How Much Can I Plan Ahead?

Since your summer vacation is winding to a close, let's think about planning for the school year ahead like planning for a vacation. (Hopefully your year will flow sooo smoothly it will feel like one at times...)

When you plan for a vacation you typically need to know the following:

1. Where you're going.
2. How you're going to get there.
   
3. Where you're going to stay.
   
4. What you're going to eat.
   
5. How much the adventure will cost.
   
6. How long the trip will take.
   

The greatest vacation memories rarely reside in the planning phase. And the snapshots you cherish from your trips are usually of the spontaneous unplanned moments that happen along the way. But a plan still helps.

Without a plan you're more likely to run into problems. You might run out of money, fail to find a hotel with vacancy, get lost, or miss the exciting sights you could have seen on your journey.

However, even with a plan, you have to be flexible in anticipation of the unexpected things that might pop up: a flat tire, a detour, finding a spot you like enough to stay an extra day, etc.

If you think about planning for the school year ahead in terms of planning for a vacation you should be in pretty good shape. You need to know the basic outline of your trip - but you keep yourself open to the possible challenges and opportunities that are likely to occur.

When you're planning for your classes, think of each unit as a journey and plan for it in terms of these questions:

1. Where are you going? - What do you want students to know or be able to do by the end of this unit of study?
   
2. How are you going to get there? - What processes will your students be using to learn the material in this unit?
   
3. Where are you going to stay? - Just as each night of a trip needs a roof and a bed, where are the logical breaks in teaching this unit, what piece should you attempt to get through each day?
   
4. What are you going to eat? - Hungry travelers can be ornery travelers. Your students probably don't eat in class but they still need nourishment of another sort. They need to be engaged! What are you going to do to keep them engaged as they move through this unit?
   
5. How much will this adventure cost? - Think ahead about what materials you'll need to teach this unit, perhaps all you need is a novel, but what if you're doing science experiments? Do you have all your supplies? How can you order them?
   
6. How long will the trip take? - Is this a week-long unit? A month-long unit? Longer? Answering questions 1-5 will give you a good idea of what you have to get through and your final departure and arrival dates.

Once you create your plan be gentle with yourself and remember that the learning takes place as much in the journey as it does in the destination. If it ends up taking 4 weeks instead of 3 that probably means you found some interesting detours and kept the students well fed on engagement. If it finishes up a week early that means you hit a highway somewhere along the route and went 80 when you'd anticipated going 60... that's okay! Hopefully you started planning your next journey and can start that one early!

A plan keeps you from spinning your wheels and gives you the confidence to move forward and know where you've been, but it should be allowed to prevent the magical spontaneity that is a mainstay of true Inspired Teaching.