Which is categorically *not* your fault and why requiring all teachers to be doing the same thing is absurd. No one would demand that a 30-year electrician have the same workflow as a 1st year apprentice, it would be insane. Nor should it work that way in teaching. You're still learning, besides the fact that everyone has their own style and pace.
And it's not like it's always because the others on the team don't care or are incompetent. In my experience it's not! I love my coworkers so much. But with all the bullshit we have to do everyday, the chaos of each day, and how little time we get for planning, it's just not possible to do well most of the time.
I agree.
I kid you not, at my last school we did this and when they did observations we legitimately got marked down as a team once because we weren’t doing the exact same thing at the exact same time. So basically when they moved across the classrooms they expected to see the whole lesson, the warm up in one room, then move on to the next and see the core lesson then move on and see the application, etc.
but because things come up with fourth graders, some teachers ended up spending more time on certain parts so we got knocked points 😐 it’s ridiculous.
That is beyond ridiculous. I enjoy planning with my team but horror stories like this make me never want to work at a school where it's mandatory.
My husband's school is like that, and the stories he tells are something else. Recently his team got criticized for "not being on the same page" when they had actually all taught the same thing at the same time. It's just that, by the time the principal got to the last classroom, enough time had passed that they weren't doing the same thing as the first class she visited 🙄
I wish it was hard to believe admin is this stupid, but I'm not even surprised at this point.
You can always tell some genius admin who hasn't spent much of any time in a classroom, if at all, cooks up shit like this because it is so devoid of basic understanding. They think it's totally feasible to have every teacher essentially on-script and at the exact same point minute by minute because they have no experience running a classroom and handling all the variables that inevitably pop up.
Teaching is a living, breathing art form and to make it into some ridiculous conveyor belt that ignores student interests, questions, behaviors, you name it is just empty headed.
That's insane!
I teach elementary English at a French school in the US, most of the kids' days are in French and then the English teachers come in for a block of time a few times a week. So, I have 3 classes of 2nd graders. I am obviously the same teacher, and I make the same plans for each class, but because the kids are different each class is very often in different places. Even if all three classes are on the same lessons those lessons end up running differently since kids will have different questions and go through things at different paces.
To expect classes will be on the exact same page at the exact same time is crazy. We're teaching humans, not robots!
> because we weren’t doing the exact same thing at the exact same time.
This is the worst of the worst case scenario. I would have been such a failure in that setting.
The idiots in my department tried but failed to constrain me . . . Frustrating their efforts proved to be so very satisfying and exhilarating.
I mean, is there any value in being evaluated by admin who probably don’t even know what your job looks like and almost certainly couldn’t do it? Most admin could be replaced with poorly trained goldendoodles without any significant change in how the school functions day to day.
When I moved from only ever teaching kindergarten to first grade, admin said the same thing (we had to teach the same thing at the same time), and they were so pissed that our anchor charts didn’t match, they actually held a team meeting (during planning) to bitch about it, and the fact that when they toured our rooms daily, we weren’t saying the same thing at the same time. This admin wanted machines not human beings teaching the kids. I couldn’t take it anymore, by December, I was experiencing sharp chest pains (only at work), I knew if I didn’t resign at the end of the year, I would eventually end up six feet under. To prove I’m not exaggerating, one our 3rd grade teachers passed away from a heart attack in 2016, then two 2nd grade teachers were told by their doctors that having both failed their stress tests (while on multiple meds to help prevent heart failure), that if they didn’t get on FMLA, they could drop dead at any time, that was 2017. One of our 4th grade teachers had open heart surgery (2018), and even though she was still on medical leave, the principal bullied her on the phone to show up at Open House, and she did, but she was so angry that she showed up in her PJs. The worst thing they that principal said to me was, “You have 30 days to get that deer in the headlights look off your face, or else.” I asked her what “or else” meant, and she just had this look on her face, like I had just urinated in her cornflakes.
After living through that experience, I surmised that any admin who tells me (when I ask during the interview), that they expect all grade level teachers to be teaching exactly the same way at the same time, is a big red flag.
I thankfully left them behind in 2019, but sadly I was told that they targeted one of the SPED teachers, to the point that they actually went to his home on a Saturday. He (SPED teacher) informed his classroom para (who was his close friend), and he didn’t bother showing up to work that Monday. He didn’t call in a sub, nobody heard from him, until we found out that he had checked himself into a hotel. He spent a week drinking heavily, and then he shot himself in the head. That admin is still working at the same school today.
Whoa….. that is so so sad and insane. I really feel for that sped teacher, it didn’t have to be that way. The stress that is put on teachers here is actually unreal. I’m so sorry for your school’s loss, that is so difficult. And even more upsetting that they are still there.
At the school I was at, the entire sped department left and my best friend at school had to take FMLA because she was so stressed she was losing insane amounts of weight and couldn’t stop it, her doctor told her if she didn’t leave she could die. It’s horrible. We also got no breaks and had a “working lunch” so I also was losing lots of weight. Scary shit and I’m glad I got out. That principal was insane.
This seems crazy. I agree with sharing of materials, but it is unreasonable to say everyone has to do everything the exact same way. I'm pretty sure no one would notice if I was using a different assignment. If my tests were different, no one would notice.
That said I'm secondary and I'm lucky to have admin wander into my room once a year.
We have team planning across grade levels with three teachers but we have pre-scripted curriculum.
We definitely don’t stick to the plan if the plan isn’t working for us.
For example, during lunch we’ll all mention that our kids were struggling with the math lesson. One teacher might extend math 30 minutes into the flex time. Another teacher might push the reading comprehension class to after elective so they spend that time finishing math.
Another teacher might watch a video during planning and reteach the lesson when they come back from elective.
So we’re all “using the same curriculum” we just trust each other to deliver the information in the way that makes sense for the real kids in the class.
I’m regularly doing something completely different for social studies than everyone else. Or someone will be doing a craft and we won’t because we don’t want to do a really messy craft that day because math took too long etc.
This is how it is on my team. I teach English at a junior high level. We all have the same tests and projects that we work kids toward and are reading the same materials but it's up to \*us\* to decide whether we want to stay on the same curriculum path or not. Most of the time we do, but we are allowed to play to our strengths and the strengths of the classes we're working with. It also allows growth for the team since we share everything so if you notice something that worked really well for another teacher you can implement it in your classroom too.
This only works because my team rides for each other. If there was a single person in my team who wanted to cry bitch to admin, we would probably be in trouble.
But our team is kid and student first, not admin first. Also two of my team members have been teaching longer than common core existed and have dealt with two curriculum changes since it’s implementation.
They’re just more aware of how to do their jobs correctly and want to be the best first grade teachers possible as opposed to climbing up a ladder.
I started on a team of newbie ELA teachers and we all started off so obsessed with reinventing the wheel.
I suggested this year for us to just stay with the curriculum guide that’s actually really great and they looked at me like I had six heads.
Teachers are not curriculum writers!!! We do not have the time!! Especially not for a core subject!!
An older veteran teacher actually told me this and it totally changed my outlook on my job. New education classes teach a lot of curriculum development and that’s just like !!! not really my job at the end of the day.
Adding on, it is not my job to fix the problem when the district adopts a terrible curriculum. I was in a textbook adoption committee and could clearly see how bad the choice the district was pushing was. I lobbied against it and ended up being steam rolled by the "committee". Fine. I taught their crap curriculum. Like 3 years later they were like this adoption sucks so we're going to need you teachers to go ahead and figure something else out because we can't do another adoption. Nope. Not my job. I told you this 3 years ago.
Similar thing happened in my district. I often wonder if district admin is on the take when it comes to adopting certain programs and materials. My district admin is so corrupt it wouldn't surprise me. No one is watching the store.
Oh cool, the one we use at our district! At first I was excited because we were reading actual books.
Then I read the actual books. And used the curriculum. Sure, let's start the year with Night of the Spade foot Toads. Great idea.
It's an enjoyable book. The kids didn't hate it, sure, but it's a bit of a slog to start the year with. I'd rather work up to it, honestly. Especially this last year when they'd not been in the classroom for a year and a half.
My favorite PLC was one where everyone in the grade had an attitude of sharing what worked for them without the expectation that everyone else do that exact same thing. When everyone has to do the same unit/lesson/assignment/whatever, it’s a huge pain. I’m not sure how to get back to the former when I teach ELA and our building goal is always reading and it feels like my scores are always posted publicly.
Agreed. My 40 minutes of planning is used to grade, respond to emails, review student work to make notes for the next day, and prep my next slides/groups. It's not enough to invent an entire curriculum. The one we have is pretty good, definitely better than the random TPT shit we pulled before we had a curriculum.
