A lesson plan you write for yourself, one skill and one week at a time.
Lessons for One
School gave us plans written by somebody else. This notebook hands the pencil back. Three short lessons, a few loose sheets, and the idea that a mind past fifty stays sharp the same way it always has: by learning something, saying it out loud, and getting ready for tomorrow.
The plan for this term, filled in by hand
- Objective
- one small, new skill each month, practiced in short daily sessions
- Materials
- a spiral notebook, a pencil, index cards, a second chair
- Practice
- fifteen minutes a day, one conversation a week, ten minutes the night before a busy day
Three lessons, in the order they are meant to be read
- Lesson 1 One Skill a Month, Written on the Top Line
Choose a skill that fits in fifteen minutes, write it at the top of a page, and let the month fill in underneath.
- Lesson 2 Teach It Back: Saying It Out Loud Is How It Stays
Once a week, explain what you practiced to a listener, or to an empty chair, and write down the question you could not answer.
- Lesson 3 The Night Before: A Rehearsal List for Tomorrow
Eight lines on an index card the evening before a day that matters, read once at night and once over breakfast.
Tucked into the back pocket
- A calendar of small skills, twelve ideas for a year of lesson one
- The rehearsal checklist, the eight prompts behind lesson three
- Questions after class, short answers to common doubts
- Words used in this notebook, a small glossary
- Whose handwriting this is, the company, the money question and the FDA statement
- What we jot down about visitors, privacy and reading conditions
On the inside cover
The notebook belongs to Mix Gel, a shop in Itabuna, in the Brazilian state of Bahia, that sells cosmetics and toiletries and is also registered to organize events and teach. The pages are written in English with American households in mind. The company's own page is here, in English, and here, in Portuguese.