How to shine at the perfect lesson

Imagine that you have just completed a brilliant gymnastic display in the Olympics. To roars of applause, you score a perfect ten. Perfection. No one could possibly leap higher, stretch further, curl tighter or look more elegant. Hold on a minute, surely someone, somewhere might? Perfection by definition cannot be improved upon, so reflect for a moment and you will realise that the perfect lesson that I am going to write about doesn’t really exist.

Suspend your disbelief and think about when you might just need that ‘perfect’ lesson. Certainly not during the day-to-day teaching that constitutes most of your termly toil; for the time and energy repeatedly required to set up such lessons could only be at the expense of all the other lessons that you have to teach. Striving for continual perfection may be laudable but you cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the good.