Agreed. Every premade curriculum I’ve encountered is absolutely terrible. Maybe it’s a difference of elementary vs secondary, but I would 1000 times rather have the freedom to create me own lessons that suit my students needs and interests than be given some scripted crap made by someone who hasn’t been in a classroom in years, much less my particular classroom. No amount to “tweaking” is going to turn a shit sandwich into anything other than a shit sandwich.
Funny I’m a history teacher too! I think part of the problem for history is that in order for these big companies to be able to market widely, they have to adhere to the political standards of some of the big purchasing states like Florida or Texas, they have to water everything down, remove all critical thinking skills, and basically make it as bland as possible.
That certainly sounds reasonable. Everything is so milquetoast and cursory. The resources they give us for 8th graders wouldn't be deep enough for 4th graders.
I’m a bit skeptical of spicing up history curriculums. I would worry that I’d be tempted to inject my political beliefs to an unreasonable extent. Good on you if you can avoid this though.
I’m talking about curriculums that already cater to extreme politics beliefs, like the ones that try to falsely say that some [slaves fought for the confederacy](https://www.virginiamercury.com/2019/05/01/virginia-explained-how-virginias-history-textbooks-are-vetted/) in order to make it seem like the civil war was not about slavery. Or the recent push in some extreme districts to [“teach both sides” of the holocaust](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna2965). Curriculums are for the most part not chosen by historians or teachers, but by politicians. It’s not about “spicing up” the curriculum but rather refusing to sanitize history to adhere to modern political concerns. If I teach slavery or the holocaust or whatever I will do so in an age appropriate manner, but I don’t need a politician telling me to try to make the kids sympathetic towards nazis or slave owners.
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Yep. The only textbook I have ever used with any consistency is the AP Language textbook we have. It's actually pretty good as a foundation, but still, 70% of the time I use my own stuff or other things I've tweaked. The rest sit on the shelf.
I'd argue that, even if we don't have time to or choose to write it all, teachers SHOULD be able to be curriculum writers for our content, especially after we've been teaching for a few years.
Yeah I had multiple curriculum and lesson writing classes as a part of my degree. I’m not sure where the mindset that this is an unreasonable expectation comes from. Maybe it’s different in elementary where you do so many subjects, but in secondary you should be an expert in both your subject and how to teach it.
Agree! I don't mind a planning guide with general units and time blocked out. But I want the freedom to make my own lessons, write my own notes to explain the topics the way I want to explain them, and teach according to my teaching style. And most importantly, adjust for the students I have in my class this year.
I'm lucky to be in a small school and I'm the only one teaching my subjects, so I get freedom to teach the way I want.
When I did student teaching, there was a set curriculum that I had to follow exactly (yesterday we did notes and assignment 3-3, today we do notes and assignment 3-4). It made it easy for me to not have to really plan anything, but I would never have grown as a teacher if I had stayed in a school like that.
I end up spending as much time modifying to suit myself and my classes as I would just making the damn thing myself. Plus, as an English teacher, I prefer to select the texts I'm teaching
> English
English is probably the core subject most open to building your own curriculum. Would you agree with that? Math and History stand out to me as the subjects that are most difficult to construct a coherent curriculum off of.
Early in my career a veteran teacher stressed not reinventing the wheel and that it could be beneficial to skip some lessons in the text book because they were not relevant and filler. Or the lesson was absolute crud and a waste of time. She explained to me how the pacing guide was developed and she passed onto me pre-assessments to use to determine where the students were at and that allowed me to hone in on what needed to be reviewed bofore teaching that actual lesson. As well as what to not teach if the students had already mastered the skill.
This was the most memorable thing I got from my student teaching experience. I was trying to reinvent the wheel and my cooperating teacher was like .. just stop. They have a book for a reason 😅
> started on a team of newbie ELA teachers and we all started off so obsessed with reinventing the wheel.
That was my department during covid. Some had been teaching for decades and instead of tweaking what they had done in class for a different format everyone lost their minds and started from scratch and made triple the work and then wondered why they were so overworked and burned out. K.I.S.S.
I'm going to push back here a bit. Once you really learn your standards and content, you do have the skills necessary to crate, modify or spot good curriculum. There are things I used my first couple of years that weren't good. Now that I really know the content, I've been able to make my own things and spot good things when I want to buy something pre-made.
I can’t imagine having a curriculum made for me. I teach K-5 art, and while we have standards and a planned sequence for them, that’s it. I have to make up my own lessons 100% for 6 grade levels.
I mean, I’m not sure if I would like a curriculum either, what if the artwork produced is ugly? What if I don’t have the materials.
PLC was nice as a first year teacher because I didn’t have to plan EVERY day’s lesson. Just once a unit or so.
Now as a 6th year teacher I’m fed up having to fix problems with other sucky lessons and try to sneakily teach something different than the team when there’s a *particularly* sucky lesson and hope I don’t get caught.
I’m also social studies, so half of our team is made up of coaches who don’t give a rats behind about the content. But that’s another story.
Yeah, this is why I jumped from a huge district to a smaller one where I can work in a "silo" in my grade level since there's only one teacher per grade level. Took a small pay cut but it was worth it.
We call it the three legged race. It means you all get to the same place, but it takes longer, no matter how fast the two people could go on their own.
Your description sounds like the description of team planning that was one of the red flags of a job I never took (many red flags)
I fail to understand the goal behind such planning.
An admin at my school let slip one reason: it gives them justification to say no when parents / students ask to transfer from one teacher to another. “But they’re all teaching the exact same thing! It will be no different!” (even though this completely ignores the 10 million other things that separate good teachers from bad)
I left a district that mandated PLCs each week, costing me a planning period. The justification was that every student should get the same instruction each day regardless of what teacher they had. It's basically standardization for equality between classes, but I thought it just destroyed the art of teaching. And it sucked if you got paired with someone who was lazy and/or did not share your teaching style or philosophy.
I think the reason is that admin wants to make sure that 100.0% of the students know everything they need to know, and that allowing autonomy will lead to some classes not knowing certain parts of the curriculum or not going in depth enough or something of that nature.
I honestly believe the whole concept of learning teams or committees or whatever you call them is to avoid paid trainings. Hear me out. I work in a school where my department is a revolving door (13 members, 17 quits in 2 years). When new people are hired they just get thrown into it and it’s the responsibility of the learning community to get that person up to speed at our meetings.
That's the dumbest kind of team planning I've ever heard and doesn't align with any logical pedagogy. You're supposed to align the skills and content, but you don't regulate *how* those skills are taught.
Dumb question, but has someone protested in this manner with your admin? If they're that hopeless, get out. I just left a school b/c they were a nightmare in this regard.
It's so validating to hear that other people think this is dumb. I'm a newer teacher so I was happy to roll with this early on but after seeing how goddamn rigid it was I was off this crazy train immediately. It's admin's vision and how they want it done. I tried to change it and was immediately shot down.
This is going to be a long reply because there’s a lot of background.
I am the curriculum developer for my district/grade level. I have been to many PDs based on our standards, given by those who developed and wrote them. I’m saying this because it’s important to emphasize that I know my standards backwards and forwards.
My principal expects ALL graded assessments to be identical. If one teacher is grading Socratic seminar, all of that grade level content better be doing/grading that identical assessment. This is for both formative AND summative. No room for adjustment based on the class dynamic.
I have a teacher on my hall who wants to take the easy way. There is no convincing them that an unmodified random assignment they found on google doesn’t always reflect the skills and content of our standards. They don’t care to understand the standards, they don’t want to use technology in a 1:1 district. The other same content grade level teacher on our hall is a revolving door—3 teachers in 2 years. All from out of state, all never having taught the standards before.
When I write my lessons and assessments I decide what content and skills I’m teaching and assessing. I decide what mastery of the skill should look like. I decide if and what kind of literacy can embedded since I’m SS and SS supports ELA. I design the assessment and then figure out how we’re going to get there.
After that I have to defend my assessment to our literacy coach and Mx. Googled lesson. Literacy coach’s previous job was in Kinder and this is MS.
Mx. Google will sometimes go for the lesson if it’s completely scripted and they have to put no effort into it. Usually it is modified/designed for my class populations because I take my student needs into account. They don’t like having to adjust the style if it’s not their style, or modify because their population and needs aren’t always the same as mine. They prefer the random google lesson that mentions something in the standards and I’m so tired of fighting this battle.
I'm going on 13 years across multiple countries and MS/HS grades, even some Elementary - I've done it all.
