I'm having trouble finding information about what exactly an English teacher is allowed to do. How much freedom is involved in choosing texts and things to cover? Are lesson plans kind of laid out for you or do you create them from scratch and they have to be approved? I'm sorry if my questions are things that are difficult to answer. I recently decided to leave corporate america and become a HS teacher and I just want as much information as possible.

Thanks!

Well their is some freedom but it depends on the district. Everyone has state standards. These are things that have to be covered through the year, these are designed around grades. English classes are sometimes broken down by Lit. and comp. Jr. English deals with American writers, Soph. deals with Foreign writers. What you do is teach to the standards. Each school and district has book lists per grade level. Once you get hired talk to your department head at your school. They can fill in the blanks. Now some districts just give you the keys to your room, and that is it so you have to design everything in your class. Have fun.

Each school has its own way of doing things. In the 3 high schools in which I worked, I had a lot of autonomy in creating lessons and deciding how I wanted to teach the material.

In two of the schools (both public), each grade level has a course outline, which tells you all the units you are to cover during the year: grammatical concepts that students need to master, writing pieces and their formats (research paper, creative, reflective, etc.) and titles they needed to read. The titles were always a list where I picked, say, 1 play from 3 choices, and 4 books from 6 or 7 choices. You are also given a list of literary terms and devices you need to teach.

In the one private, special ed school I worked at, I taught whatever they had the materials for, and it wasn't much.

Grammar is hard: it's not fun to teach and kids are turned off at the mention of the word. But it's soooo necessary.

Some schools require you to submit your lesson plans (to the principal, for example) two weeks in advance. My schools never asked for this, and I appreciated the trust they had in me that I was doing a good job. I started my first year writing lesson plans for my own benefit, but eventually I stopped doing that as the lesson plan database in my head grew and multiplied. Eventually, you know how best to teach which topic, the best approach to use, how much time it will take (so crucial to planning), and how best to assess them when they're done. It's more of an art than a science, and by year 3, you're well on your way to knowing what to do and how to do it.

That said, you will be observed by department chairs, principals or other district personnel, sometimes as many as 4 times your first couple of years (pre-tenure), and they will expect lesson plans in advance (only to not show on the day they're supposed to observe you, ha ha!!). These plans should align your goals and objectives with state standards to show that your lesson planning is taking these things into consideration. But in English, which is such a great, creative field to teach in, you can fit nearly anything you do within state standards.

If you work in a more collaborative environment, the more experienced teachers will help get you started with their lesson plans, materials and tests. I hear it's not always like this though, and some teachers can be very territorial, thinking they spent all that time creating a lesson and they're not gonna just give it to someone else. That's a crappy attitude though, and one I didn't encounter where I worked. My schools also had mentoring during my first year (which was invaluable) and mandatory "new teacher induction" the first 3 yeras just to make sure everyone was basing their lesson plans on valid research and proven methods.

Good luck! Email me if you have any other questions.

A lot of what we do is based on what the state tells us to do. As much as I'd like to chose my own novels to teach, we have a reading list that has been set in stone for us to abide by. I can say that one teacher breaks the rules of the curriculum as well as that reading list, but she is a favorite of the principal and gets away with it. Lesson plans (here) are created by each teacher, but must revolve around the state's SCOS. Lots of schools require teachers to submit lesson plans, but mine doesn't. Everything is really just based on the state's curriculum. We have some freedom in how we teach it, as long as we cover those specific elements.