Teachers Selling Lesson Plans? I'm Buying

As a teacher, I was at my best in front of an audience. But I was lousy at lesson planning in an empty room. I would be at home trying to think of creative ways of presenting things like the difference between the short a and long a (I used to act out the roles of the letters, the poor short a suffering from an inferiority complex). Or creative ways of teaching times tables (I used to light a match and hold it until a child finished reciting the entire table for the one number, the goal being for him to finish before I burned my finger - the sharpest kids got the 8x table, the hardest one in my opinion).

I was one of those teachers whose creativity was stimulated when I was in front of kids. Not always the best way to teach.

I was best at performing, not planning, while some of my colleagues were able to create sharp plans but lacked a certain spark in the presentation. I was always confident that I could take just about any material and tweak it to my style. Like an actor on stage performing a script. So though I rail against rigid scripted programs like "Success for All" I hungered for some scripts I could modify and work from. In my ideal world of teaching, I would have had one or more partners who did the writing while I did the performing. Or marked the homework. It would have been a good deal, as I was comfortable being in front of kids for hours at a time. As long as I had the material. But teaching was never really collaborative in the world I lived in.

So, it was interesting to read on the front page of the Sunday Times, (the attention things teachers do seem to be getting incredible scrutiny) that teachers are putting their lesson plans up for sale. Some school districts are saying they own the rights to teacher lesson plans. Then there's this:

Some purists think that undermines the collegiality of teaching. Beyond the unresolved legal questions, there are philosophical ones. Joseph McDonald, a professor at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development at New York University, said the online selling cheapens what teachers do and undermines efforts to build sites where educators freely exchange ideas and lesson plans.

“Teachers swapping ideas with one another, that’s a great thing,” he said. “But somebody asking 75 cents for a word puzzle reduces the power of the learning community and is ultimately destructive to the profession.”

I wonder if Professor McDonald has noticed that the ed deformers are trying to turn teaching into a commodity. It's all about competition and merit pay and performance of kids. Dog eat dog. So, why shouldn't teachers take advantage while they can? After all, what is coming is one script for the entire country. Every single teacher will be doing the same exact thing at the same time of the day.

Even way back then in my days, many teachers wrote books based on their experiences and I bought loads of them. So how is that different from using the internet to sell lesson plans?

So yes, I would buy some lesson plans and curriculum designed by real teachers to save me the time and anguish of having to write them.

Memories: Teachers in Charge

As teachers have been shunted aside and de-skilled in the corporate takeover of school systems I still cling to the increasingly unlikely thought that if teachers controlled schools, they would do a much better job of addressing the issue of colleagues who don't carry their share of the water (defined as potentially capable teachers who are lazy or don't give a shit) and the just plain incompetent (those who just can't do the job - based on my years of observation, a fairly small % – they either leave or work their way up the ladder to principal.

Back in the 70's we had a milquetoast principal – not a bad guy, a real educator of the old style – many years as a classroom teacher followed by over a decade as an AP, all in the same school – who believed in trying to teach teachers good pedagogy and promoted some good ideas – "Nothing learned, nothing taught" was a favorite expression of his. But in terms of leadership, it was the AP's who carried the load. (I'll leave the details for another time as to how the district destroyed him in order to install a political appointee, a younger, stronger, ambitious leader who had "zero" teaching experience, installed a test prep system, and took away the rights of teachers to decide anything - in 1979 - sound familiar?)

Mr. A, our AP in the upper grades, was also a lifer - classroom teacher for many years – a man who taught in an elementary school in the 50's was rare and many ended up on the supervisor track – the war babies like me invaded in the late 60's and changed the landscape. Good leader, great personality, (also a lawyer), let us pretty much do what we wanted.

Now, he didn't have a lot to worry about – the school was under pretty good control – the massive special ed influx hadn't begun yet. They put the men in the 5th and 6th grades and by the time I got there in 1971, the guys had all been there for a few years and not only had good control, but where pretty good teachers.

Well, there was one guy who could have been good but didn't give a shit about teaching, planning to get out as soon as he could – but it would take 10 years 'till he left - and used his time to work on his law school stuff while maintaining absolute control – he became a chapter leader, a good one in that he intimidated the principal, but no one thought he was a good teacher, something he was actually proud of. (One of the knocks on the Mr. A was that he let this go on, and years later, he came under attack for this.) Mr. T was also very smart and very funny to boot. So the kids actually liked him. Of course when I got his class the year after him and found they knew very little math and had lower level reading than they should have had despite being the bottom class, I had a bit of resentment. Actually, they did know how to look up words in the dictionary, which is what they did for hours while he studied. (For new teachers - great idea when you need to take a breather for a few minutes - but I bet they don't let you do this (take breathers or have them look up words) anymore - probably don't even have dictionaries.) He finally left to go into the law and became very successful I hear.

All the hysteria about "quality teachers" would line Mr. T up squarely in the gun sights. But schools can tolerate Mr. T's. He brought leadership, humor and kids were not running wild. However, if we had real power as teachers, we would have found an out of classroom position for Mr. T (which eventually happened) to make use of his talents or would have treid to pressure him to do a better job.

There's always good and bad in these situations and the good was that the AP, Mr. A let us run our own deal as long as we checked it out with him. Mr. A was totally open to suggestions. When I wanted to try an open classroom, he not only gave me the OK but gave me a double sized room to make it more feasible (it turned into a disaster.)
We had input in everything, especially the four 6th grade teachers, who were all so good and learned a lot from each other.

Next time I'll tell you how we all (Mr. A included) pulled a practical joke - punk'd someone in today's parlance - on Mr. Z, one of our weak, always trying to get over, loser teachers. We could tolerate Mr. T, but just the mention of Mr. Z as a teacher made you laugh. Oh yes, in the "shit rises to the top" category – years later we heard that Mr. Z became a supervisor. We're still laughing.