I have a very broad mind. I’m a global thinker. Ideas tend to come to me as big, complex, overarching things that I have to work hard to break down into details. With teaching, this is both great and terrible. Even this semester, when I’m not actively doing any sort of teaching, I’ve been getting all sorts of ideas for lessons and units. Units are more common. They’ll just pop into my head randomly. I’ve been trying to write them all down.

I have buckets of teaching unit ideas for different grade levels. Some are very specific, like the one I came up with tonight about ancient Greece. I know that’s taught in 6th grade, so the unit would be aimed at that level. It would hit on every aspect of the curriculum (thanks to the amazing variety of stuff that has to do with the Greeks, who influenced pretty much everything in one way or another) and involve all sorts of fun activities. Other units are more general, like the recycling one I came up with in Environment and Society class the other day. I came up with a general plan for activities and centers and even a few books to read, but I could adapt it for different grade levels.

The problem with all of this, of course, is that I have no idea what grade I’ll end up teaching, even for student teaching in the fall. I have this amazing Ancient Greece unit in mind for 6th grade, and if I end up with 6th grade, I’ll probably try to use it. But it’s not going to work if I end up with kindergarten. Also, obviously, since the ideas are pretty broad, I would still have to do a lot of work to flesh them out into full lesson/unit plans that my professors would accept. Even so, I love this part of being a teacher. I’m going to keep collecting. If nothing else, the giant stack of ideas, resources, and plans will (hopefully) impress my professors when I go back to talk with them for my “midterm check in” next week. And (hopefully) they will give me something to talk about. If I can do that without crying or making myself look ridiculous, I’ll be fine.