Teachers are able to use differentiation as a dynamic tool for proactively adjusting teaching and learning methods to accommodate each child’s learning needs and preferences to achieve maximum growth as a learner. And for the Adventist teachers in schools in the Pacific Union Conference, differentiated instruction is a spiritual imperative. God created each child in His image—and each and every child is unique. Responding to the needs of each child, so that they may develop and grow into the people that God has created and called them to be—well, that is the job description every teacher takes on. This is the mission. It is the calling. And it is the focus. The task facing educators as they unlock the door to their classroom or lab or studio or gym each morning is to meet each student one-on-one where they are, and to be available to be used by God to help students develop as far as they can grow. And that includes growing, as Christ grew, “in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man” (Luke 2:52). This is why the women and men in our faculty have chosen to be teachers. It is a response to what they believe about each child, that each one, as Ellen White so aptly phrased it, is “created in the image of God, is endowed with a power akin to that of the Creator— individuality, power to think and to do” (Education, p. 17). These convictions—of their own calling, and the sacred nature of their task—are at the heart of how our teachers approach their work and the operation of our schools. Individually and collectively, the faculty in our
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schools mirror that little group who approached Philip with the request, “We would see Jesus.” It is their prayer that Jesus would be known to each teacher and staff member as they prepare for their daily work. It is their prayer that Jesus would be found in every discipline, every lesson plan, every presentation and experiment and demonstration. That Jesus would be apparent throughout the time that young people are students in our
schools, and continue to be present in memory and in the communities that such times create. And it is their prayer that we will each truly see Jesus in the lives of the girls and boys who are learning their numbers and their alphabet—and ultimately in the young women and young men whose mastery of their academic studies is matched perfectly by their becoming the people that God has wonderfully created them to be. n