Wasting time on preparing entertainment?
It seems that modern teachers are pulled apart by on the one-hand pressure to deliver exciting, action-packed lessons to engage an attention-deficit generation, and on the other to plan and prove that is what they are doing.
A well argued point by Phil Beadle from Oasis Academy, Coulsdon, UK in his blog for the Guardian highlights this:
In general, kids mess about when they are bored. Gilbert is merely drawing teachers’ attention to the simplest answer to the difficult class: don’t bore ‘em …
But planning exciting lessons is a time-consuming activity. Vast swathes of a teacher’s time in an over-regulated education system is spent proving they are doing the job, rather than actually doing it. If [Ofsted] wants more exciting lessons, perhaps the focus should be less on top-down diktats, and more on reducing teacher workload, so that we have the time to engage, to excite and, yes, even to entertain.
The only practical solution to seems to be: get sharing those interactive lessons, along with the lesson plans, so other teachers can keep the class on track WITHOUT sacrificing their weekends in lesson preparation. Entertain, yes. Produce all the entertainment yourself – no.
