Does anyone remember the show, The A-Team? A famous catch-phrase from the show comes to my mind…”I love it when a plan comes together.” Another comes to mind also, “I pity the fool.”
When it came to planning, I was the fool to be pitied. I’m not the guy who knows what he sees himself doing in 5 years. I just struggle looking ahead. My daughter asks me almost every night “what are we doing tomorrow?” And I answer almost every night, “I don’t know.” Back when I was in school, I really struggled to plan how to write any essays or papers. I just didn’t want to plan. I was lazy and just wanted to “let my creative juices flow.” And I still shudder when I think of how I used to be when planning for the school year. I would pick the units, arbitrarily decide how long they’d be (since I didn’t even research the unit that well), then decide what activities would be in the units. Sound crazy? It’s what I knew. It’s actually what I was taught and shown. {involuntarily shudders} That method held true for quite a few years. Fast-forward 25 years…Through trial and error (mostly error), I’ve learned the benefits of planning. Thanks to the series of posts on Joey Feith’s site about unpacking standards and backwards design, conversations with Mike Graham and Kevin Tiller, and a host of other tweets and conversations, I’m now a huge proponent of planning. In fact, I rarely get into anything without asking at least a few questions to get my mind primed for the task or event. And though I’m far from the more powerful planners of our teaching field, I love drawing inspiration and knowledge from them to better myself and by extension, my #physed program. And when that happens, my students benefit immensely! I will outline the planning process I discovered in my next post. If anyone can benefit from it, that is wonderful. My main goal is to hold myself accountable to this process. I’d like to journal through the year to keep myself on track and help me evaluate my performance and progress.
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AuthorI'm Cliff, an elementary Physical Educator to a ton of awesome students! Here is where you will see my thoughts and ides regarding #physed. Archives
April 2020
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