Chapter 12: Lesson Plan Menu

The Lesson Plan Menu enables teacher candidates to use pedagogical tools learned in their methods courses and themes relevant to diversity, social justice, and other traditionally underrepresented topics (e.g., gender, race, social class) throughout their field experiences.

Being a teacher candidate is tough; in addition to their own expectations, they must manage a host of demands from supervisors, cooperating teachers, schools, and districts. With all of these expectations, many adopt a survival strategy of “don’t rock the boat.” They avoid sanctions (Evans, Avery, & Pederson, 1999) and do not challenge the official curriculum (Salinas & Castro, 2010; Segall, 2002). As placement supervisors and course instructors, we understand, but are not happy with our candidates being overly reliant on lectures and hesitant to experiment with the authentic instruction and assessment (Newmann, King, & Carmichael, 2007). Therefore, with our faculty advisors, we designed the Lesson Plan Menu to create common expectations for candidates and ensure that candidates apply learning from their university courses during their field experiences.