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Leading and Managing a Differentiated Classroom
(e.g., “I’d have trouble eating lunch because the sleeves would get in my food,” or “I don’t think I could write very well because it’s hard to move my arms.”) Finally, the teacher should ask them to describe what they think would happen if they had to wear clothes of this size all year. Generally, students easily see that what initially seemed silly, unimportant, or slightly inconvenient could become a serious impediment to doing what they like to do (e.g., “I think I’d begin to see myself as a slob,” or “I don’t know if kids would want me to work with them in school because I couldn’t do much to help with projects since I can hardly move.”) Once again, it’s generally only necessary to ask the class, “Why do you think we just did this? What’s it got to do with school or with this class?” Students will often talk about how uncomfortable it is when class activities or assignments are the “wrong size” and it becomes difficult to do the work. They sometimes share examples from their own school experiences when work seemed to always be “too big” or “too small” for them, and they are generally quite able to explain both short-term and long-term fallout from those experiences. As is the case with the previous two examples, this activity easily leads to the conclusion, “When you look around the room, it’s clear that not everyone wears the same size clothes. My experience as a teacher has shown me just as clearly that identical tasks won’t always be a good fit for everyone in the classroom either. What do you think a teacher should do about the fact that not all students are exactly alike in their needs at a particular time?” With this in mind, students should be ready to move to the next step in the discussion.
Given the differences we see, how should I teach you? Whether the teacher elects to use one of the three activities explained above or develop another approach, it is important for students to acknowledge that people don’t come in matched sets like luggage. Human differences are not only normal, they are valuable. If we were all clones of one another, the world would be much less interesting and people would be much less prepared to address the issues and problems that are inevitable in life. We’d exhibit very limited creativity. In this portion of the conversation, the teacher should pose some questions that are specific to his or her grade and subject level for students to consider. Examples include • Let’s say there are some students in our physics class who are very strong in science but haven’t had chemistry yet. Would you expect any important