LESSOON PLANS!

Lesson plans at this point in my education are a four letter word. I have taught in various settings for most of my adult life and of course had to have plans. Lesson plans in special education are long and tedious.... Not fun. It is fun to decide what your going to teach and how your going to present the material, but after that the fun is over. I always struggle deciding which standards are being used, but this plan took the cake! My partner and I had some disagreement on what standards we should list, our list is huge. I have been called out on that before, but by the time we got to refining the lesson I was really tired. I also have a love hate relationship with technology. I think it can make lessons vastly more interesting, but with one click you can lose parts of your lesson plan or you activity! This of course happened to us. about 45min. before class was over we noticed that two of our sections had vanished! It turned out ok and was a learning experience in how we could retrieve the lost material. Flash drives are important! We will make sure we use ours better from now on.
I actually enjoyed working with my partner. We got together on Saturday, we are not so good at distance collaboration yet, had enjoyed our time together. We became better friends. I liked what our lesson was about because I have personal interest in Japan, my oldest child has lived there for five years. I think it was a positive experience overall. I hesitate to say I'm glad we did it, but I did learn from the process. This class has been good for me. I am usually intimidated by the things we do, but I think it is the only way I would become updated in my technology skills. Kicking and screaming into this century.