Debbie Sealey » Blog Archive » Day 2 - In Which We Are Accosted With Lesson Plans

Today we learned about Basic Lesson planning. Our tutor demonstrated it first, making it look so deceptively simple. ‘No sweat’, I thought - until it came to recalling step-by-step how she had actually done it. It seems these tutors make a career out of minuscule details and how to catch their students out at forgetting them. There’s so much to remember that I couldn’ even recall half of the steps. Suddenly I felt so blonde! You’d think a simple 4-line dialogue combined with actions, etc, would be a doddle. Not so. It started out badly and got worse from thereon out.

Then came – and I think this is going to be a phrase to be dreaded throughout the course – Lesson Plans. Terminal Objectives (somehow that sounds so ominous to me), Enabling Objectives, Accuracy Targets, Timing, Potential Problems, What the Tutor Does, What the Students Do, Handoffs, Horseshoes, Variable and many other bits of teachy-type jargon. All this inside weeny frames on multitudes of pages. I think this is the fastest and smallest I’ve ever written in my life! I guess it’s to prepare us for the never ending thirst for paperwork that some never-seen bureaucrats in hallowed offices somewhere insist on having satisfied. Oh dear.

At lunchtime I managed to get outside to reengage with the real world. I was sitting on a bench watching pigeons in a stunned and mindless sort of way, when a great big guy from the Pacific Islands somewhere sat down to chat. We had a lovely conversation until he asked me if I had any money to give him. That’s when I clicked he was one of the ‘homeless’ of the city. He was a little disappointed when I told him I was a poor student and to let me know if he finds a money source he’s willing to share, but he took it with reasonably good grace.

Back into class to stagger under yet another onslaught of new information. Perhaps this is some kind of torture test to see you have what it takes. Just as you start getting your head around what the Tutor is talking about, they switch topics and start on something else altogether! Agghh!!! Please God, tell me I’m going to get better at this…

We have to co-plan a basic lesson with another student, ready to teach to our fellow students tomorrow morning. This could be a bit of a comedy. I haven’t even got the steps all around the right way and they’re going to let me loose on real human beings already. Oh well, at least we get to share the workload. All I have to do is draw 27 pictures tonight and do some reading and practice the lesson and know it by heart and…..

And the killer hill waits….

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 9th, 2007 at 4:25 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can leave a response to this entry.