February 6, 2024

When I started lesson planning in the 90s it was something I looked forward to. Although it took a lot of time, I found that better plans made for more energy in the classroom, more student engagement, and better learning outcomes. 

With the passing years and hundreds of reps of practice, lesson planning took less time and it remained something I basically enjoyed. Until I realized that something was amiss. 

As a heavily loaded administrator who also had classroom responsibility, I realized I was missing something about how to engage my students and how to make the classroom a place of authentically shared authority for learning. That doubt started when I encountered Understanding by Design [UBD] and then grew when I started using LearningFLOW from L-EAF. 

What I noticed is that when I shared authority with my students for lesson planning, allowing them some agency and real input, the energy level went up and stayed up. I was getting more done, sooner and with less energy. I now know that I shouldn’t have been surprised, given what we have learned about team science in the past generation and across many domains of learning. 

The UBD framework…