Effective teachers have a broad bank of instructional materials to supplement lesson design and delivery. Some of that material is purchased by teachers, and some of it is just material that school systems purchased during past textbook adoptions. It is a vast and valuable library that is often found in teachers’ cabinets or on their laptops. In a lot of ways, that collection of supplemental materials is like a miniature, modern day version of the ancient Library of Alexandria. And our “libraries” of supplemental content would suffer the same fate.
Definition: A canned lesson is a lesson with scripted words for teachers. It moves in a specific order. There is very little freedom to add to the lesson. Those lessons are in sequential order. It is robotic. It is education as fast food, and it is just about as healthy as that.
I once worked in a building where the principal ordered all supplemental materials to be placed in the hall with a surplus list. Teaches had no discretion as to what they would keep. It ALL had to go. We were told only to teach canned lessons. And those canned lessons often came from the very company which (gasp) wrote the standardized TCAP assessments. Anything not from the canned lessons had to go. The hallways were filled with boxes and boxes of materials which could have supported a small school system. Some of that material was fantastic. In fact, we were forced to get rid of all past school system adoptions. Want to talk about fleecing the taxpayer? All of those tax dollars were loaded up and sent to who knows where.
Anyone want to take a guess at what instruction looked like in that building during coming years? The next summer they lost (3) level 5 teachers. Turns out, it wasn’t just supplemental materials which went out the door. The best teachers in the building also left.
Pro Tip: Leadership, you need to listen to your teachers. The good ones are like lighthouses. They will keep you off the rocks. The scenario described above eventually brought local realtors into the discussion. Why? Well, they couldn’t sell houses in that district, because the quality of education dipped to the point that everyone was trying to get into other school districts.
See you Monday….
