Lesson Planning 101

Oookay.

I'm going to say right now that the NYS Education Department website is not in any way, shape, or form even VAGUELY resembling something the TINIEST bit user-friendly. Which leads me to my current position of trying to pull chemistry learning standards from a 59 page PDF file so I can do a lesson plan due tomorrow morning at 7:30. I'm just confused as all hell, I guess.

Which isn't to say that I'm not prepared.

See, the thing with me, is that if you give me a problem and you tell me to solve it, but don't specify how, I'm most likely going to do it my way and you're most likely going to try and rip me a new one. This translates into Molly's already figured out what she'd teaching a week from Thursday, knows the material she needs to cover, has a notion of how she's going to do this, and really doesn't need to bother with all this other crap that you people seem to think is so important.

Maybe this is why I don't hold management positions of any sort.

I'm teaching Regents Chemistry students about Covalent bonding. I know what I need to teach them, I know what I'm going to talk about, what examples I'm going to use, and here I am trying to figure out the bureaucratic paperwork mess to go with it.

And I really shouldn't have turned over the damn page so I could have miraculously said I failed to realize there was a back. Shit.

I hate filling out these forms. Really, I do. I find it irksome and a detriment to my intelligence. I don't care if filling out blanks makes it easier for some people, some of us just don't think that way. Some of us simply don't think linearly.

All teachers are different, just as all people are different. Doesn't it make sense that we would do things differently? That we can arrive at the same goal, but get there by different means?

This paperwork might end up taking a dive out a fourth floor window.

I think I've at least found the right goal-thing I need to be in. Actually, I found exactly what I was looking for. And I only had to wade through 19 pages before I found it.

I'll figure this out later. Really. I need to clean before I go to bed - I'm hosting tomorrow, and since tomorrow's Tuesday, and Tuesdays are my days to not stop until after 5, I'm not going to have time to clean or anything.