Daily lesson planning, anyone?

My column for last week's issue of Vox Bikol.

OCTOBER is the month when public school students go into a week-long break ending the first semester of the school year. The break also allows their teachers to attend training arranged by their respective division or district offices.

I was reminded of this after my wife, who teaches geometry at Camarines Sur National High School, was extra-busy last week -- as Math club president, she had to oversee their departmental in-service training and aside from that prepare something to share to fellow math teachers.

There was something in one of our conversations last week that grabbed my attention, and I took mental note of it. It had something to do with a sharing by a fellow teacher on the new Cyber Education Project (CEP)-compliant lesson plan format, for which a week-long training was recently arranged by the DepEd.

From a simple format that requires only five sections, the new lesson plan now has 13, ostensibly in preparation for CEP’s eventual implementation. The sharing drew sharp reactions from the audience: instead of simplifying matters, lesson planning has just become more complicated if this P26.4 billion project really pushes through!

This reminded me of the Rapu-Rapu Education summit we facilitated last August 25 under the auspices of the Synergeia Foundation. If there is a search for the most unpopular task ordinary Filipino teachers must grapple with, preparing lesson plans day in and day out will be the hands-down winner.

In that Rapu-Rapu event, the dynamics between the teachers and their supervisors again came to the fore, mirroring all other events I have previously attended where the issue came up: is there really a need for these daily lesson plans in the task of educating the Filipino child?

On one hand, supervisors argue lesson planning is part of the job description, as teachers are given only six loads daily, with the two others allocated precisely for that task. Further, they are essential tools for the monitoring function of supervisors.

Teachers, on the other hand, argue they will be most thankful to DepEd if ready-made lessons can be provided them, or other alternative schemes are implemented, and these two hours be devoted instead to efforts to improve their delivery of the lessons.

Well, being a non-teacher, I scoured the net and ended up with an item on “lesson plan” from Wikipedia, part of which says

“In today's constructivist teaching style, the individual lesson plan is often inappropriate. Specific objectives and timelines may be included in the unit plan, but lesson plans are more fluid as they cater to student needs and learning styles. As students are asked to engage in problem or inquiry learning, rigid lesson planning with title, behavioral objectives, and specific outcomes within certain time constraints often no longer fit within modern effective pedagogy. Today, formal lesson plans are often required only of student teachers, who must be demonstrably familiar with the components of a lesson, or teachers new to the field, who have not yet internalized the flow of a lesson.”

Now, you tell me: Is there really a need for these daily lesson plans in the task of educating the Filipino child?

For five days, I am running a poll on the above question until Sunday. Feel free to join or better still post a comment, especially if you happen to believe that there is a better way.