Immersion: Thoughts on the Pre-Immersion Assignment

Midmorning today, I posted my document for the pre-Immersion assignment we have to complete. Since I am in the teacher track, in essence, I had to create what amounts to a detailed lesson plan. I pretty much had an idea of what I wanted to work on during the program, but I found myself recalling something I learned from my supervising teacher way back when I did my student-teaching. Back then, my teacher would have my write out all my lesson plans, and she would check them before she would let me into her classroom. Over time, this requirement relaxed a little bit, but to this day, I never enter a teaching situation without a lesson plan. In part, it is because I like having a back-up. I teach in a very extemporaneous style; I can plan ahead, but if a class were to show up asking for library instruction now, I would be able to leave me desk and teach it. No, we don't actually take those kind of walk-ins. Another reason is that one never knows when a bus will run me over, and someone else will have to teach the lesson. Somehow in our conversations, I had asked about writing things in a lot of detail, and she told me that once I had some experience, a lot of the details would become second nature. She may have said something along the lines of you will go into a class, and you know the objectives, you know what you want your students to achieve. You don't write it down, but you know, and you can tell someone if they ask. Sure enough, time has passed, and a lot of the things I had to write for the assignment I posted are things that are second nature by now. I guess what I am saying is that the exercise was a bit more reflective for me at least than just writing up a lesson plan. I did have one of my supervisors check on me a couple of times to make sure I was doing my homework. So to her, I can say now, "yes, it's done and posted." Doing it made me realize that there are a lot of little details I take for granted. And that is the reason why I engage in reflective practice, and maybe why I think more teachers should do it as well. If nothing else, it makes us aware of what we do and why we do it.