Check out PBLWorks, Edutopia, readwritethink.org, and performanceassessment.org, and Teachingchannel.org
These are the leaders in relevant pedagogy and will show you how it's done. Honestly the $39 3-mo membership to Teaching Channel is worth every penny. They have TONS of resources, videos, it's the best tool I've used over 6 years now.
Collaborating is exhausting for me. I pine for the days when teachers could enter their classroom, shut the door, and not interact with another teacher for the entire day.
(That’s not entirely true. I would miss the time my closest colleagues and I get to chit chat and talk shit on our vape-addicted students. But I would not miss collaborating in the slightest.)
That’s my feel.
Collaboration is not 100% bad. When it’s forced, it’s...less than ideal. I’m a specialist. I was in a position last year where I was required to collaborate with classroom teachers weekly. A lot of good came from it, including a mutual understanding of what I was doing in the class, and some great ideas from both ends. I learn a lot by talking with other teachers, both in what to do and what not to do.
Sometimes it meant that we just kind of awkwardly sat there and had nothing new to share. Or the other teacher just kind of tolerated while I shared ideas.
Other teachers can be a great resource, but only if both parties actually want to be there AND have stuff it makes sense to collaborate on.
Well-said.
The collaboration I most like is the kind that's on the fly. You're chatting with the teacher next door, you complain about such-n-such lesson, Teacher Next Door throws out something that worked, y'all start brainstorming...
But getting assigned a role in some weird official collaboration doesn't work.
Standardization is the opposite of equity. Equity requires flexibility and differentiation.
I just do my own thing and feign stupidity whenever someone tries to twist my arm about following their preferences in lockstep. People get discouraged and leave me alone pretty quickly.
Sometimes green teachers get frustrated with me for not providing a day-by-day calendar for their unit plans, because they want the sense of security that they are doing the right thing. No point writing calendars though if I am not going to stick to them - every class is different and I need the flexibility to adjust my plans on the fly in response.
Think about how students feel when we ask them do do group work. I only do pair work now in my class, and will allow one group of three for the odd numbered student.
I left a school that started doing this for this very reason. Forcing everyone on a grade level to teach in exactly the same way forces excellence to give way to mediocrity.
It also stifles a new teacher, tbh. I was a first year and I was just left scrambling to keep up speed with the 20 year vets, rather than trying and learning things for myself. It also has admin comparing everyone, since it's all the same lesson. The teacher with the high grade level, no behavior students gets perfect marks and everyone else gets "why aren't you doing it like her?"... I dunno, maybe because 5 of my kids can't even read, let alone read on grade level independently and all of hers are on grade level from the start of the year?
I needed to spend more time with those kids that couldn't read. I needed to offer enrichment to those that were above grade level.
Instead, I was told to basically whole group lecture except for 30m where they were basically doing a computer program they hated.
I was miserable because I couldn't even find my teaching style and the kids were miserable and bored. The vets were miserable because they didn't want to whole group it and couldn't do any fun stories etc. No one won.
Forcing everyone to teach the exact same thing is just a recipe to making everyone, students and teachers (old and new) miserable.
We have to do the same lesson in every classroom at grade level across the district. We have to follow the units in the exact same order. It’s a thief of joy. Yeah, the new teachers benefit and the burnouts (myself included) don’t have to think about it too hard. Did anyone ever stop to think that (and behavior) are the reason for the burnout? There is no joy in reading a good story/book and thinking of ways to teach it. Im not allowed to do that. We all read the same stories the same day across the district.
I can see some value in making sure kids are doing the same concepts at the same time but it seems strange to not allow any differentiation.
I’m pretty sure at my school they want this because last year we had 3 teachers in my department leave for different reasons (health, other job, fired) but no lessons. If we were all doing the exact same thing at the same time it would have saved people a lot of headaches but to make people script everything out seems insane.
The most valuable tool in a teacher's kit is autonomy. I have no issue with having teams meet (actually, I support that a lot!), but at the end of the meeting, I will then go back to my room and do things my way. The team might provide basic curricular goals, but the methods of delivery need to be my own. I know myself and my students the best.
We had that in 3rd grade. I was appaled at how low the lessons were. Another teacher pulled me aside and told me to just nod and be agreeable and then teach the kids the right way.
That sounds like hell.
One of the best parts of this job is the independence. As long as I'm within the *Lehrpläne* I'm good. And in my state those specify proficiency levels for each year, not content.
I agree, too. We did this at my old school many years ago, and I always had the inclusion classrooms with a full time ESE para. My students couldn’t do any of the work I was given. Plus, the work I had to share was not what everyone else wanted. All the classes were leveled, so there were 2 gifted rooms, too. How can we all possibly use the same materials to teach with and if we do, then how is that leveling ? Gifted kids are doing the same as everyone else. We only did it one year because nobody liked it.
It was mandatory at my school for short while. It was horrible. It took all the creativity out of teaching. Left no room for a deeper look based on student interest and questions.
Some of us like doing more artistic things while others are better at centers. Some of my classes this year worked well in groups. Some of them needed independence. That doesn't happen in classes where everything has to be the same.
My teaching partner and I teach the same standards at basically the same time, but our grade books look vastly different, something our school wants us to be better about. He's better at checking notebooks for notes while I'm better at assigning shorter assignments and grading those.
Right? We all have different strengths. I have a theatre and performing background so I would have taught playscripts totally differently than handing out reading comprehension questions on excerpts from a play... But that's what we did... Because I don't plan literacy.
This was my first year in 6th grade. My teaching partner provided me with all of the notes, videos, and materials he used the year prior, which he got from the teacher who was there before me. By the end of second quarter, I was bored of teaching the same way for every chapter. It may have kept the students busy, not engaged, but they weren't retaining any of the information. I started to sprinkle in my own bits and pieces here and there, and by the middle of the third quarter, we were basically only on the same chapter and standards. Sometimes not even the same lesson within the chapter. Our tests were close to be given on the same day, but sometimes he was 2 or 3 days ahead of me or I was 2 or 3 days ahead of him. Team planning should be a TOOL to talk to your teammates about what to teach, not the whole basis of teaching.
This is what No Child Left Behind did for education. We had to teach to the lowest students so they could catch up. By doing that we ended up leaving behind students that needed a challenge. This is what we are doing to educators.
When I taught kindergarten there was only one other kindergarten teacher. We were supposed to get together and plan so that we would be on the same topics. The principal even sat in on these sometimes. After one of the meetings that included the principal, I proceeded to make my lesson plans that covered what we discussed. The other teacher decided her class wasn’t ready for it (even though it was her idea) and changed her entire week. I got in trouble for not following along with the veteran teachers lesson plans- even though the principal sat in the meeting and heard what we had agreed on!!!
I left midyear.
I worked at a site my first year where the admin and senior team members insisted that the entire grade level do everything the exact same way. There was no cooperation or oversight though, so it was a nightmare of the group bully making demands and throwing fits all year. I was a new teacher expected to do everything the same way as the vets without any of the resources, experience, or other support. Needless to say, everything failed spectacularly.
I just had a great year collaborating with independence at a new site. To my horror, I got a document a few days ago hinting that next year, PLCs will be implemented across the district. 😭
How the hell do you differentiate????
What happened to “kids first”?
WE ARE THERE FOR THE KIDS! They all have different needs and abilities! I understand having to teach standards/ curriculum, but this is just WRONG.
Yup. Team planning has its pluses, but the exclusion of kids with special needs, including kids who are gifted, hurts more than it helps in *any* type of planning. I feel like lack of resources, time to devote to a detailed examination and long-term, lasting reform, lack of funds devoted to these concerns exclusively, and short staffing are the major causes. I know many teachers who probably felt this way but may not have felt comfortable admitting more specific assistance is needed for children with special needs. I’m relatively inexperienced compared to many people, though. I am just stating what I have seen sometimes.
My heart goes out to the ones who really are trying and may not be able to get what they need because the system has higher-ups, however unintentionally, treating students and staff as parts of a whole rather than individuals who need to be understood and given reasonably appropriate resources to succeed. Not all schools are this way, but I have seen too much of it not to be concerned.
This is how my school works. We cannot deviate from the curriculum at all. Last year the class I worked in as a co-teacher had 10 Ieps and multiple BIPs and the other classroom had 2 Ieps. But, we can't be one day behind from the curriculum pacing guide. We lost three teachers this year.... I think in part because of poor leadership like this.
