Planning a Lesson: Books a Heaven Sent, or a Trap?

When you start working as a teacher in a new school, you usually come to a system that is already in place. They give you the books you will use, possibly some previously elaborated annual plan, and depending when you come on board, you may have to create your lesson plan, or you will inherit one done by your predecessor.

If you are a beginner, or someone who strictly follows specialists’ advice, your lesson plan will be highly detailed in order to show that you know what you are doing, make sure that you have everything that you need, and don’t forget any important steps due to nervousness.

This kind of planning is very good. Many times it is not even that difficult because nowadays, books and their accompanying resources have everything you need for planning. It is just a matter of using the format preferred by the school you are working in.  It just takes time to “fill in the blanks”.

So… books and the resources that accompany them seem to be a heaven sent for teachers, but are they really? What happens when things do not work out as you anticipated they would? You have to think fast on your feet, and improvise, have a plan B, or even C, for just in case. If you have gotten used to depend on what the book says you should do, you might run into trouble because, creativity breeds creativity, but dependency does the same.

Another drawback of letting books dictate your plans is that books are not always well matched to the learners’ needs and to their  socio-cultural context. Books can be like a pleasant house: it helps organize things, has everything that it should, and protects you from the unknown but, can it can also limit you (and your students). As teachers, we can never forget that books are tools to attain a goal. They are not the only path.

Since there is an economic aspect attached to the issue of books, for both the editorial house (through the schools), and the learners and their families (who are asked to buy and trust in them), the decision of which books to use can be a really tricky one. Teachers, often times, have little control over the final decision, but are asked to create their lessons based on them.

I’m always very saddened when I hear teachers say that they didn’t have time to do anything else than to “complete” the exercises listed, to “finish” the book. In this circumstances, the book becomes a tyrant that has snipped off the creativity of the learning process.

To have a model, guidance, resources, is important. But, we cannot forget that books were part of the methodologies created to service the needs of societies based on paper technology. As we provide more and better professional development for our educators, and take work ethics to a higher level, we will have to insure teachers become more self-sufficient, critic, and less dependent on readymade tools. Instead, they will have to become more dexterous in their capacity to use many different kinds of tools, or even create their own, to better adapt to their learner’s needs, interests,  capacities, and learning styles in our fast changing world.

When planning our lessons, besides the more immediate objectives, we also have to think about what it means to be part of the information (or knowledge) society; its paradigms, the skills and competences needed to be successful in such world; then we can set our teaching goals, and then we may choose the best pathway and tools to reach them.

So what are we to do in the mean time? Use the books provided, design your lesson plans creatively,  and don’t let them rule over the learning process that takes place in the classroom. 

Be the rider, not the horse!