Far Too Many Novice Teachers are Looking for the Cookbook Modules

Throughout the course, one of my roles is to impart a bit of reality to the textbook version of the foundations of American education. One thing I have noted anecdotally–I’m not a researcher teaching one class per semester, freed up to follow this and to specialize, so my point of view is necessarily limited–is that many newer teachers are less interested in or able to create their own learning units.  They might scour the Teachers Pay Teachers website for free or cheap lessons, or they might uncritically accept units that their peers tell them “they have to use,” even though newer teachers have the most recent theoretical knowledge of learners and learning.

You see where I’m going with this?

The people most energized and able to devote time to new planning are often least likely to do so.  They want to fit in, so they accept what others say.  (Translation as well: They lack tenure!)

But attitude does matter and I worry about the younger teachers who don’t even realize they are shortchanging their students at times by adopting without change those sorts of prepackaged units.  Some schools buy into those from big companies.  (That’s why Pearson is a dirty word to many teachers.)

I mention all of this not to sound old (at forty-nine, I sound like the grumpy old man in a comedy sketch here), but to remind people to be themselves in the classroom.  If you’re not creative as a new teacher, it’s unlikely that, ten years in, you’d suddenly develop a knack for fashioning all sorts of curricula!