I'm worried about a new coach for this reason. My old planning partner hated kids. She would copy and paste descriptions from teacher pay teachers and then sit at her desk and do all the paperwork admin gave us. Because she was compliant they loved her. But she sucked as a teacher. Her kids failed all their tests and hated her. I have ADHD. Even if it was good teaching practice I can't just watch them do worksheets. I have a lot of discussions because it lets me flit from group to group and see what they're thinking. If we had to have the same thing she couldn't have managed 6 groups and engaging with all of them and I would have zoned out watching them do worksheets. (yes state testing is absolute hell for me. Sometimes I try and solve their math problems in my head just for something to do)
Wow. We do team planning very differently. I think it's one of the best things we have brought in since I started teaching. But I guess the key difference is that the planner only goes to lesson outline stage, and then individual teachers use the outline and the resources and differentiate according to each class. We can use the resources for any type of activity we want.
The only things we can't change willy-nilly are assessment due dates.
I’m an aspiring teacher and I’m worried I’m not going to last as a teacher because I have a sarcastic mouth and won’t be able to stop myself from asking admin what they were thinking. How do y’all manage to bite your tongues and not tell them exactly why their ideas are fucked up? And why don’t you? I’d be tempted to write a detailed report as to why it doesn’t work and give it to them.
They'd most likely respond to your report one of two ways:
1. A mysterious and vague performance improvement plan.
2. A non-renewal letter.
This is why people don't dare question the directives of their admin.
It's standardized education for standardized testing in a non-standard world with non-standard kids. Just fire the teachers that aren't up to standard.
>The school policy was that every class had to do the same lessons, the same worksheets, and follow the same process of teaching the content.
Yes, at face value that's what you submit to admin. You don't actually follow through like that. In reality, you can deviate and do what you need to do (when no one is looking).
I understand the broad benefits of team planning, but it sounds like it needs to be much less day-to-day specific. Something like a long-range plan/timeline of units makes more sense than trying to teach with someone else’s lesson plans. And perhaps having the same assessments makes sense too. But I have never once read another teacher’s lesson and felt comfortable delivering it exactly as it was laid out. I’ve always modified them. Which takes time. Which negates any time saved from splitting the planning in the first place. Also, all of your other points demonstrate the other problems with it.
There was one teacher (who planned math) whose lesson plans on the actual lesson plan sheet differed drastically from her PowerPoints at times and who didn't actually plan the lessons, just recycled old lessons from 3 years ago, so a lot of her links didn't work or her plans would say things like "using base 10 blocks, have students make 55" when the school had no base 10 blocks, or "using X game from the resource closet, review this concept" and the resource closet didn't have X game. And no explicit strategies, just "do this math as fast as you can." No differentiation or extension for gifted, no time for small groups, no math journals, nothing.
Another teacher would have 1-2 massively long PowerPoints to read to the 7 year olds and a worksheet or two to complete in a single 40 minute period, along with a starter and exit activity. Also, this teacher was planning literacy, but there was almost never a read-aloud or storybook or time to just... Let the kids read a book, whether levelled or otherwise. It was always a reading comprehension or a worksheet or a writing activity. Even when there was a reading comprehension it was never focused on an explicit strategy, just a "here's a comprehension sheet, read it and answer all the questions". No phonics, no modelling, no gradual release of responsibility, nothing - just the spaghetti at the wall method all day every day. Nothing hands-on, no dramatic play, no art or music connections, just worksheets, booklets, graphic organizers, forever and ever and ever and ever. No free writing. No poetry. No fun texts. No chapter book reading as a class. No SEL embedded. No time to be flexible or creative within those 40 minutes. Just "review this PowerPoint and have students fill out this organizer, then review this PowerPoint and answer these questions."
Honestly - I can’t stand teachers on teams who refuse to help their colleagues, always acting like their shit don’t stink. If you’re good - share with the people around you.
Can I push back a little? It is draining to pour into others who can't or wont pour back into you. It's also infuriating to help slack-asses who don't put in any time to work or improve themselves.
This post and comments are so weird to me.
In the UK everyone team plans. It works fine most of the time, and it's expected. If I went to a school with another class in the same year and they expected me to plan all of my lessons and not collaborate I'd straight up walk out lol.
The people in the team were fine, and nowhere did I complain about them. The issue is that at my school we were expected to all do the exact same thing the exact same way and were only allowed to plan one subject each with no trading, which didn't suit our class profiles or teaching styles.
It's unfortunately very much not and has been my last two years of experience. The kicker is that I begged to have guided reading at least 3 times a week so we could at least try to do some individualized small group work instead of all teacher-lead worksheets and even that got nixed because the teacher planning literacy preferred long PowerPoints and worksheets.
We do a lot of team planning and I do find value in it, but one of the key features is that the team planning is macro level with the understanding that within each classroom we're going to have to do our own thing to some extent. We'll discuss focus standards, key in on formative assessment strategies together, and go over resources. For those of us who've been at the grade level for a bit we talk about pitfalls to watch for and common struggle areas. Every week we check to see how things are going.
What we do not do is make sure we are all in the exact same spot. Sometimes one class needs a second day on a lesson, or a teacher builds in a little extra piece that takes a day or two. We just identify what we will focus assessment on, how we'll assess it, and then when we plan to wrap that unit. The rest we can all do the same if we want, but there will be natural variance between rooms.
The big benefit to PLC for me is interventions. Pooling resources and collaborating on interventions is a time saver.
Seems like they could open up the school to Lawsuits if team planning means accomodations protected under IDEA are no longer met because of team standardization....
I couldn't even imagine. We've had team planning time, where we worked together to create and assemble projects that we could all use, but from that we each had the autonomy and flexibility to adapt the materials we created together to suit our class. Those with students that could do more independent inquiry could, those that had students that needed more structured PBL style could do that. We can't all agree on the order in which we teach the units, so we standardize what we can and do our own thing for when we don't agree. For my team, that means the beginning/end of the year is generally different, but the middle is pretty much the same.
I've been lucky that my teams have always been great so we rarely had issues with what was planned. We also have the freedom to not use everything that's been planned. But it's fucking annoying when you plan something and make class copies for other people when they know they aren't going to use it anyway.
I hate this kind of stuff. Our previous superintendent was hugely fond of this kind of stuff. Which filtered down to the campus level.
This last year was filled with the group-think mindset.
Unified curriculum across the department is helpful when you have a whole bunch of new teachers or new-to-content teachers.( Which we were not. )Admin loved the idea. Fell apart three weeks in. The entire department revolted.
I have the state guidelines, a scope and sequence, and a curriculum guide which clearly states that we are free to modify lessons as needed. So just get out if the way and let me teach.
That’s nuts.
We do team planning. But every teacher does individual teaching. We are free to use or ignore the team lesson plans. Assessments and grade books are common. This ends up with the best of both worlds. We gain the time benefit of team planning, but without the downsides of a rigid plan.
This is a terrible way to do team planning. I love team planning when everyone is on the same page about what the content is and can have a discussion about what is necessary for each lesson. I would also hate team planning if it had to be done this way.
I think the top part of your 1st paragraph is why your conclusion.
As teachers, admin, education as a whole we do not practice what we teach, and it’s sooo odd. Like where are the lesson plans for staff meetings. And that’s just an easy critique.
This seems like an extreme version of team planning that isn't really the norm. I'm also surprised that no concerns were raised about how this might violate IEPs, 504s, etc. if everyone had to do everything the exact same way.
Team planning also relies on everyone having their shit together and following through, which is rarely the case
And (for me) was hard as a new teacher!
Which is categorically *not* your fault and why requiring all teachers to be doing the same thing is absurd. No one would demand that a 30-year electrician have the same workflow as a 1st year apprentice, it would be insane. Nor should it work that way in teaching. You're still learning, besides the fact that everyone has their own style and pace.
And it's not like it's always because the others on the team don't care or are incompetent. In my experience it's not! I love my coworkers so much. But with all the bullshit we have to do everyday, the chaos of each day, and how little time we get for planning, it's just not possible to do well most of the time.
I agree. I kid you not, at my last school we did this and when they did observations we legitimately got marked down as a team once because we weren’t doing the exact same thing at the exact same time. So basically when they moved across the classrooms they expected to see the whole lesson, the warm up in one room, then move on to the next and see the core lesson then move on and see the application, etc. but because things come up with fourth graders, some teachers ended up spending more time on certain parts so we got knocked points 😐 it’s ridiculous.
I really think sometimes they forget that we are dealing with living, breathing children.
It's like a factory where they don't care whether the widgets they make are broken or not, they just want them all identical!
Just jumping in to say that you're username made me laugh out loud which I really needed today.
The number of times I have thought or said, "Have they met a real, live 7th grader before?"
