on a single income.

[WalterBright]

> funds aren't made specifically available for purchase of lesson plans

You mean no teachers set up a github repository where they give away lesson plans just to be helpful? Teachers are unable to pool their resources and help each other? "Hey Mr Hand, I'm teaching science for the first time next year. Can I use your lesson plans?" "Sure, Ms Halsey!"

Besides, teachers complain a lot about spending all their time devising lesson plans. They might do cost-benefit check on whether they might be way ahead taking a second job, using part of the wages to buy plans, and spend the rest on a vacation.

[_tom_]

Simply googling would answer many of your questions in thirty seconds. For example, search for by lesson plans and you’ll discover there are many marketplaces for lesson plans.

People unfamiliar with problems frequently think they are easy, because they fail to understand the complexity of the problem.

A similar question might be “why would you invent a new programming language, when you could just use an existing one?”

Answering that question to a non programmer might require hours of explanation and background, and you might find yourself just sighing and saying “never mind”. That doesn’t mean you don’t have a reason, or it was a bad idea. It just means it’s not your job to explain things. Particularly to people who make it clear they have an agenda.

[thekyle]

> A similar question might be “why would you invent a new programming language, when you could just use an existing one?”

I feel like this is a bad analogy if you are trying to support the idea that teachers need to make their own lesson plans. Could you imagine if every programmer had to build their own programming language before using it create software? Nothing would ever get done.

Instead, the vast majority of programmers just use one of the many existing programming languages.

[WalterBright]

> People unfamiliar with problems frequently think they are easy, because they fail to understand the complexity of the problem.

Please illuminate how 3.7 million teachers need to spend their summer drawing up a new set of lesson plans every year.

> A similar question might be “why would you invent a new programming language, when you could just use an existing one?”

Great question. Because I want to. I'm not complaining about it demanding sympathy because I lose my summers working on it.

I have no problem with teachers who want to create their own lesson plans, rather than using existing ones. I'm just not buying the complaining about what a burden it is to reinvent the wheel, when they can use last year's, or a fellow teacher's, or buy one off the internet.

[mkingston]

It's probably a bit late to bother replying to this, but hey, here goes anyway.

Believe it or not, I wasn't arguing against you. My main point was to agree with you, and to inform: markets exist for lessons. The prices are quite reasonable. Some are free. I hear free lessons are typically lower quality.

I also (indirectly) pointed out that lessons are necessarily different from one another. What I've observed is that some work needs to be done even when plans are obtained from another party. Though, from what I've seen, much less. Purchasing lesson plans is a big time-saver.

Perhaps next time someone complains to you about spending too long lesson planning, you should propose they purchase some lesson plans, and see what they say. To me, that's the interesting question. Do they know these are available? Do they find the cost reasonable? Are they opposed to purchasing these lessons in principle, because they already spend their own money for the benefit of their students?

> They might do cost-benefit check on whether they might be way ahead taking a second job, using part of the wages to buy plans, and spend the rest on a vacation.

This statement is completely ludicrous to me. Humans should be given the resources they require to perform their jobs effectively. You might be strictly correct that individual teachers might be better off taking another job and buying these resources. But I think you should direct your ire at the employer of the teachers if you acknowledge that this is a problem. Consider the analogous statement:

> [Programmers] might do cost-benefit check on whether they might be way ahead taking a second job, using part of the wages to buy existing libraries, and spend the rest on a vacation.

[IncRnd]

It is amazing how many strawman arguments you are getting, apparently from teachers. You requested clarification on specific items, yet the answers discuss entirely different things. Maybe that is the actual problem with how things are taught.

[troupe]

> You mean no teachers set up a github repository where they give away lesson plans just to be helpful

Your sample set of teachers is very different than mine if they can figure out how to do something technical like that.