“Don’t believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding, find out what you already know, and you’ll see the way to fly.” -from the poem, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, by Richard Bach

“What we call differentiated is not a recipe for teaching. It is not an instructional strategy. It is not what a teacher does when he or she has time. It is a way of thinking about teaching and learning. It is a philosophy.” -Tomlinson

If an educator believes the above quote, then they have a still, small voice that speaks to them every time they walk into a classroom, create lesson plans, or work with a student. It is a guiding force in the strategies used by that educator. It is a belief that every student is unique, special, and deserves the opportunity to be qualitatively engaged in the learning process.

I use some of the words in the previous paragraph when I talk about differentiated instruction, but I don’t always explain what they mean to me. I’d like to talk about a few in my next few posts about differentiated instruction.

Every student doesn’t mean just the ones who are below level and who aren’t passing the state test. It doesn’t mean just the ones who have been identified as gifted. It doesn’t mean just the ones whose parents “squeak” the loudest. It doesn’t mean just the ones whose parents volunteer the most or are a PTO officer. It means that every single student who walks through the doors of your classroom deserves learning experiences that appeal to her interest and her learning style.

Qualitatively means that the teacher identifies how much the student knows about the content they are studying (their readiness level, not their ability), then provides them with activities that will help them move “a little bit further than they were the day before” on the readiness continuum for that content. It doesn’t mean giving them more if they finish. That’s quantitatively challenging students with more work.

Engaged means that all students are actively involved in the learning process. If you were to walk in a classroom where all students are engaged, they wouldn’t even notice you were there. Engaged students don’t watch the clock waiting for the bell to ring or count the minutes till recess. Engaged students are busy as they develop understanding of the concepts they are studying.

I wish my 4th grade math teacher had understood what differentiated instruction was. She explained concepts by working a problem on the board with her back to us. This was of no help to me since I’m a visual learner and never got to see her face. After working no more than two examples, she assigned the odd numbers from pages in the textbook. I need to feel connected when I learn. I’ve never felt “connected” to a textbook.

When one of us finished the odd problems she had just assigned, then she made us all work the even problems, too. No one wanted to work more problems, so we developed a system of looking busy until the bell rang. We also timed ourselves and used non-verbal signals so that no one finished early.

I have wondered what would have happened if we had spent that creative energy in exploring math in a differentiated way…

“Quality in a product or service is not what the supplier puts in. It is what the customer gets out and is willing to pay for. A product is not quality because it is hard to make and costs a lot of money, as manufacturers typically believe. This is incompetence. Customers pay only for what is of use to them and gives them value. Nothing else constitutes quality.” -Peter F. Drucker