Among the ongoing suggestions for the PLC Gold link, which James has suggested we place as a hard link on this page for ease of reference to the best stuff we have in this PLC, is chill’s suggestion that we include the weekly schedule as a golden idea.
I have been thinking about this and I think it is crucial. There is the image of the teacher with too many things to do, too many tools in the box, but without a plan about when to use what idea. All the tools don’t fit and the box. It’s like a house with too much furniture – some of it goes in the back shed, never to be used, or even ends up on the lawn when the shed is full.
Clutter is not good. And too many cool teaching ideas to keep up with cause cluttered teaching. And yet that is all I see among many teachers. They are drowning themselves in ideas. They are so busy looking for the best activity that they end up providing a confused product to the kids. Chill is right – we need a schedule.
Carol Gaab’s theme in her workshop here over the past two days whas that the mind craves variety and I don’t dispute that, and as long as it is in the form of comprehensible input I suppose that it fine, but I just honestly feel, personally, the need for a nice organized week.
As we continue to add great new teaching techniques like rSF and RT into our instruction, the question must be asked, “Where are those big pieces of furniture going to fit in our current house, our current weekly schedule (for those of us that use the one for 2013 suggested here in the category list)?
So just sayin’. We need to make sure that all of the great furniture we have come up with, all the great teaching ideas of the past years here, as we create the PLC Gold link, fit in the house/weekly schedule and don’t get rained on out on the lawn. We need a bigger house, perhaps, and that would would totally change our schedule and maybe even draw it out to over ten days or so.
We’ll see what happens as the PLC Gold hard link idea develops. This idea of planning the right weekly schedule is, at least to me and chill, of major importance.