I'm ready to plan! I have my new lesson planning book -- I always use this one. Lakeshore Learning tends to only carry it in maroon, and if they had it in combination with the record book, I'd get that, too. I like the simplicity of the design and the lack of commercial-looking clip art on the cover and pages. Just nice, clean, sepia grids for my grand plans!

Planning on the weekend feels very familiar and natural. Planning during the summer feels rather directionless and strange to me. It's always hard for me to deal with long stretches of unstructured time. Perhaps that is part of the reason I love teaching in a Waldorf school. Our time is fairly free within each lesson period. We strive to have healthy rhythm to each lesson, including times for concentrated, quiet work and for expansive activity, with meaningful transitions. Aside from that, and general indications for lesson content in each grade, the teacher is free to create lessons that will meet her students' needs. So much freedom would be overwhelming for me, and was, in my early days of teaching, without the understanding that it is up to me to create a reliable rhythm of activities within each given timeframe into which the students, and I, can relax.

For example, in fourth grade, I always started the day by greeting each student with a handshake and a hearty, "Good Morning!" This gave me a chance to hear any pressing news, to take a good look into their eyes, and to get a feeling for what kind of day each child was having so far, and how I might best meet him or her. When it was time to start, I'd close the door, sing our good morning song, and read out the schedule for the day. After this, the students would stand, light a candle, and recite together the morning verse, a sort of dedication of the day to learning and expression of gratitude for light and life.

This sequence of events, repeated each day, was extraordinarily calming for me as a teacher. No matter what kind of day I'd been having up until that point, no matter how tired I was, by the time we had finished the morning verse and moved the desks to do some concentration exercises, singing, and moving together, I felt more present, more solid, and ready to work. I saw that it had a similar effect on the children, too, and the days that we didn't follow our usual rhythm were usually more difficult and presented greater classroom management needs.

Part of my planning this weekend will be to craft an opening sequence for this new school year. The students are older and ready for new challenges, and the time we will take on this work together has shrunk from 45 minutes in the first grade, to perhaps 20 minutes. There will be some time for mental math and spelling drills, review of the previous day's work, presentation of new material, and lots of time for them to work independently.

This weekend, I will also lay out my plan for the year -- the sequence of topics for our morning lesson work each day -- and decide which blocks I will ask someone to teach while I am on maternity leave. It's a hard choice; I hate to miss out on any of it!