"Education has missed the boat, with respect to instructional design. Teachers come up with lesson plans on the fly, with little thought to why ..."

I don't think it's fair to group all teacher together in this statement. I think this quote perfectly describes some teachers in the profession. However, this quote is probably as far from the truth as possible for other teachers in the profession. I also think that this quote can apply to some teachers on some days, but not to those same teachers on other days. I have to admit that I am not always 100% as prepared as I would like to be in a given day. I try to the best of my ability to be prepared, but life happens and teachers are human beings. Sometimes you just have to go into survival mode and that may mean that you are forced to come up with lessons on the fly. I don't believe that is how most teacher want to teach.

When I first started this section on instructional design I thought it was going to make me feel like a really bad teacher because I do not currently follow one of the fancy little models. However, as I learned more about it, I started to realize that I do go through most of these steps as I plan my instruction I just do it without realizing it because I don't have a pretty check list of the steps that I can cross off. I think that now that I am more aware of the models that are available to me, I can spend some time finding the model that fits me personally. My hope is that by following a model and being more aware of the steps I can optimize my instruction to better meet the needs of my students.