Planning for the Short and Long term

Planning is something everyone does on a daily basis. You may plan what to eat for dinner early in your day, or what you want to purchase when you arrive at Walmart. Both of these things are done for the very short term even though you may not realize it, they both require some type of planning. Most people think more along the lines of deciding on an itinerary for an upcoming vacation as a plan, which is just a longer (maybe more important) term plan than deciding on a grocery list. What do plans do? How do you go about making a plan and why are they important? What is different about short-term planning vs long-term planning, and which one most applies to educators?

Plans are an important way to organize information for yourself or a group to make reaching a your goals easier and more manageable. Teachers utilize both short and long term planning every single day of each school year. The video below talks about the importance of long term planning. It references how people in general make plans (most of which begin and end during their lifespan), but why not plan for something longer than your lifetime? This applies to teaching in the sense that teachers plan long-term: they plan for their school year. Do they have all 180 days planned on day one? -most certainly not. This is because of the dynamics and alterations that happen throughout the year on a day-to-day basis. Your long plan should remain somewhat consistent with your goals, although that plan is variable and will change. Your long-term plan may be more general than your short term-plans, but your short-term plans are what get you there.

The process of planning for a teacher includes many things, from instructional units to way to improve teaching practices, such as professional development. All of these are areas that can be improved and with a plan, make reaching goals and milestones much easier.

When delivering and/or planning professional development you should have a plan of how it will be presented, who will be in attendance, and what rollout will look like. I would consider these things all short-term plans although that is relative. A long term plan is more overarching. It aligns with your district's goals, vision, and your vision as an educator. When it comes to using technology it can be tough to have a very, very, long term plan because technology is always changing and advancing. It is vital to think about the future of the school year, and years to come, but very tough to make perfect decisions for the future when we do not always know what is ahead. Planning can be very intricate and involved when planning something such as professional development. There are many parts to it, many stakeholders, and many variables that can change in both a positive and negative way. It is vital that when planning things like PD we take our time, collaborate with others to learn about different perspectives, etc..The better we short term term plan, they easier it will be to reach the goals of our long term plans.

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