To plan a
complete and well-designed lesson takes time. Most of us have 30-40 minutes of
prep time per day, yet teach 6-10 lessons per day (at the primary level). Since
that in-school prep time is also the only chance we have to go to the bathroom,
organize manipulatives, or gather materials, not much lesson planning happens
during the school day. Which means that either we do most of our planning on our
own time, or we don't do it and end up winging it.

We need
community members, administrators, and policy makers to carefully consider
where they want us to focus our efforts. How much time do you want me to spend
preparing lessons for your child?

Right now, it works out to less than 5
minutes of planning time per lesson. That is 5 minutes to consider the standard
that needs to be taught, to plan for the instructional strategy, and to gather and
create materials. But wait…your child is struggling…or
excelling? Then part of that planning is focused on differentiating to meet those needs. Oh, and
you’d like me to grade your child’s work and give him meaningful feedback so
that he can continue to grow? Absolutely. And not just for the growth of the child, but for my own instruction as well.

Teachers
do those things. They are essential to teaching, and to be honest, barely
scratch the surface of what goes into planning lessons for our students each
and every day. Obviously there is no way all of that happens in five minutes.
Even if I’m using a lesson that I created last year and just need to adapt to meet
the needs of this year’s students it’s going to take more than five minutes.

Besides,
during my prep period every day, there are more urgent matters: going to the
bathroom (any teacher could write pages about the dilemma of toileting for
classroom teachers!), returning phone calls, responding to emails, wiping
tears, finding lost coats, ordering a bus for the field
trip, and on and on. Lesson planning just doesn’t happen during planning time.
It has to happen on our own time. Or it doesn’t happen.

None of us
would care to admit that some days we wing it. Some days teaching is more like
Improv theater than a Shakespearean production. Those afternoons when there is
a meeting stacked on top of another meeting and I get home too late to plan
each lesson well. Or when my own family needs my time and attention.

Could I lock my classroom door and guard that time so that it is only for instructional planning? Yes. I don't need to look for lost coats, and some days I have a volunteer or two who can count out the math manipulatives. There still isn't enough time. It is one of the complexities of our (or any) profession to determine how we will conduct ourselves at any moment in our day. The point is not that one set block of finite minutes.

Nor is it a complaint about how hard I have to work. The truth is that I love my job and honestly delight in matching standards to effective instruction. I love love love reading my students' writing or seeing how they've approached a math problem solving activity.

The
current system assumes that teachers will spend several hours of our own time
each day to ensure that our students have meaningful feedback and coherent lessons.
Then the current system, or at least public opinion, condemns teachers who aren’t willing to work for free
every evening as “bad teachers.” It is long past time to acknowledge that this
assumption foolishly leaves the quality of instruction up to individual generosity.

Tthe professional day needs to
be restructured to create time for teachers to do the work of instruction. So
long as teachers are doing the most important part of our work on a
volunteer basis, there will be gaps in quality not even between teachers, but
from day to day in the same classroom.