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by uvtc 5080 days ago
When I was teaching, having a detailed lesson plan was the least of my work. Just a handful of bullet points was fine.

What takes the most time when you're teaching is grading.

Also time-consuming: documenting discipline issues and parent contact. And, when you're new: creating worksheets/problem-sets, lab handouts, quizzes, tests, and exams.

2 comments

When I was teaching, having a detailed lesson plan was the least of my work. Just a handful of bullet points was fine.

I half-agree with this. I don't need to work from a script, but if you want to do really high-quality work with students your plans need to be laid out pretty carefully. Students should be able to produce professional-level work in high school, in their area of highest interest and ability. We need to do some pretty well thought-out planning to help students work at that level. Once the planning is done, I work from bullet points. But at some point, for consistently high-quality curriculum, we need more than bullet points.

What takes the most time when you're teaching is grading.

I disagree with this. Certainly many teachers spend a lot of time grading. But with good use of peer feedback and modeling, grading does not need to dominate a teacher's time.

Also time-consuming: documenting discipline issues and parent contact.

Yes, although education is a holistic profession. The better we plan and deliver meaningful learning experiences, the fewer discipline issues we have.

Might I ask how do you go about creating those worksheets/problem-sets, etc?

I've noticed in Staples that they have paper templates for those but I'm wondering if anyone actually uses them at all.

You mean what tools did I use? LaTeX.