Long-Term Planning

What shuts you down?

What makes you come to a complete standstill?

For me, it’s long-term planning.

Something about it gets me every time I try.

 

When I first started teaching,

I didn’t write down my lesson plans until after I’d taught them.

This was back in the days when computers weren’t the norm,

So handwriting was the way that I wrote.

I didn’t want to write down something wrong—

Something that I didn’t actually do—and

I didn’t want to have to erase or add in things that changed,

So I didn’t write down anything until I had come up with a lesson that I liked.

That meant that I taught everything

Flying by the seat of my pants

And that my lesson plan book was more of a lesson journal.

 

When I returned to teaching,

I had a principal who forced me to write real lesson PLANS and

To turn them in the week before teaching them.

Thankfully, this was in the age of computers,

So if I wrote down something that I didn’t like

Or if I discovered something that needed tweaking,

Then I could easily change the document.

I remember the transition being very hard,

And I hated it.

But it is still what I do to this day.

 

I have lesson plans from every year of my teaching.

I look back on them for ideas and

Copy and paste the lessons that I really like

From year to year.

 

But sometimes I get bored of the lessons.

Or sometimes I want or need to teach new things.

And that requires writing new lessons

And sacrificing old lessons

And knowing when and where to do this is always so hard

So that’s why I need to long-term plan

And yet it shuts me down every time I try.

 

Oh God: Help me to face this strange fear and to come up with an outline for the year. We all have things that shut us down and bring us to a standstill. Help us to face those things with hope and courage and give us the ability to see what it’s like to move beyond the stand-still and into action. Help us to take life one step at a time and to know that we can do all things through you who give us strength. Amen.