Why Structured Lessons Are a Lifeline, Not a Limitation

On Wednesday night I found myself in the local emergency department. My son had jumped off a slide and the call I received from his after school care made it clear that it wasn’t one of those “walk it off” injuries. He was in real pain, and he needed medical care straight away.
At the hospital, the triage nurse greeted us warmly, reassured my son, and got straight to work. She asked a series of questions that were clearly part of a structured script. It was calm, efficient, and comforting. That script didn’t make her robotic; it made her effective. She still smiled, cracked a joke or two, and treated us like people, not a checklist.
This experience reminded me just how valuable good systems can be: especially when things are complex, high-stakes, and time-pressured. It’s the same with teaching.
Lately, there’s been some debate about so-called “teacher-proof” maths lessons. A recent blog post claimed that these lessons won’t work, and that teachers should be creating everything from scratch so they can better respond to students’ needs. But that’s a false dichotomy.
Let’s be clear: using a script or pre-designed lesson doesn’t mean teaching without thought or care. It means having a well-researched, carefully constructed recipe to follow: one that saves us from having to reinvent the wheel every day. And like any good recipe, we adjust the ingredients. You don’t force-feed egg to someone with an allergy. Similarly, you don’t deliver a lesson exactly as written when it’s not quite right for the learners in front of you.
Many of these lessons have been created by highly experienced teachers; colleagues who have spent hours refining them so others don’t have to start from scratch. In fact, I’ve helped put some of them together myself. Are they perfect? Of course not. But they are strong, structured, and well-sequenced. I had the time to really fine-tune these lessons, bringing them to a higher standard than I normally could. Carefully pre-designed lessons give teachers a solid base to build from, not a cage to be trapped in.
The criticism that scripted lessons remove professional judgement misunderstands how most of us actually use these resources. No one’s handing over their classroom autonomy. We’re using these tools to free up time and cognitive space so we can focus on the things that matter most: our students’ learning, questions, and needs.
Take daily reviews, for example. The suggestion that every teacher should be crafting their own daily review slides, every single day, sounds great in theory, but it doesn’t align with the real demands of the classroom. It takes hours. And that time has to come from somewhere; usually planning, marking, sleep, or time with family.
We need high-quality teaching resources not because we’re lazy or disengaged, but because we’re smart and committed. When we can rely on good materials, we have more capacity to focus on formative assessment, to provide feedback, to build relationships, and to actually teach.
Teaching is too important to be left to chance. A good script won’t make you a great teacher; but it’ll help you become one faster, with fewer barriers in your way. Just like that triage nurse, we can follow the plan and connect with the humans in front of us.
Let’s stop pretending it has to be one or the other.