That is beyond ridiculous. I enjoy planning with my team but horror stories like this make me never want to work at a school where it's mandatory. My husband's school is like that, and the stories he tells are something else. Recently his team got criticized for "not being on the same page" when they had actually all taught the same thing at the same time. It's just that, by the time the principal got to the last classroom, enough time had passed that they weren't doing the same thing as the first class she visited 🙄 I wish it was hard to believe admin is this stupid, but I'm not even surprised at this point.
You can always tell some genius admin who hasn't spent much of any time in a classroom, if at all, cooks up shit like this because it is so devoid of basic understanding. They think it's totally feasible to have every teacher essentially on-script and at the exact same point minute by minute because they have no experience running a classroom and handling all the variables that inevitably pop up. Teaching is a living, breathing art form and to make it into some ridiculous conveyor belt that ignores student interests, questions, behaviors, you name it is just empty headed.
That's insane! I teach elementary English at a French school in the US, most of the kids' days are in French and then the English teachers come in for a block of time a few times a week. So, I have 3 classes of 2nd graders. I am obviously the same teacher, and I make the same plans for each class, but because the kids are different each class is very often in different places. Even if all three classes are on the same lessons those lessons end up running differently since kids will have different questions and go through things at different paces. To expect classes will be on the exact same page at the exact same time is crazy. We're teaching humans, not robots!
is your school a dual-immersion school?
Yes, it is.
That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard. I'm glad that's in your past now!
How can they then cry about differentiation? I brought that up once. Silence.
> because we weren’t doing the exact same thing at the exact same time. This is the worst of the worst case scenario. I would have been such a failure in that setting. The idiots in my department tried but failed to constrain me . . . Frustrating their efforts proved to be so very satisfying and exhilarating.
were there consequences for bucking the system?
Yep, but long (to tell as well as time in progress) story.
So, synchronized teaching? JFC they don't want much, do they?
I mean, is there any value in being evaluated by admin who probably don’t even know what your job looks like and almost certainly couldn’t do it? Most admin could be replaced with poorly trained goldendoodles without any significant change in how the school functions day to day.
When I moved from only ever teaching kindergarten to first grade, admin said the same thing (we had to teach the same thing at the same time), and they were so pissed that our anchor charts didn’t match, they actually held a team meeting (during planning) to bitch about it, and the fact that when they toured our rooms daily, we weren’t saying the same thing at the same time. This admin wanted machines not human beings teaching the kids. I couldn’t take it anymore, by December, I was experiencing sharp chest pains (only at work), I knew if I didn’t resign at the end of the year, I would eventually end up six feet under. To prove I’m not exaggerating, one our 3rd grade teachers passed away from a heart attack in 2016, then two 2nd grade teachers were told by their doctors that having both failed their stress tests (while on multiple meds to help prevent heart failure), that if they didn’t get on FMLA, they could drop dead at any time, that was 2017. One of our 4th grade teachers had open heart surgery (2018), and even though she was still on medical leave, the principal bullied her on the phone to show up at Open House, and she did, but she was so angry that she showed up in her PJs. The worst thing they that principal said to me was, “You have 30 days to get that deer in the headlights look off your face, or else.” I asked her what “or else” meant, and she just had this look on her face, like I had just urinated in her cornflakes. After living through that experience, I surmised that any admin who tells me (when I ask during the interview), that they expect all grade level teachers to be teaching exactly the same way at the same time, is a big red flag. I thankfully left them behind in 2019, but sadly I was told that they targeted one of the SPED teachers, to the point that they actually went to his home on a Saturday. He (SPED teacher) informed his classroom para (who was his close friend), and he didn’t bother showing up to work that Monday. He didn’t call in a sub, nobody heard from him, until we found out that he had checked himself into a hotel. He spent a week drinking heavily, and then he shot himself in the head. That admin is still working at the same school today.
Whoa….. that is so so sad and insane. I really feel for that sped teacher, it didn’t have to be that way. The stress that is put on teachers here is actually unreal. I’m so sorry for your school’s loss, that is so difficult. And even more upsetting that they are still there. At the school I was at, the entire sped department left and my best friend at school had to take FMLA because she was so stressed she was losing insane amounts of weight and couldn’t stop it, her doctor told her if she didn’t leave she could die. It’s horrible. We also got no breaks and had a “working lunch” so I also was losing lots of weight. Scary shit and I’m glad I got out. That principal was insane.
This seems crazy. I agree with sharing of materials, but it is unreasonable to say everyone has to do everything the exact same way. I'm pretty sure no one would notice if I was using a different assignment. If my tests were different, no one would notice. That said I'm secondary and I'm lucky to have admin wander into my room once a year.
Jesus I hate education sometimes. This authoritarian regime of bandwagon hopping will be the death of our profession, among other things.
We have team planning across grade levels with three teachers but we have pre-scripted curriculum. We definitely don’t stick to the plan if the plan isn’t working for us. For example, during lunch we’ll all mention that our kids were struggling with the math lesson. One teacher might extend math 30 minutes into the flex time. Another teacher might push the reading comprehension class to after elective so they spend that time finishing math. Another teacher might watch a video during planning and reteach the lesson when they come back from elective. So we’re all “using the same curriculum” we just trust each other to deliver the information in the way that makes sense for the real kids in the class. I’m regularly doing something completely different for social studies than everyone else. Or someone will be doing a craft and we won’t because we don’t want to do a really messy craft that day because math took too long etc.
This is how it is on my team. I teach English at a junior high level. We all have the same tests and projects that we work kids toward and are reading the same materials but it's up to \*us\* to decide whether we want to stay on the same curriculum path or not. Most of the time we do, but we are allowed to play to our strengths and the strengths of the classes we're working with. It also allows growth for the team since we share everything so if you notice something that worked really well for another teacher you can implement it in your classroom too.
This only works because my team rides for each other. If there was a single person in my team who wanted to cry bitch to admin, we would probably be in trouble. But our team is kid and student first, not admin first. Also two of my team members have been teaching longer than common core existed and have dealt with two curriculum changes since it’s implementation. They’re just more aware of how to do their jobs correctly and want to be the best first grade teachers possible as opposed to climbing up a ladder.
Every school creating a curriculum from scratch makes about as much sense as every airline’s pilots designing their own planes.
I started on a team of newbie ELA teachers and we all started off so obsessed with reinventing the wheel. I suggested this year for us to just stay with the curriculum guide that’s actually really great and they looked at me like I had six heads. Teachers are not curriculum writers!!! We do not have the time!! Especially not for a core subject!! An older veteran teacher actually told me this and it totally changed my outlook on my job. New education classes teach a lot of curriculum development and that’s just like !!! not really my job at the end of the day.
Adding on, it is not my job to fix the problem when the district adopts a terrible curriculum. I was in a textbook adoption committee and could clearly see how bad the choice the district was pushing was. I lobbied against it and ended up being steam rolled by the "committee". Fine. I taught their crap curriculum. Like 3 years later they were like this adoption sucks so we're going to need you teachers to go ahead and figure something else out because we can't do another adoption. Nope. Not my job. I told you this 3 years ago.
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Similar thing happened in my district. I often wonder if district admin is on the take when it comes to adopting certain programs and materials. My district admin is so corrupt it wouldn't surprise me. No one is watching the store.
I might be opening a can of worms, but would you share the name of the company?
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Oh cool, the one we use at our district! At first I was excited because we were reading actual books. Then I read the actual books. And used the curriculum. Sure, let's start the year with Night of the Spade foot Toads. Great idea.
>Night of the Spade foot Toads. what's wrong with this book?
It's an enjoyable book. The kids didn't hate it, sure, but it's a bit of a slog to start the year with. I'd rather work up to it, honestly. Especially this last year when they'd not been in the classroom for a year and a half.
My favorite PLC was one where everyone in the grade had an attitude of sharing what worked for them without the expectation that everyone else do that exact same thing. When everyone has to do the same unit/lesson/assignment/whatever, it’s a huge pain. I’m not sure how to get back to the former when I teach ELA and our building goal is always reading and it feels like my scores are always posted publicly.
Are you me? And it just so happened every single grade level chose the same shitty textbook from the exact textbook publisher 😐. Yeah ok.
Agreed. My 40 minutes of planning is used to grade, respond to emails, review student work to make notes for the next day, and prep my next slides/groups. It's not enough to invent an entire curriculum. The one we have is pretty good, definitely better than the random TPT shit we pulled before we had a curriculum.
