Pre-service days for teachers before the start of the school year are the worst of all times to even consider revising lessons plans for the month of September.  If you are not refreshing lesson plans while you have the time for refreshment, your students will get last year’s lessons, like or not.

Almost always last in pre-service days – lesson plans.

Looking at lesson plans is almost always the last thing teachers do during pre-service days.  Many meetings and making a classroom physically ready for children are always in conflict with lesson planning.  Be smart and remove the conflict by doing your lesson plan review in early August.

Consider the following:

• Things move too quickly during a school day and week for a teacher to review, evaluate, and adjust existing lesson plans.  Your lesson plans today are exactly what they were when you last taught them.
• Big question – will you teach this unit and/or this lesson again?  If not, stop here and begin new unit/lesson plan writing.

Look at the unit as a whole and lesson plans in their details.

• Was the lesson as planned effective as initial instruction?
• What adjustments did you make while teaching the plan?
• What did your formative assessment feedback tell you about your plan?  Did it cause learning?
• What adjustments were necessary for challenged children?  Special education?  Els?  Did your adjustments clarify/correct and cause learning?
• What tier 2 interventions were necessary to ensure all children were ready for the next lesson/rest of the unit?
• What do you know about the children you will teach this year that need to be accommodated in your existing plan?

Do this checklist work for each unit and lesson plan you will teach in September.  Better yet, complete this checklist for every unit and lesson you will teach in the first semester. 

Pre-service days address district and school needs before teacher needs.

Most schools provide their teachers with three to five days of contract time before the first day of school.  (More on that in a minute later.).  The concept is that a teacher can do all things necessary in these pre-service days to start instruction on day one.  For most teachers, this is equivalent to the proverbial putting ten pounds in a five-pound bag.  District-wide meetings, school meetings, and grade level or departmental meetings are usually scheduled on the first day of pre-service.  Just when teachers want to be in the classrooms, they are seated in auditoriums and cafeterias to hear district administrators introduce new faculty and staff and cheerlead for new programs and initiatives in the district.  Afterward they traipse to school meetings where intros and explanations are made regarding how the new programs and initiatives will play out at the school level.

The PTA- or booster-provided lunch is spaced between larger meetings and smaller grade level and department meetings.  Perhaps a teacher sees her classroom in the late afternoon on day one.

Pre-service days are essential for teachers to understand student challenges.

In the second and third days, teachers attend IEP and 504 Plan and ELL meetings to understand the accommodations last year’s teachers, administrators, parents and advocates wrote for implementation this fall.  In most of these, a teacher collaborates with special education teachers and aides, counselors and the school nurse, and ESL teachers.  There may also be individual meetings with student parents. These are detailed and require close teacher attention.

Reviewing class lists to identify and become prepared for known student learning needs is essential.  If a teacher does not establish an acknowledgement of these with challenged students on the first days of school, these children drift into the “she doesn’t care about me” world of student-hood.

Classrooms require time and sweat.

Throughout pre-service days teachers either wait or try to schedule time with the school technology staff to get their classroom technologies running.  If new technologies have been installed, the wait and time it takes to get running take even longer.

Making a classroom ready for children is a major pre-service task.  If a teacher is returning to the same classroom she used the prior year, time is required to “unpack” what she put away the prior June.  If a teacher is assigned to a new classroom or the teacher is new the school, then the entire classroom setup starts from scratch.  Moving desks and tables and chairs, arranging learning centers, placing classroom routine information on bulletin boards is sweat work.  Elementary grade teachers do much more student readiness work than secondary teachers.  All told, this work eats up two to three workdays.

Throughout pre-service days teachers either wait or try to schedule time with the school technology staff to get their classroom technologies running.  If new technologies have been installed, the wait and time it takes to get running take even longer.

Making a classroom ready for children is a major pre-service task.  If a teacher is returning to the same classroom she used the prior year, time is required to “unpack” what she put away the prior June.  If a teacher is assigned to a new classroom or the teacher is new the school, then the entire classroom setup starts from scratch.  Moving desks and tables and chairs, arranging learning centers, placing classroom routine information on bulletin boards is sweat work.  Elementary grade teachers do much more student readiness work than secondary teachers.  All told, this work eats up two to three workdays.

The Big Duh!

Districts and schools never schedule enough contractual time for teachers to review and adjust units and lesson plans after they are taught and before they will be taught again.  It is educationally sinful, and it is our reality. 

Knowing our realities means that summer is the only rational time for a teacher to review, adjust, and plan.  It is easy to say, “If my district/school does not consider this to be important work, why should I?”.  In a saner moment, you know that your review and adjustments are needed if you are to cause all your students to be successful learners this coming school year.  Assemble your best refreshing drink, your most casual clothing, spread out your units and lesson plans and get at this essential work in August.