Hey,
So recently I’ve been thinking a bit about how much planning goes into each lesson I make.
But I’m talking about a really specific time in the planning process.
Let’s say that the lesson is 80% done. By this, I mean that
The outline is done ✅
The Starter, Main, and Plenary are all done ✅
The PowerPoint is done ✅
The resources have been made and printed ✅
Plans for differentiation ✅
You’ve even worked out how it is going to look slightly different across all of your classes, based on individual needs! ✅
IT EVEN EXPLICITLY LINKS TO THE SCHOOL CAREERS POLICY THAT THEY TOLD YOU ABOUT LAST WEEK IN A BEAUTIFULLY SUCCINCT WAY! ✅ ✅ ✅
But you could just…
That Bit. The last 20%. The bit where the lesson is, in all manner of speaking, done. But your brain tells you that there’s something more. Another resource? A rearrangement of the sides? A different font? I call it the last 20%.
But here’s the thing. The last 20% doesn’t exist. We say it does. We think it does and in a weird way, we want it to. We are chasing perfection that isn’t real. We tell students that this level of perfection isn’t achievable and that we should not chase it but we don’t let ourselves off the hook. Why?
Maybe it’s something in the nature of teachers that wants everything to be under control in our area and there is good in wanting that to be the case to an extent. But we can’t plan for every eventuality. Every teacher who has had a wasp fly in mid-lesson will attest to that. How’s you’re 100% planned lesson now? Your “ALL, SOME, MOST” objectives aren’t going to save you now.
When chasing this impossibility we can really go down the depths. Lord knows I’ve been hooked in the deep depths of PowerPoint’s advanced settings genuinely believing that this will benefit pupils around me, but here’s the truth.
It won’t. It doesn’t.
You may have planned the first 80% of this lesson in about 35 minutes, but the last 4 hours you spent on the handouts for this lesson may have turned your 80% into (at best) an 81% lesson.
Students will not remember the hue you ingeniously used on slide 4 to perfectly offset the title and the background making (scientifically speaking) the world’s most engaging resource. If that is genuinely wrong, and they do remember this, then for a humbling experience, ask what else of your lesson they remember.
Ok, let’s change the tone. that got a little hot. and NAGNAGNAG’y… oops.
What am I getting at here?
You, as a teacher, have too many lessons to plan, and not enough time to plan them. So what do you do?
This reminds me loads of the Pareto Principle which states that 80% of the yield from a certain task or action comes from 20% of the input. It is often called the 80/20 rule.
With the example of lesson planning, we can map on the (very vague) assumption that in a perfectly, and boy do I mean perfectly planned lesson. The inaccessible 100% of lessons. 80% of the planning will have taken 20% of the time. The last 20% of the quality of that lesson, however, will have taken 80% of the time. Real terms.
80% of your lesson plan - 30 minutes.
the last 20% of your lesson - an extra 2 hours.
Say your lesson lasts 1 hour. Does that sound like the kind of time deficit you can live with? Because I certainly can’t, and therefore won’t.
I think that our lesson planning needs to hit that sweet spot. The 80% yield for 20% of the time sweet spot. the Point of highest yield for the economists. A year full of 80% planned lessons is so much better than a teacher who runs themselves into the ground chasing perfect lessons for 3 terms, and then has 3 terms of cover lessons because they are at home recovering from burnout.
That may be a kind of extreme comparison. But please be kind to yourselves. Good enough is good enough. We are not magic, with worldly lesson plans which change lives every single second of the academic year. No matter how many teacher influencers seem to have it all figured out and have the perfect lives full of inspiration and endless time and motivation, it’s a lie. And just like everything, we need to be warey of being sucked into that notion.
80% s good enough. You being happy and healthy is what is best for your students.
Thanks for sticking through a particularly brutal one today. But going into the coming academic year, I am keen to make myself a priority as much as anything, as you should be doing too. 😊
Have a great day.
Joe
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❤️ Here are some things I’ve been loving recently
🎙️ Music - I have been using the Spotify DJ AI feature a load recently just when I need something to put on quickly and I don’t want to think about what to listen to. I am a fan of where AI is going and its practical applications, some are more conventional than others (this being one of them) and some are a bit weirder. It’s like when iTunes brought out the radio feature, but it’s way better! (really good artical and tools of AI here)
📰 Article - I read this article by Barrett Swanson on the Anxieties of Influencers. It was partially eye-opening, and partially just. full on bonkers! Well worth a read as some parts just genuinely made me laugh at the absurdity of it all! $35,000 for rent of a mansion to make TikToks in seems a little insane to me!
🗻 Holiday - I’m still kind of decompressing from being away in Scotland for 2 weeks. It was an insane trip and one that I’ll remember forever. From the sheer beauty of the Cairngorms to the madness of the Edinburgh Fringe. It had it all. It felt like such an actual holiday!
📱 App - I have been playing around with the Readwise Reader app. I’ve been using Instapaper for about a year to store articles that I want to read later and then using Readwise to resurface highlights so that I remember things (it’s also where the fancy generated quotes come from) but with Readwise launching its own reader app, it does make me think of how I could streamline these processes into one place.
✍️ Quote I’ve been pondering this week