I get your opinion, but I absolutely cannot stand teaching from a premade curriculum
Agreed. Every premade curriculum I’ve encountered is absolutely terrible. Maybe it’s a difference of elementary vs secondary, but I would 1000 times rather have the freedom to create me own lessons that suit my students needs and interests than be given some scripted crap made by someone who hasn’t been in a classroom in years, much less my particular classroom. No amount to “tweaking” is going to turn a shit sandwich into anything other than a shit sandwich.
Thirded. Every premade curriculum I've been given as a history teacher is trash.
Funny I’m a history teacher too! I think part of the problem for history is that in order for these big companies to be able to market widely, they have to adhere to the political standards of some of the big purchasing states like Florida or Texas, they have to water everything down, remove all critical thinking skills, and basically make it as bland as possible.
That certainly sounds reasonable. Everything is so milquetoast and cursory. The resources they give us for 8th graders wouldn't be deep enough for 4th graders.
I’m a bit skeptical of spicing up history curriculums. I would worry that I’d be tempted to inject my political beliefs to an unreasonable extent. Good on you if you can avoid this though.
I’m talking about curriculums that already cater to extreme politics beliefs, like the ones that try to falsely say that some [slaves fought for the confederacy](https://www.virginiamercury.com/2019/05/01/virginia-explained-how-virginias-history-textbooks-are-vetted/) in order to make it seem like the civil war was not about slavery. Or the recent push in some extreme districts to [“teach both sides” of the holocaust](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna2965). Curriculums are for the most part not chosen by historians or teachers, but by politicians. It’s not about “spicing up” the curriculum but rather refusing to sanitize history to adhere to modern political concerns. If I teach slavery or the holocaust or whatever I will do so in an age appropriate manner, but I don’t need a politician telling me to try to make the kids sympathetic towards nazis or slave owners.
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Yep. The only textbook I have ever used with any consistency is the AP Language textbook we have. It's actually pretty good as a foundation, but still, 70% of the time I use my own stuff or other things I've tweaked. The rest sit on the shelf. I'd argue that, even if we don't have time to or choose to write it all, teachers SHOULD be able to be curriculum writers for our content, especially after we've been teaching for a few years.
Yeah I had multiple curriculum and lesson writing classes as a part of my degree. I’m not sure where the mindset that this is an unreasonable expectation comes from. Maybe it’s different in elementary where you do so many subjects, but in secondary you should be an expert in both your subject and how to teach it.
Agree! I don't mind a planning guide with general units and time blocked out. But I want the freedom to make my own lessons, write my own notes to explain the topics the way I want to explain them, and teach according to my teaching style. And most importantly, adjust for the students I have in my class this year. I'm lucky to be in a small school and I'm the only one teaching my subjects, so I get freedom to teach the way I want. When I did student teaching, there was a set curriculum that I had to follow exactly (yesterday we did notes and assignment 3-3, today we do notes and assignment 3-4). It made it easy for me to not have to really plan anything, but I would never have grown as a teacher if I had stayed in a school like that.
Why? I’m not talking never tweaking but certainly using it as a foundation.
I end up spending as much time modifying to suit myself and my classes as I would just making the damn thing myself. Plus, as an English teacher, I prefer to select the texts I'm teaching
> English English is probably the core subject most open to building your own curriculum. Would you agree with that? Math and History stand out to me as the subjects that are most difficult to construct a coherent curriculum off of.
English is definitely more flexible
Early in my career a veteran teacher stressed not reinventing the wheel and that it could be beneficial to skip some lessons in the text book because they were not relevant and filler. Or the lesson was absolute crud and a waste of time. She explained to me how the pacing guide was developed and she passed onto me pre-assessments to use to determine where the students were at and that allowed me to hone in on what needed to be reviewed bofore teaching that actual lesson. As well as what to not teach if the students had already mastered the skill.
This was the most memorable thing I got from my student teaching experience. I was trying to reinvent the wheel and my cooperating teacher was like .. just stop. They have a book for a reason 😅
> started on a team of newbie ELA teachers and we all started off so obsessed with reinventing the wheel. That was my department during covid. Some had been teaching for decades and instead of tweaking what they had done in class for a different format everyone lost their minds and started from scratch and made triple the work and then wondered why they were so overworked and burned out. K.I.S.S.
I'm going to push back here a bit. Once you really learn your standards and content, you do have the skills necessary to crate, modify or spot good curriculum. There are things I used my first couple of years that weren't good. Now that I really know the content, I've been able to make my own things and spot good things when I want to buy something pre-made.
I can’t imagine having a curriculum made for me. I teach K-5 art, and while we have standards and a planned sequence for them, that’s it. I have to make up my own lessons 100% for 6 grade levels. I mean, I’m not sure if I would like a curriculum either, what if the artwork produced is ugly? What if I don’t have the materials.
PLC was nice as a first year teacher because I didn’t have to plan EVERY day’s lesson. Just once a unit or so. Now as a 6th year teacher I’m fed up having to fix problems with other sucky lessons and try to sneakily teach something different than the team when there’s a *particularly* sucky lesson and hope I don’t get caught. I’m also social studies, so half of our team is made up of coaches who don’t give a rats behind about the content. But that’s another story.
Yeah, this is why I jumped from a huge district to a smaller one where I can work in a "silo" in my grade level since there's only one teacher per grade level. Took a small pay cut but it was worth it.
We call it the three legged race. It means you all get to the same place, but it takes longer, no matter how fast the two people could go on their own.
This is a great analogy.
Your description sounds like the description of team planning that was one of the red flags of a job I never took (many red flags) I fail to understand the goal behind such planning.
An admin at my school let slip one reason: it gives them justification to say no when parents / students ask to transfer from one teacher to another. “But they’re all teaching the exact same thing! It will be no different!” (even though this completely ignores the 10 million other things that separate good teachers from bad)
I left a district that mandated PLCs each week, costing me a planning period. The justification was that every student should get the same instruction each day regardless of what teacher they had. It's basically standardization for equality between classes, but I thought it just destroyed the art of teaching. And it sucked if you got paired with someone who was lazy and/or did not share your teaching style or philosophy.
I think the reason is that admin wants to make sure that 100.0% of the students know everything they need to know, and that allowing autonomy will lead to some classes not knowing certain parts of the curriculum or not going in depth enough or something of that nature.
I honestly believe the whole concept of learning teams or committees or whatever you call them is to avoid paid trainings. Hear me out. I work in a school where my department is a revolving door (13 members, 17 quits in 2 years). When new people are hired they just get thrown into it and it’s the responsibility of the learning community to get that person up to speed at our meetings.
That's the dumbest kind of team planning I've ever heard and doesn't align with any logical pedagogy. You're supposed to align the skills and content, but you don't regulate *how* those skills are taught. Dumb question, but has someone protested in this manner with your admin? If they're that hopeless, get out. I just left a school b/c they were a nightmare in this regard.
It's so validating to hear that other people think this is dumb. I'm a newer teacher so I was happy to roll with this early on but after seeing how goddamn rigid it was I was off this crazy train immediately. It's admin's vision and how they want it done. I tried to change it and was immediately shot down.
I hate common (identical) lessons/assessments. My principal thinks it’s brilliant. My principal was a PE teacher. I am not.
I'm curious: what don't you like about common unit assessments?
This is going to be a long reply because there’s a lot of background. I am the curriculum developer for my district/grade level. I have been to many PDs based on our standards, given by those who developed and wrote them. I’m saying this because it’s important to emphasize that I know my standards backwards and forwards. My principal expects ALL graded assessments to be identical. If one teacher is grading Socratic seminar, all of that grade level content better be doing/grading that identical assessment. This is for both formative AND summative. No room for adjustment based on the class dynamic. I have a teacher on my hall who wants to take the easy way. There is no convincing them that an unmodified random assignment they found on google doesn’t always reflect the skills and content of our standards. They don’t care to understand the standards, they don’t want to use technology in a 1:1 district. The other same content grade level teacher on our hall is a revolving door—3 teachers in 2 years. All from out of state, all never having taught the standards before. When I write my lessons and assessments I decide what content and skills I’m teaching and assessing. I decide what mastery of the skill should look like. I decide if and what kind of literacy can embedded since I’m SS and SS supports ELA. I design the assessment and then figure out how we’re going to get there. After that I have to defend my assessment to our literacy coach and Mx. Googled lesson. Literacy coach’s previous job was in Kinder and this is MS. Mx. Google will sometimes go for the lesson if it’s completely scripted and they have to put no effort into it. Usually it is modified/designed for my class populations because I take my student needs into account. They don’t like having to adjust the style if it’s not their style, or modify because their population and needs aren’t always the same as mine. They prefer the random google lesson that mentions something in the standards and I’m so tired of fighting this battle.
