During my undergraduate work in secondary math education, I was so proud of the wonderful files of lesson plans and activities I had created to someday use with my students. Unfortunately, my first job was teaching fourth graders. While I certainly felt I could teach them math successfully, I was very worried about my ability to teach everything else--and I do mean everything else. As it turned out, my lesson plans for math were worse than my lesson plans for reading, science or social studies. I couldn't seem to get out of my head the material I had prepared for much older students. It took me a few weeks (which seemed like years!) to realize that if I worked harder on creating authentic lesson plans geared to my students and the appropriate objectives, I would be solving several problems that were occurring in my class. I only stayed two years in elementary school before getting my dream job in high school calculus. But the lessons I learned in my fourth grade classes about planning have stayed with me throughout my career.                              Sofenia, 15 years teaching For additional stories, click here: Listen to This! Stories from the Field