What would you think of a teachers organization that fights the principal in wanting lesson plans?

Most districts spell this out in the contract they offer to teachers. Here is what my contract states:

Lesson plans or evidence of planning in a format appropriate

to the teacher’s assignment, shall be furnished by each classroom teacher upon request from the teacher’s immediate administrator. No special format for a lesson plan shall be required.

When asked in the past, I have simply printed out my calendar where I keep quick notes about suggested units. It is usually not exact as I go with what the kids need.

If the cta got involved it, the expected format must be different than what the contract states.

good luck!

First off, the California Teachers Association is affiliated with the NEA–it’s the state organization–so yes, the CTA is a union organization.

You’d need to be more specific here and give the complete picture. What school was this? Why were the teachers at that school so against the idea of having to submit lesson plans? How did the local teachers association handle the situation? How did the situation get to be such a problem that the CTA had to get involved?

It sounds like little more than a building issue and a matter of personal preference on the part of the principal. Some principals require lesson plans up to one week in advance; some don’t. This variation can even happen within the same district where the HS principal requires them, but the MS principal does not.

As a teacher, I would only fight our principal on the issue of submitting lesson plans if the principal’s required format resulted in an unreasonable amount of time and paperwork. Otherwise, I and other teachers could easily submit the plans we already do…so long as the principal was willing to accept as many different formats as there are teachers in the building.

The only time I could see a principal being justified in requiring such detailed plans is if the teacher was not getting the job done. The principal would best serve his/her staff if requiring plans was done on an individual basis for teachers who are under an improvement plan. If teachers are ever unprepared for classes, this misconduct should be reflected in their evaluations and handled with appropriate disciplinary action–including termination of contract if necessary.

Otherwise, without knowing any specific details, it sounds like a situation that’s been blown way out of proportion.

The problem comes with what’s really being asked of the teachers. To require lesson plans to be written to the principal’s standards and submitted on a regular basis means you don’t trust what your teachers are doing in the classroom. There are plenty of amazing teachers who don’t write out detailed lesson plans because they don’t need to- they know the curriculum, they know the standards the students must meet, and they know how they’re going to go about it without writing all of it down. There’s also the idea that lesson plans change to meet the needs of the students, and this can happen on a weekly, daily, or even on-the-fly basis.

It’s not that the teachers organization is afraid of having to do the work- it’s the reason behind it being done in the first place. While I think teacher accountability is important, I also think we’re professionals and should be treated as such. We all have different methods to our madness, and that doesn’t always include detailed lesson plans. To require all teachers to submit them means you don’t trust what they’re doing and you expect them all to be going about it the exact same way.

It depends on what he or she was requiring. Some principals ask for a brief outline with references to state standards and curriculum frameworks. I have no problem with that because I am already doing that and it takes me about an hour to do it for the entire week. Others require detailed plans to be typed out for every lesson. That can take from 7-8 hours and is basically “busy work” since any good teacher changes and adjusts his or her plans on a continual basis. When principals require this, they are taking that teacher away from time that should be spent working with the students. Just like any person who works, there is simply no need for any professional to write down word for word what they will do in the course of their jobs. If the principal suspects a particular teacher is not doing his or her job, then yes, they have every right to ask that that person be more detailed while their performance is being evaluated. It isn’t fair, however, to take what amounts to punitive actions against those of us who are doing what is supposed to be done – teaching the students to the best of our ability.

That seems ludicrous since most state’s require that each district follow lessons plans. That’s a state or district rule, not a campus rule and I’m sure the principal was following the mandate. How does one teach without plans anyway?