The complaint I constantly hear from teachers is they work their fingers to the bone preparing lesson plans. I ask why are they making them from scratch, why not share? and don't get a response.

> Every state, district, individual school might have its own rules about what can and must be taught, and teachers often aren't given much say in that.

Then why do they say they spend all this effort creating lesson plans, not even re-using what they used last year? One teacher told me she spent her summer writing lesson plans for next year. I asked why she didn't re-use the ones she wrote for last year? She said they had to be custom made for each student. I asked how could she custom make them in the summer, when she didn't know which students she'd be getting in the fall?

That was the end of that discussion.