Is Winging it Really Bringing It?

I wonder sometimes how much preparation is enough. As a first year teacher, in order for me to feel fully prepared for the next day, I sometimes spend an entire evening on school work. This is a depressing thought: devoting an entire 24 hour day to nothing but work and sleep. Investment bankers do this with regularity, but they also earn six figures and date Amanda Peete.

Sometimes, the temptation to put the work away when I'm at home and do something more relaxing is too good to pass up. When I do this, I know in the back of my mind that I will be "winging it" to some extent the next day. I am very good at thinking on my feet, and years of being a camp counselor have prepared me well for making something out of nothing. I have had several very good lessons this year where I had nothing more than a six or seven word lesson plan. I know that what Ben Guest said this summer, about the integral nation of the lesson plan, is overstated at least a little. However, I also understand that heading into the classroom with copies made, activities planned, and a lesson plan in hand makes a lesson much more likely to succeed.

So where does that leave me as a first year teacher? Do I spend my whole live preparing? Or do I live on the edge and wing it? The ideal solution is to reduce the amount of prep time and thereby eliminate the need to wing. The only way to do this: keep plugging away, build up a library of successful lesson plans, and keep teaching the same courses. As for now, I need to keep my life balanced. It's truet that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. But sometimes half an hour of sleep is worth having to wing it at least a little.