One Size Never Fits All

"Reconcilable Differences? Standards-based Teaching and Differentiation"

One size fits all. Really? Wow what a concept but it doesn't really work, does it? Well it does if you are right in the middle all the time. Sort of like those things they have you wear at the hospital - You know what I am talking about so I will leave you with your mental picture. Not pretty is it? I have never been able to buy gloves that were fashionable or warm. Any watch I have ever purchased has to have the band replaced. Hands to big, wrists to large. How many stores sell men's size 15 dress shoes?

So imagine being the student who is extremely smart or fast to pick up concepts or who has a family where education is extremely important so they are better prepared than students their own age. Now imagine the opposite of all those things or just being a student who is motivated to do the work but things don't come easy. Teachers must teach to the full spectrum of student readiness, interest and learning profile not through "One Size Fits All" methods and without regards to standards-based instruction. The full spectrum is ROYGBIV and is all encompassing not just the visible white light. This is my definition of a diverse classroom and rationale for differentiated instruction. Standards-based instruction approaches need to be assessed in ways that make an impact on the gifted or academically challenged students who are outside the usual norms of achievement.

Primary and secondary teachers complain about teaching to the test. Well there is a reason society created the tests and standards. We discussed a number of these in class. There is a reason colleges and universities only admit students after reviewing ACT and SAT scores. Employers also want to know if the education the prospective employee received has the same quality and measures up to the other prospective job candidates. You hear the horror stories of advance students being idle and how borderline and low motivation students are being moved to Special Education so their scores won't reflect poorly on the teachers, school, administrators, school board and the community. In the Tomlinson article she lists the following bullet points as questions educators need to ask themselves about how they are teaching.

· Do the standards reflect the knowledge, understandings, and skills valued most by experts in the disciplines that they represent?

· Are we using standards as a curriculum, or are they reflected in the curriculum?

· Are we slavishly covering standards at breakneck pace, or have we found ways to organize the standards within our curriculum so that students have time to make sense of ideas and skills?

· Does our current focus on standards enliven classrooms, or does it eliminate joy, creativity, and inquiry?

· Do standards make learning more or less relevant and alluring to students?

· Does our use of standards remind us that we are teaching human beings, or does it cause us to forget that fact?

She goes on to say, that if your "practices yield positive answers", then move forward fast in differentiating your class room with "adaptations that address the needs of academically diverse learners." If your "answers are less than satisfactory" problems need to be addressed. Because "such problems… point to cracks in the foundation of quality teaching and learning, and we diminish our profession by failing to attend to them." This is what I meant earlier when I said, “without regard” it must be done the students are counting on you.

Further into the article, Tomlinson continues that the problem is not a disconnect between standards and instruction. She says, "The problem lies in an ill-conceived interpretation and use of standards" that diminish the real structure of "effective teaching and learning." "The problem is not that we can't attend to the needs of individual learners, but rather that we've lost the essential frameworks of the disciplines in addition to the coherence, understanding, purpose, and joy in learning. Our first obligation is to ensure that standards-based teaching practice does not conflict with best teaching practices. Once those are aligned, differentiation—or attention to the diverse needs of learners—follows naturally."

I think what she is saying is that teachers taught as they were taught so now they are missing a sense of coherence, understanding and purpose. Teaching is as much an art as a science but it also must be a calling. There must be joy freely given and received. But most people get into that rut at work and find a comfort zone that allowed them to feel good about what they have been doing. Now they are being told not just to do it differently, but we decided that you weren't doing it so well after all. What a blow to confidence and self esteem that must have been to the teaching community. She says once you align standards-based teaching with best teaching practice you can move on to what is truly important. And when your heart is pure and mind is clear then attention to the needs of diverse learners will follow.

I really enjoyed reading this piece. I reread it a number of times and just kept finding more and more in it.

quotes

The two quotes that I took from the article were “Do the standards reflect the knowledge understandings and skills valued most by experts in the disciplines that they represent?” and “differentiation can show us how to teach the same standard to a range of learners by employing a variety of teaching and learning modes.” The first quote relates directly to what we were talking about in class. Some teachers feel like the standards that they have to teach limit them as teachers and creative individuals. Many times experts in their fields want to have the freedom to teach thing content that they want to teach. The content standards limit that freedom quite a bit. There can be different ways of teaching science and the students can learn the same skills but everyone might not want to teach the same thing. The quote brings up a good point that a teacher could be very knowledgeable in a branch in the subject that the content standards don’t cover. Should the students not be exposed to a great lesson that the teacher could teach just because it is not in the standards?
The second quote that I picked sort of answers the question from the first quote. Although this quote hits directly to meeting the needs of the learners by differentiation, it can also meet the teacher’s needs. A teacher can still be creative and do things his or her own way through differentiation Although all 10th grade science teachers are expected to teach the same chemistry lessons, the way the teach it can reflect their expertise on the subject area. Some teachers may be more hands on, and some teachers may have strong real life examples to bring to the classroom. Just as the quote directly states, differentiation can reach a variety of students. Teaching content standards just one way in a classroom may not give the positive result that is expected. Not all the students will learn those standards. As we have learned all through this class, people learn different ways, on different levels and with different techniques. Differentiation the lessons with the content standards may give more students an equal opportunity to learn the content that they are expected to be tested on.
Throughout this class I have found differentiated instruction to be confusing and overwhelming. It is something that has to come from experience. I think sometimes without even realizing it teachers naturally are progressing to differentiation instruction. With more and more inclusion in the classrooms, it would almost be impossible to have a classroom without any differentiated instruction. I do believe that it gives more students an equal chance to learn the material in the best way possible. Differentiated instruction is a good idea, and it is extremely necessary as we have learned all throughout this class. It is important to give everyone an equal chance to succeed. With all the different learning styles and various learning disabilities and differences in human beings, differentiated instruction in the classroom gives the best hope for each child in the classroom.

