By Tom
A recent story brought my attention to a brand new issue. Teachers are now selling their lesson plans to each other on-line. Some of them are making some pretty good money at it, including an English teacher from California, who brought in an extra $36,000 by selling his plans.
It's an interesting story, to which I have several reactions:
1. The story focused mostly on the teachers who were selling their lesson plans. I find the other side of the equation much more interesting: Teachers are spending their own hard-earned money to buy someone else's lesson plans. That just seems weird. Planning lessons is one of the most important parts of the job. Paying someone else to do just seems wrong.
2. When I first started teaching I was handed a set of teacher books. They were large, spiral-bound affairs filled with solid, well-written and sequentially ordered lesson plans. After awhile, those books fell from favor. Teachers were expected to write lessons from scratch, based on standards and grade-level expectations. And that was fun, for awhile. But it was a lot of work. And we also found that not everyone has the talent to do it well. Now the trend is back to teacher-proof scripted lesson plans again.
3. The author was making a point about the variety of lessons available for sale, ranging from lessons "as simple as M & M sorting (to lessons) as complex as Shakespeare." This reveals one of the more pervasive myths about education. Sorting M & Ms might be simple. Reading Shakespeare is more sophisticated. However, teaching little kids how to sort M & Ms is not necessarily simpler than teaching big kids to read Shakespeare. Think about it.
4. In Japan, most lessons used by teachers are written collaboratively. They use a process called Lesson Study. Once a lesson is written, vetted and fine-tuned by a team of teachers, it is made available nation-wide. That's simply a part of the Japanese teaching culture. Lesson Study has attracted some attention over here, but it's never really taken off. Maybe the open market is more our style.
5. Writing with bulleted lists is a lot easier than using connected paragraphs. You don't have to worry about transitions.
6. More than anything else, it's nice to see the basic lesson plan get the respect it's due. When you get right down to it, the essence of education is the interaction between a teacher and his students. A good lesson plan is a well-designed route through that interaction. It builds on what the students already know, and moves on to something new that the teacher introduces to the class. Then the class practices that new skill under close supervision with ample feedback and correction before moving onto a more independent practice session. And then, ideally, the lesson closes with an assessment of some sort so that the teacher can begin to plan the next lesson.
Hmm… That does look like a lot of work. And I could sure use some extra cash…
Thanks, Tom. I hadn’t cared either and followed the patterns you described.
Left unclear, at least to me, is what liability a teacher has for such practices. Perhaps a union rep could review it with union legal services. For self protection reasons in this robust time, I think teachers should have a ready answer for the question of who owns lesson plans and what liabilities rest with individuals.
That’s an interesting question, Bob. The short answer is “I don’t know.” I really don’t. But I guess the person who wrote the lesson plans owns the copyrights to the intellectual property, unless they were doing so under contract with a particular institution. But in reality, it’s probably more complicated than that. If most teachers are like me, they use a melange of original ideas, ideas that they’ve heard about or read in books, as well as the ideas written in whatever curriculum manuals they happen to be using. So the lessons, as taught, wouldn’t be original enough for that teacher to claim ownership, nor would they be “borrowed enough” not to be their own. And frankly, most teachers couldn’t care less, as long as the resulting lesson was effective.
You raise, by inference, an interesting question, Tom. Who owns lesson plans, the writer, school district that pays the writer, …? That question leads to the issue of plagerism, who holds copyrights, who has a right to royalties, … In light of limits on public school funding for the foreseeable future, perhaps these questions will be addressed in ways that get more money for schools. I don’t know, so can you tell me what statutes and case law say about lesson plans ownership and distribution rights? (No, this question is not a joke or trick.)
I’ve written lessons, bought lessons, borrowed lessons, stolen lessons, collaborated on lessons, tweaked lessons. I want everything I can get from everywhere I can get it, as I go in to plan a unit. Sometimes I’m great with the content and there is a lot of me in what is finally shared with the students, but that is not always the case and I have no monopoly on good ideas. Teachers have been buying lessons forever, just as we have shared freely with one another. There is no shame in trying to provide the best lessons for one’s students.
Proper Planning Prevents Pretty Poor Performance. There’s another version, but I’m not taking our blog there. I teach math, and I do plan. But I don’t write the SWBAT lesson plans I learned to do as a student teacher. I teach 3 Algebra classes everyday, and if i had a script, by the time I read it to the third class I’d be ready to jump through the window. So I admit I use a bulleted list, and then pretty much go with Algebra Improv. Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure no one would pay for my Improv. (Lucky for me I have a captive audience.)