I have been thinking about planning and new teachers quite a bit
lately. When I was a new teacher, everything I taught was new to
me, and I didn’t have enough time to plan. I think a lot of
schools are a similar schedule: six periods a day, teachers
teach five and have one planning period. Not nearly enough. Many
teachers, especially new teachers, need to use time outside of
school to plan. Of course, nowadays the Internet makes a wide
variety of lesson plans available to teachers, and I imagine
planning is much easier for student teachers and new teachers
than it was when I started teaching; however, the quality of a
lot of this material is mixed, and I think it might sometimes be
hard for new teachers to be able to discern the quality of
lessons. What can we do to help new teachers learn to plan? -
Mentorship: Model how to plan for units and lessons. Meet with
new teachers to plan with them. I was provided with a bunch of
templates when I was student teaching and sent on my way. It
really took me years to f