Thinking Outside the Box

"Teaching is hard." "Teaching well is fiercely so." I'm just glad as I've said before that we don't know any different from standards based-differentiated instruction. I'll use the standards as a guideline but I'll also strive to teach "out of the box", to be creative. I'll do everything I can to provide differentiated instruction as often as possible but as Dr. Scott expressed it is not feasible for every lesson for every subject to be differentiated!
Now let me change tracks and pose two questions. My first question is what are our goals as teachers for our students? Are the goals still college (first choice) and technical/skills school (second choice) for our class? If so, what are the long term results of differentiation? Can all students pass a standardized test such as the ACT/SAT? I submit that since differentiation is still a new concept we don't know the answer to this question. OK, second question. Once I become a more experienced teacher will I have more behavior control over SGI which seems to be an integral part of differentiation?
More to come on all that but meanwhile; I will continue to improve my differentiated thinking skills. I will strive to find new and better methods to achieve successful learning skills in all of my students.

Tomlinson Quote

"Our first obligation is to ensure that standards-based teaching practice does not conflict with best teaching practice. Once those are aligned, differentiation—or attention to the diverse needs of learners—follows naturally."

In today's classrooms, it's obviously important to make sure you, as a teacher, meet the standards set by the state. But for many teachers, it's difficult to find the time to meet those standards while meeting your own objectives that you've set yourself. Because of this conundrum, many teachers today set aside their creative lessons and ideas, and instead plan their lessons to only meet the state standards.

This quote puts emphasis on what's important when planning out your lesson plans for the year. I think the article gives a great example of how teachers make sure the standards-based teaching practice doesn't conflict with the best teaching practice - before the school year begins, teachers get together and discuss ways to effectively teach their material. They come up with, what they believe to be the best teaching practices. Once this is established, they go over the standards-based teaching practices and find a way to work them into their "best" practices. This is a great way to come up with ideas on how to meet the state standards while not sacrificing the "best practice."

Don't Get Derailed!

Reconcilable differences indeed! A standard refers to something that is uniform by nature and differentiation refers to something that is diverse. Great, now all we have to do achieve uniform diversity, or is it diverse uniformity? Yeah, and while we're at it, why not just put an end to the Israeli - Palestinian Conflict? Well, fortunately it's not as hopeless as it seems. From our discussions in class, first around Tomlinson's text and later her web article, we seemed to learn that, as teachers, we actually can accommodate both approaches in the same classroom. Even more exciting is the prospect that one can be made to compliment the other! We just need to maintain the proper perspective. We should proceed with the outlook that differentiated instruction is the proper strategy through which the standard content is channeled to our students. We can look at it as though all our students have a common destination. However, we must realize that they all will not be starting from the same origin and furthermore, the paths that they must cross vary greatly in length and topography. But once we gather this information and carefully construct a plan to navigate each terrain, we can achieve our goal. I selected the quote from the article which compared Standards-based instruction to a run-away locomotive- obliterating everything in its path. Well, let's just make sure our tracks are laid with differentiated steel. That way teachers, students, and administrators alike, can all stay on track and safely meet up at our intended junction.

My quote from Tomlinson

“Curriculum tells us what to teach, differentiation tells us how.”

This simple yet to the point quote from Tomlinson’s article stuck out to me because after learning about differentiated instruction throughout this course and knowing how important the focus is on implementing it in today’s classroom, I truly feel that it is a big under taking, but the benefits of it are so great and profound, that they are not even measurable. Research has backed this up and that is why it is being pushed. We all know that it works, but the key is that it has to be effective and being effective at it TAKES PRACTICE! I understand and even feel overwhelmed myself by all of the ways that differentiation can exist in a classroom. Of course as new teachers we are all going to feel overwhelmed. Throughout the course we have learned endless techniques and methods to differentiating our curriculum, but instead of being overwhelmed, we need to take all of these tools, resources and methods with us and slowly start to implement the ones we feel comfortable with. The gift of having our own classroom is that we have the freedom to pick and choose from these differentiation methods and practices! We need to look at this course and what we have learned as beginning introduction that is setting us up for success in being an effective instructor with effective differentiated instruction!

I feel a good starting point in being an effective differentiator is by differentiating our instruction in Tomlinson’s three areas of student readiness, students’ interests and student learning profiles. Some may come easier to us based on preferences and/ or subject matter we are teaching, but being able to identify ways to differentiate in these three areas will cause us to have a good starting point in becoming effective at this skill! Putting the time and energy into thinking about these things now will only make it easier for us later when we get into our classrooms and have other things going on, like getting to know our students!

