At my new school all of these questions have met with the same, or a similar, answer.

Where is my office?
Where is my desk?
What book do the students use?
Where and when can the students come to see me outside class?
Do you want me to follow a particular scheme of work?
Do you need to see my lesson plans?
Do I need to make lesson plans?
What materials should I use in class?
What are the levels of the students?

and a host of others.

The universal answer is...
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None of the other teachers have ever wanted to know that.

Can't have been very good teachers then, can they?

Are you the first ever professional educator at that school?

If you mean in the sense of behaving in a professional manner, it would seem so. If you just mean "paid" then no. My company has supplied at least three teachers to this school before me, possibly more, and if I am the first to ask these questions then I have a very low opinion of the others. It's really no wonder that the Chinese Government has such a low opinion of foreign teachers.

Good heavens. They are lucky to have you!

The only question I'd think wouldn't be asked would be "Do I need to make lesson plans?" because I'd think the answer would always be yes. wouldn't it?

quote:

Originally posted by Kalleh:
Good heavens. They are lucky to have you!

The only question I'd think wouldn't be asked would be "Do I need to make lesson plans?" because I'd think the answer would always be yes. wouldn't it?

You would certainly think so, wouldn't you? But the number of teachers I know who think that lesson preparation is to think of a subject, stick a pop song onto a flash drive and retire to the sofa with a beer would stagger you. It's true that I do very little in the way of new preparation but that's because I have hundreds of lesson plans that I have used and saved over the years and even then I always look them over for half an hour before I use them to make sure there is nothing that needs to be changed for my new classes. However it isn't just the teachers at fault here. There are definitely some schools that apply the "dancing monkey" principal where they don't care what dance you do as long as they can tell parents that they have a dancing monkey.

Ah, lesson plans… I won’t even get into what the poor folks who haven’t yet fled the US pubsch ‘ed-reformed’ fiasco have to do, & in what detail, & how far in advance, & even get surprise-visited by admins with clipboarded checklists to make sure they’re (a)precisely aligned to the [excruciatingly bad] standards and (b)teacher not deviating by one iota… [ugh]

For-lang lesson-planning for 2.5-5yo tykes (not pubsch) was de rigueur or you were inviting complete chaos. But they were also a sales tool, as I was promoting myself to parents [free-lance or through agent]. I learned to develop a cutesy image- & link-laden version emailed ahead of time. I always boosted the advantage of checking out the links-- only saw the kids wkly, & even 5mins daily makes a huge difference. Sad to say how few families (maybe 15-20%) did that. But even 1 kid in 5 singing lustily along to the cancion de la semana raised the participation level of the whole class.

I'll tell you about the best advice I ever got. Newly qualified, never taught a real class in my life I managed to get a six week summer job and straight after that interviewed at a college for what became my regular job for about ten years. The guy who interviewed me (and who became a good friend) asked me what I thought about lesson plans and I told him that they are a necessary evil. He gave me some advice. Remember the lesson plan is your document. If you don't find it useful then it was a waste of time making it. Write it in a way that you find useful in class. Don't be afraid to write on it, scribble on it or change it however you see fit. It's yours.
I asked about inspectors. His advice was to write out a second lesson plan, not to spend a lot of time on it, that matched their requirements and keep that one in your bag so that if they wanted it they could have that one. That would keep them happy and leave you free to do a good lesson from your real plan.
He was, at the time, a quite senior teacher in the college so I took his advice. And it worked all the time I was teaching in England. I don't need the second plan now. I do the plans once - to my own design - and use them.

Ha-- perfect & spot on. The one I actually used in class was about 5 lines in big font (so I could see it from anywhere), in a 'tree' format [i.e., if they get that quickly, proceed to this]