Ah Sundays

I have a feeling that most teachers use Sunday afternoons as I am becoming accustomed to doing - writing lesson plans. This is of course nice in that I know I am accomplishing all of the outside-of-school work I need to do for the week, but also leaves me in the frustration pit I find myself in a little too often. You see, I wonder if this is preparing me to be an effective educator in the future or if it is training me in destructive habits and crushing my more creative impulses. Because when I see material I often think "This may provoke an interesting debate" or "We should use the primary source material to analyze this situation" or "Let's compare this to the situation going on in Iraq" (which is what I thought today and I was planning for the drafting and ratification of the U.S. Constitution). But no. My lesson plans are "read this" "answer these questions" "write an brief/extended constructed response." All of my more scholastic inspirations lose out to the grim reality of the innercity middle school. And so I wonder, if I have resigned myself to completing this task because of the doors it will open, how can I be sure that it is preparing me in a positive way? Okay I just constructed that last sentence as if I was Carrie Bradshaw. Time for a break.