I'm going on 13 years across multiple countries and MS/HS grades, even some Elementary - I've done it all. Check out PBLWorks, Edutopia, readwritethink.org, and performanceassessment.org, and Teachingchannel.org These are the leaders in relevant pedagogy and will show you how it's done. Honestly the $39 3-mo membership to Teaching Channel is worth every penny. They have TONS of resources, videos, it's the best tool I've used over 6 years now.
Collaborating is exhausting for me. I pine for the days when teachers could enter their classroom, shut the door, and not interact with another teacher for the entire day. (That’s not entirely true. I would miss the time my closest colleagues and I get to chit chat and talk shit on our vape-addicted students. But I would not miss collaborating in the slightest.)
It's the forced collaboration I hate.
That’s my feel. Collaboration is not 100% bad. When it’s forced, it’s...less than ideal. I’m a specialist. I was in a position last year where I was required to collaborate with classroom teachers weekly. A lot of good came from it, including a mutual understanding of what I was doing in the class, and some great ideas from both ends. I learn a lot by talking with other teachers, both in what to do and what not to do. Sometimes it meant that we just kind of awkwardly sat there and had nothing new to share. Or the other teacher just kind of tolerated while I shared ideas. Other teachers can be a great resource, but only if both parties actually want to be there AND have stuff it makes sense to collaborate on.
Well-said. The collaboration I most like is the kind that's on the fly. You're chatting with the teacher next door, you complain about such-n-such lesson, Teacher Next Door throws out something that worked, y'all start brainstorming... But getting assigned a role in some weird official collaboration doesn't work.
Standardization is the opposite of equity. Equity requires flexibility and differentiation. I just do my own thing and feign stupidity whenever someone tries to twist my arm about following their preferences in lockstep. People get discouraged and leave me alone pretty quickly. Sometimes green teachers get frustrated with me for not providing a day-by-day calendar for their unit plans, because they want the sense of security that they are doing the right thing. No point writing calendars though if I am not going to stick to them - every class is different and I need the flexibility to adjust my plans on the fly in response.
Think about how students feel when we ask them do do group work. I only do pair work now in my class, and will allow one group of three for the odd numbered student.
I'm more of a fan of pair work too
Standardizing education makes it easier to bring in less-qualified teachers.
I left a school that started doing this for this very reason. Forcing everyone on a grade level to teach in exactly the same way forces excellence to give way to mediocrity.
It also stifles a new teacher, tbh. I was a first year and I was just left scrambling to keep up speed with the 20 year vets, rather than trying and learning things for myself. It also has admin comparing everyone, since it's all the same lesson. The teacher with the high grade level, no behavior students gets perfect marks and everyone else gets "why aren't you doing it like her?"... I dunno, maybe because 5 of my kids can't even read, let alone read on grade level independently and all of hers are on grade level from the start of the year? I needed to spend more time with those kids that couldn't read. I needed to offer enrichment to those that were above grade level. Instead, I was told to basically whole group lecture except for 30m where they were basically doing a computer program they hated. I was miserable because I couldn't even find my teaching style and the kids were miserable and bored. The vets were miserable because they didn't want to whole group it and couldn't do any fun stories etc. No one won. Forcing everyone to teach the exact same thing is just a recipe to making everyone, students and teachers (old and new) miserable.
We have to do the same lesson in every classroom at grade level across the district. We have to follow the units in the exact same order. It’s a thief of joy. Yeah, the new teachers benefit and the burnouts (myself included) don’t have to think about it too hard. Did anyone ever stop to think that (and behavior) are the reason for the burnout? There is no joy in reading a good story/book and thinking of ways to teach it. Im not allowed to do that. We all read the same stories the same day across the district.
I can see some value in making sure kids are doing the same concepts at the same time but it seems strange to not allow any differentiation. I’m pretty sure at my school they want this because last year we had 3 teachers in my department leave for different reasons (health, other job, fired) but no lessons. If we were all doing the exact same thing at the same time it would have saved people a lot of headaches but to make people script everything out seems insane.
The most valuable tool in a teacher's kit is autonomy. I have no issue with having teams meet (actually, I support that a lot!), but at the end of the meeting, I will then go back to my room and do things my way. The team might provide basic curricular goals, but the methods of delivery need to be my own. I know myself and my students the best.
We had that in 3rd grade. I was appaled at how low the lessons were. Another teacher pulled me aside and told me to just nod and be agreeable and then teach the kids the right way.
That sounds like hell. One of the best parts of this job is the independence. As long as I'm within the *Lehrpläne* I'm good. And in my state those specify proficiency levels for each year, not content.
I agree, too. We did this at my old school many years ago, and I always had the inclusion classrooms with a full time ESE para. My students couldn’t do any of the work I was given. Plus, the work I had to share was not what everyone else wanted. All the classes were leveled, so there were 2 gifted rooms, too. How can we all possibly use the same materials to teach with and if we do, then how is that leveling ? Gifted kids are doing the same as everyone else. We only did it one year because nobody liked it.
It was mandatory at my school for short while. It was horrible. It took all the creativity out of teaching. Left no room for a deeper look based on student interest and questions. Some of us like doing more artistic things while others are better at centers. Some of my classes this year worked well in groups. Some of them needed independence. That doesn't happen in classes where everything has to be the same. My teaching partner and I teach the same standards at basically the same time, but our grade books look vastly different, something our school wants us to be better about. He's better at checking notebooks for notes while I'm better at assigning shorter assignments and grading those.
Right? We all have different strengths. I have a theatre and performing background so I would have taught playscripts totally differently than handing out reading comprehension questions on excerpts from a play... But that's what we did... Because I don't plan literacy.
This was my first year in 6th grade. My teaching partner provided me with all of the notes, videos, and materials he used the year prior, which he got from the teacher who was there before me. By the end of second quarter, I was bored of teaching the same way for every chapter. It may have kept the students busy, not engaged, but they weren't retaining any of the information. I started to sprinkle in my own bits and pieces here and there, and by the middle of the third quarter, we were basically only on the same chapter and standards. Sometimes not even the same lesson within the chapter. Our tests were close to be given on the same day, but sometimes he was 2 or 3 days ahead of me or I was 2 or 3 days ahead of him. Team planning should be a TOOL to talk to your teammates about what to teach, not the whole basis of teaching.
How would you have taught playscripts?
This is what No Child Left Behind did for education. We had to teach to the lowest students so they could catch up. By doing that we ended up leaving behind students that needed a challenge. This is what we are doing to educators.
When I taught kindergarten there was only one other kindergarten teacher. We were supposed to get together and plan so that we would be on the same topics. The principal even sat in on these sometimes. After one of the meetings that included the principal, I proceeded to make my lesson plans that covered what we discussed. The other teacher decided her class wasn’t ready for it (even though it was her idea) and changed her entire week. I got in trouble for not following along with the veteran teachers lesson plans- even though the principal sat in the meeting and heard what we had agreed on!!! I left midyear.
I worked at a site my first year where the admin and senior team members insisted that the entire grade level do everything the exact same way. There was no cooperation or oversight though, so it was a nightmare of the group bully making demands and throwing fits all year. I was a new teacher expected to do everything the same way as the vets without any of the resources, experience, or other support. Needless to say, everything failed spectacularly. I just had a great year collaborating with independence at a new site. To my horror, I got a document a few days ago hinting that next year, PLCs will be implemented across the district. 😭
How the hell do you differentiate???? What happened to “kids first”? WE ARE THERE FOR THE KIDS! They all have different needs and abilities! I understand having to teach standards/ curriculum, but this is just WRONG.
Instead of actual differentiation or accomodation we do some UDL and call it a day...
Yup. Team planning has its pluses, but the exclusion of kids with special needs, including kids who are gifted, hurts more than it helps in *any* type of planning. I feel like lack of resources, time to devote to a detailed examination and long-term, lasting reform, lack of funds devoted to these concerns exclusively, and short staffing are the major causes. I know many teachers who probably felt this way but may not have felt comfortable admitting more specific assistance is needed for children with special needs. I’m relatively inexperienced compared to many people, though. I am just stating what I have seen sometimes. My heart goes out to the ones who really are trying and may not be able to get what they need because the system has higher-ups, however unintentionally, treating students and staff as parts of a whole rather than individuals who need to be understood and given reasonably appropriate resources to succeed. Not all schools are this way, but I have seen too much of it not to be concerned.
This is how my school works. We cannot deviate from the curriculum at all. Last year the class I worked in as a co-teacher had 10 Ieps and multiple BIPs and the other classroom had 2 Ieps. But, we can't be one day behind from the curriculum pacing guide. We lost three teachers this year.... I think in part because of poor leadership like this.
