there are 2 steps to planning

The first step is the calendar. The calander is not a new concept to me, as the calander is a staple of all teachers. I think back to the Compie days when I printed off a February and a March and an April and filled in the blank squares with begin research underlined thrice and library day and discuss fallacy and SPRING BREAK! and then showed it to the Compies. Now I'm planning calanders by the quarter. Last quarter, the Drama Quarter for the freshman, I used Mr. O's Romeo and Juliet calander as a guide. This quarter, nonfiction. Nine weeks. I divided the calander into 45 squares, nine weeks from January through March. I started filling shit in--the documentary project at the end of the quarter, alongside my persuasive speeches that I have to teach so the Communication experience missing from my portfolio can fit in and I can leave here with a license--literary journalism...

I crossed off literary journalism. Too hard for freshman. We'll instead look at newspapers, objective writing, get into a little discussion about the relevance of them in the 21st century. Make fun of the feature articles in a Southern Minnesota newspaper. Did you know the Star Tribune filed bankruptcy last week? Shit like that. And there are terms I have to meet in the unit, concepts they have to master...

I called Mr. O after filling in a couple of weeks. Imperative he tell me where I'm fucking up before I fuck up too far and find myself inevitably fucked up with a useless calander on my desk. For instance, he had to remind me that Bowling for Columbine was rated R. Ah, yes, not showing it. Found something better. At first, the NF unit was divided based on person, place, thing and then idea. Thought it was cute, practical. That failed miserably, except for the "idea" part, which we're using to discuss "education." Everything kids might find interesting about it. We'll read Op Ed articles, we'll read creative essays about the high school experience (hey, do you know any appropriate for high schoolers that are funny? Any of you? Did Alexie write NF that mimicked his main themes in Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian?) We'll watch the documentary. It will lead up to our big final project, the persuasive speech. There are a lot of problems in high schools. Identify one, tell us your opinion about it, and most importantly, give us a solution to it. Your speech is five minutes long. Please don't suck ass.

I'm proud of this plan. Of course, I got to school today to work and I called Mr. O and said I have this idea, and this idea and such and such and he said oh, yeah, I've done that before I have an assignment sheet for it. And then I don't feel so awesome and innovative anymore. I work on the calander, the part one, for a solid five hours today, sketching and brainstorming, and notes and notes and so many notes (all on goldenrod paper so I can stay color-themed) and I burn out a couple of erasers and leave little pink eraser boogers all over my desk. Then I show it to Mr. O and we talk about it, and he says what are your objectives and I read them off for him because when I called him two hours ago, before he got to school, he said stop looking for essays and work on your objectives first and I'm mad because this makes sense and I just secretly want to reread a bunch of favorite essays. I'm wasting my time, because he and I both agree that the essays I want to teach are not the right level for high schoolers (if you think about it, most of them will never be able to read Joan Didion, he says). And I know that deep down, but I still brought my copy of Slouching to school today as one of the "page-through" books because it makes me think of workshop and my superior intelligence to Reedo.

But I get to teach nonfiction, and even though just a small chunk is creative, this will be a good quarter. The students identify it as their least favorite--but we're changing that. Because--how fun are solution-speeches? And graphic organizers that help you determine the validity of your online sources! Talk about amazing, and I've left the sarcasm at the door...

Anyway, part one of planning is that calander, those devil squares of passing time. You're not thinking of the small stuff yet, how you'll get them to write about place (but it doesn't matter because after 5 seconds of thinking--after you've thought about it for three hours--Mr. O says just have them do this, and it is, of course, the perfect thing to do and you play that game again where you don't understand how you just don't get this stuff that comes so quickly to other people, so you write down what he says and furl your brow and end the sentence on your clipboard with a sharp, stabbing dot! of your pencil to show this frustration).

That's part one. That's the calendar. Part two of planning is the implementation. The I-know-what-we're-doing-today-but-what-are-we-doing-today part. The individual lesson plans, the homework, the smaller assignment sheets, the changes when the first plan didn't work, the photocopies for class, the reading and re-reading of the material so you know what you're talking about when it comes time to talk about it.

Which one is better. The calander has so much ambition, so much promise. Everything is fresh, you're not sick of talking about individual essays, you're not sick of stupid solutions to impossible problems. And it's first empty squares, but then it's full. But the lesson plans--that's where you really see yourself teaching, where you see the students doing the work, where you're grading their silly little paragraphs with their comma splices, where you're thinking of you "anticipatory set" to hook those little bastards in, where you find Simpsons clips because you just can't resist. Which one is better. Whenever you're doing one, you wish you were doing the other. They both suck and they are both awesome. Good thing there are 2 steps to planning.