Differentiating curriculum based on students learning profiles is what stood out to me the most after our class on Monday so I wanted to share my thoughts and ideas on this area of possibility to differentiate in! Below are Tomlinson’s guidelines for learning profile differentiation (p.63)

1) Some (not all) of your students will share your learning preferences.
It is important to recognize your learning preferences. There are tests/ assessments you can take to learn yours! I think we sometimes think we know what we are, but what I didn’t realize is that we all have a little bit of the different styles in us, just the levels of these styles varies depending on the activity!

2) Help your students reflect on their own preferences.
Spend a day assessing and let your students do an exercise/ assessment that will identify these. It would be a fun way to kick start your class and kill two birds with one stone where you are learning more about your students and the students are learning more about each other! You can collect the assessments and be able to refer to them throughout the year when you are differentiating instruction, setting up projects and even your classroom area.

3) Use both teacher-structured and student choice avenues to learning profile differentiation.
Now that we know our students learning preferences, we can guide them and challenge them to use other ways to learn as well.

4) Select a few learning-profile categories for emphasis as you begin.
Back to the overwhelming feeling, choose just a few to focus on to start with. After you collect and learn about your students maybe strategically choose which to focus on from there.

5) Be a student of your students.
Expand our universe. Truly try and understand where all of our students are coming from. Talk to parents. Make every attempt to engage in this. I think when I get into my classroom I will designate 15-20 minutes a week to engaging the class in some kind of activity where I will get to know them better and they will get to know each other better too!

I think Tomlinson’s book is a great resource to keep with us as we continue our courses and start our teaching careers. Make it a goal when you have your own class to try every method once and document how it goes and what the outcome is. Maybe even document your comfort level using the tool and/ or method based on the resources available to you. Of course some methods and tools will be eliminated based on what your subject is or what your resources are etc, but make a true attempt in your first year or two to experiment and learn from these experiments. Eventually we will all crack the puzzle and differentiating our instruction will become second nature to us! We will become so good at it that we won’t even know we are doing it. If you don’t engage in and push yourself to do this when you first start, human nature tells us that it will be harder to get started after the fact because we will probably feel more overwhelmed than we do now. It will never come easy until we practice, practice, practice!

Reflection 10 - What D.I. Means to Me

The quote that I selected to write about is "Students will learn best when they can make a connection between the curriculum and their interests and life experiences." I have to believe that any teacher would create projects and come up with interesting and fun ways to connect the curriculum with their students' interests and life experiences every time if they could. However, it isn't realistic for each teacher to create that type of curriculum every time they try to. I may not be thinking outside the box, but isn't it impossible for a math or science teacher to relate their subject material with their students' interests and life experiences? I can definitely see how an English teacher or Social Studies teacher could create some projects and curriculum that would relate to their students' interests and life experiences. But it just doesn't seem realistic to be able to achieve this type of relation of curriculum in every subject or in every assignment. As a future teacher of special education students, I know that half of the battle will be to keep my students interested and motivated in my class. Differentiating the instruction and making it interesting and relative to them will help win that battle. But what does differentiated instruction mean to me? I feel that differentiating instruction is something you can do when you are in the correct situations. I don't feel it is something that can be forced. Hopefully, I will be teaching classes where it is easier to mix up my curriculum. However, I know that I can't rely on that because I will be teaching different classes each year as an intervention specialist. How is Differentiated Instruction aligned with standards based curriculum? I'm not exactly sure how it is but I know that teachers can differentiate their lessons and they can still relate to the standardized tests that their students will be taking. If it was impossible to align differentiated instruction with standards-based curriculum than we wouldn't be discussing differentiated instruction at all. Carol Ann Tomlinson says that recent demands for more standards-based teaching can feel like a huge impediment to encouraging differentiated instruction, especially for teachers and principals who recognize student variance and want to address it appropriately. A relatively new phenomenon (at least in its current form), standards-based instruction dominates the educational terrain in a time of great academic diversity in contemporary classrooms. In fact, standards-based instruction and the high-stakes testing that drives it can often feel like a locomotive rolling over everything in its path, including individualized learning. When any phenomenon in education suggests that we may have to jettison common sense and good pedagogy, we must first examine it in light of what we know about high-quality instruction. In other words, if we understand how standards-based teaching does or does not align with sound teaching and learning practices, we can then approach what look like barriers to differentiation. In truth, the conflict between focusing on standards and focusing on individual learners' needs exists only if we use standards in ways that cause us to abandon what we know about effective curriculum and instruction. I agree with Carol Ann Tomlinson. It just seems that teachers can become so frustrated because it is as though the teaching is being taken away from them and all they have left to do is to recite and repeat. Repetition, Repetition, Repetition, as though teachers are now robots! Differentiated instruction is supposed to give the teaching back to the teachers. I know that good administrators and school districts will allow their teachers to teach, although they are handicapped too because they want to show success through the standardized test scores, but in the end, good school districts and good administrators will support teachers teaching!