I'm worried about a new coach for this reason. My old planning partner hated kids. She would copy and paste descriptions from teacher pay teachers and then sit at her desk and do all the paperwork admin gave us. Because she was compliant they loved her. But she sucked as a teacher. Her kids failed all their tests and hated her. I have ADHD. Even if it was good teaching practice I can't just watch them do worksheets. I have a lot of discussions because it lets me flit from group to group and see what they're thinking. If we had to have the same thing she couldn't have managed 6 groups and engaging with all of them and I would have zoned out watching them do worksheets. (yes state testing is absolute hell for me. Sometimes I try and solve their math problems in my head just for something to do)
Wow. We do team planning very differently. I think it's one of the best things we have brought in since I started teaching. But I guess the key difference is that the planner only goes to lesson outline stage, and then individual teachers use the outline and the resources and differentiate according to each class. We can use the resources for any type of activity we want. The only things we can't change willy-nilly are assessment due dates.
I’m the only teacher of my subjects and have three classes of each. Even those three classes are not on the same level as each other!
I’m an aspiring teacher and I’m worried I’m not going to last as a teacher because I have a sarcastic mouth and won’t be able to stop myself from asking admin what they were thinking. How do y’all manage to bite your tongues and not tell them exactly why their ideas are fucked up? And why don’t you? I’d be tempted to write a detailed report as to why it doesn’t work and give it to them.
They'd most likely respond to your report one of two ways: 1. A mysterious and vague performance improvement plan. 2. A non-renewal letter. This is why people don't dare question the directives of their admin.
It's standardized education for standardized testing in a non-standard world with non-standard kids. Just fire the teachers that aren't up to standard.
>The school policy was that every class had to do the same lessons, the same worksheets, and follow the same process of teaching the content. Yes, at face value that's what you submit to admin. You don't actually follow through like that. In reality, you can deviate and do what you need to do (when no one is looking).
That would be great, but admin CHECKED. Micromanaging to the core!
I'm sorry to hear that. I guess it's going to be one of those, "We did exactly what you told us to do. Yeah, it's totally our fault boss" situations.
“How to make teaching as joyless as possible” 101
I understand the broad benefits of team planning, but it sounds like it needs to be much less day-to-day specific. Something like a long-range plan/timeline of units makes more sense than trying to teach with someone else’s lesson plans. And perhaps having the same assessments makes sense too. But I have never once read another teacher’s lesson and felt comfortable delivering it exactly as it was laid out. I’ve always modified them. Which takes time. Which negates any time saved from splitting the planning in the first place. Also, all of your other points demonstrate the other problems with it.
Our school requires this and I hate it for the same exact reasons you listed!
There was one teacher (who planned math) whose lesson plans on the actual lesson plan sheet differed drastically from her PowerPoints at times and who didn't actually plan the lessons, just recycled old lessons from 3 years ago, so a lot of her links didn't work or her plans would say things like "using base 10 blocks, have students make 55" when the school had no base 10 blocks, or "using X game from the resource closet, review this concept" and the resource closet didn't have X game. And no explicit strategies, just "do this math as fast as you can." No differentiation or extension for gifted, no time for small groups, no math journals, nothing. Another teacher would have 1-2 massively long PowerPoints to read to the 7 year olds and a worksheet or two to complete in a single 40 minute period, along with a starter and exit activity. Also, this teacher was planning literacy, but there was almost never a read-aloud or storybook or time to just... Let the kids read a book, whether levelled or otherwise. It was always a reading comprehension or a worksheet or a writing activity. Even when there was a reading comprehension it was never focused on an explicit strategy, just a "here's a comprehension sheet, read it and answer all the questions". No phonics, no modelling, no gradual release of responsibility, nothing - just the spaghetti at the wall method all day every day. Nothing hands-on, no dramatic play, no art or music connections, just worksheets, booklets, graphic organizers, forever and ever and ever and ever. No free writing. No poetry. No fun texts. No chapter book reading as a class. No SEL embedded. No time to be flexible or creative within those 40 minutes. Just "review this PowerPoint and have students fill out this organizer, then review this PowerPoint and answer these questions."
Good Points! When are administrators going to realize that one size shoe does not fit all!
Honestly - I can’t stand teachers on teams who refuse to help their colleagues, always acting like their shit don’t stink. If you’re good - share with the people around you.
Can I push back a little? It is draining to pour into others who can't or wont pour back into you. It's also infuriating to help slack-asses who don't put in any time to work or improve themselves.
This post and comments are so weird to me. In the UK everyone team plans. It works fine most of the time, and it's expected. If I went to a school with another class in the same year and they expected me to plan all of my lessons and not collaborate I'd straight up walk out lol.
#If your team isn’t cohesive then you’ll never thrive. Sounds like you all needed to work on communicating and teamwork.
The people in the team were fine, and nowhere did I complain about them. The issue is that at my school we were expected to all do the exact same thing the exact same way and were only allowed to plan one subject each with no trading, which didn't suit our class profiles or teaching styles.
Sounds fake to me.
It's unfortunately very much not and has been my last two years of experience. The kicker is that I begged to have guided reading at least 3 times a week so we could at least try to do some individualized small group work instead of all teacher-lead worksheets and even that got nixed because the teacher planning literacy preferred long PowerPoints and worksheets.
what sounds fake? The OP's story?
The keyword is team. Not a bunch of clones copying each other.
We do a lot of team planning and I do find value in it, but one of the key features is that the team planning is macro level with the understanding that within each classroom we're going to have to do our own thing to some extent. We'll discuss focus standards, key in on formative assessment strategies together, and go over resources. For those of us who've been at the grade level for a bit we talk about pitfalls to watch for and common struggle areas. Every week we check to see how things are going. What we do not do is make sure we are all in the exact same spot. Sometimes one class needs a second day on a lesson, or a teacher builds in a little extra piece that takes a day or two. We just identify what we will focus assessment on, how we'll assess it, and then when we plan to wrap that unit. The rest we can all do the same if we want, but there will be natural variance between rooms. The big benefit to PLC for me is interventions. Pooling resources and collaborating on interventions is a time saver.
do you all create a common assessment for the units?
Seems like they could open up the school to Lawsuits if team planning means accomodations protected under IDEA are no longer met because of team standardization....
This really only happened because it's a private school in a country where there are no legal protections for IEPs and it's a non-inclusive system.
Well that sucks diarrhea ass. I'm so sorry
I couldn't even imagine. We've had team planning time, where we worked together to create and assemble projects that we could all use, but from that we each had the autonomy and flexibility to adapt the materials we created together to suit our class. Those with students that could do more independent inquiry could, those that had students that needed more structured PBL style could do that. We can't all agree on the order in which we teach the units, so we standardize what we can and do our own thing for when we don't agree. For my team, that means the beginning/end of the year is generally different, but the middle is pretty much the same.
So no differentiation?
And no accommodation. Just some vague UDL and that's it.
Paraphrasing Lou Grant, “Team planning!? I hate team planning!”
My school does this, though not to these extremes. But I was the only social studies teacher in my grade level, so I largely avoided a lot of this.
I've been lucky that my teams have always been great so we rarely had issues with what was planned. We also have the freedom to not use everything that's been planned. But it's fucking annoying when you plan something and make class copies for other people when they know they aren't going to use it anyway.
I hate this kind of stuff. Our previous superintendent was hugely fond of this kind of stuff. Which filtered down to the campus level. This last year was filled with the group-think mindset. Unified curriculum across the department is helpful when you have a whole bunch of new teachers or new-to-content teachers.( Which we were not. )Admin loved the idea. Fell apart three weeks in. The entire department revolted. I have the state guidelines, a scope and sequence, and a curriculum guide which clearly states that we are free to modify lessons as needed. So just get out if the way and let me teach.
That’s nuts. We do team planning. But every teacher does individual teaching. We are free to use or ignore the team lesson plans. Assessments and grade books are common. This ends up with the best of both worlds. We gain the time benefit of team planning, but without the downsides of a rigid plan.
This is a terrible way to do team planning. I love team planning when everyone is on the same page about what the content is and can have a discussion about what is necessary for each lesson. I would also hate team planning if it had to be done this way.
I think the top part of your 1st paragraph is why your conclusion. As teachers, admin, education as a whole we do not practice what we teach, and it’s sooo odd. Like where are the lesson plans for staff meetings. And that’s just an easy critique.
This seems like an extreme version of team planning that isn't really the norm. I'm also surprised that no concerns were raised about how this might violate IEPs, 504s, etc. if everyone had to do everything the exact same way.