We are Life-Changing Teachers!

I can still remember the pink gingham dress my mother picked out for me to wear on my first day of kindergarten.  I remember how excited I was to finally be able to go to school.  I actually attended school here in Charlotte County at Meadow Park Elementary.  I had Mrs. Irwin as my kindergarten teacher.  She was kind, caring, fun, and pretty.  Although, I can remember reading, coloring, and playing, I can’t remember specific academic lessons I learned.  I do however, remember how she made me feel.  I decided then, that I wanted to be a teacher. 

Over the next dozen years, I had teachers who were passionate about their job and I had teachers who were not.  I am sure that all of you can think of those few teachers who left a lasting impression on you.  Those teachers who changed and molded you into who you are today.  Those teachers that you would consider unforgettable and life changing. 

Recently, I came across an article in a blog at https://www.edutopia.org/article/6-traits-life-changing-teachers-betty-ray titled 6 Traits of Life-Changing Teachers.

In education there’s a lot of talk about standards, curriculum, and assessment—but when we ask adults what they remember about their education, decades after they’ve left school, the answers are always about their best teachers.  So what is it about great educators that leaves such an indelible impression? If the memory of curriculum and pedagogy fades with time, or fails to register at all, why do some teachers occupy our mental landscape years later? We started getting curious: What are the standout qualities that make some teachers life changers?

To answer this question, we asked our Facebook community directly. Over 700 responses poured in from teachers, parents, and students. When we analyzed the responses, some clear patterns began to emerge, across all age ranges and geography—even subjects.

Each trait includes detailed information in the blog.  I hope that you can take time to read it in its entirety.  I will just pull bits and pieces of the information for each life-changing trait.  It makes my heart happy to know that the teachers here at Myakka River Elementary possess all 6 of these traits.

1.       Life-Changing Teachers Help Their Students Feel Safe

The research is unequivocal: People can’t learn if they’re anxious, frightened, or in trauma. Safety is part of the education starter kit. Unsurprisingly, many of our readers recalled that the best teachers establish a culture of safety and support in their classrooms, whether it’s physical, emotional, or intellectual.

2.       Life-Changing Teachers Possess a Contagious Passion

A passion for education is in the blood of the best teachers—the word passion showed up 45 times in our audience responses—and the best teachers pass it on to students.

3.       Life-Changing Teachers Model Patience

Learning can be slow and messy. Classrooms are filled with students—sometimes more than 30 at a time—who arrive each day with different emotional needs, and learn at wildly different speeds. Remarkably, life-changing teachers find a way to stay calm amid the chaos and play the long game, giving their students the time and support they need to learn.

4.       Life-Changing Teachers Know When to Be Tough

If life-changing teachers are patient, they also know when to change gears and get tough. They’re the teachers who challenge us to be better students and better humans—and then up the ante and demand that of us.

5.       Life-Changing Teachers Believe in Their Students (and Help Them Believe in Themselves)

The power of a teacher’s simple, unequivocal belief in a student was mentioned almost 70 times by respondents. Most of us have had some sort of self-doubt, but many students are crippled by it. Life-changing teachers have the gift of seeing potential in kids when others don’t, and then have the perseverance to help the children find it within themselves.

6.       Life-Changing Teachers Love Their Students

Respondents used the word love a whopping 187 times (and that’s not counting an additional 157 heart emojis). Showing love for students—through small but meaningful gestures of kindness—is far and away the most impactful thing life-changing teachers do.

Taking a step back, it appears that the most direct and longest-lasting way to reach a child—to really make a difference in his or her life—is through so-called non-cognitive dimensions like passion, patience, rigor, and kindness. And when students are lucky enough to find a life-changing teacher, the benefits last a lifetime. In many cases, those students take up the vocation themselves: 145 of the people who responded to our question had become teachers, passing the gift of education forward to the next generation.

Thank you for changing lives every day!

I also wanted to share this video that came across my news feed this weekend.  This principal is not your typical principal, but his number one goal is to make all his students feel loved.  https://www.facebook.com/whatweseee/videos/1580623271997035/

Red Ribbon Week

Motivational Monday Morning!

This is Marie Gibson, your school counselor, and today starts the first day of our activities for “Red Ribbon Week”. The mission of this program is “Helping kids grow up safe, healthy, and drug-free”.  Our focus for the week is to continue spreading awareness of the dangers of bullying and drug use among our students. The goal is to encourage as many students as possible to take part in each day’s activities so that they have an understanding of how to live above the influence of others and to say no to drugs and bullying, and be proactive when bullying or other destructive  activities takes place in the classroom, lunchroom or the playground. Red Ribbon week spreads an amazingly positive message and our school will help support this message this week with prizes such as water bottles, spirit sticks and red ribbons. Together let’s encourage full participation in the poster contest, signing of pledges and activities for each day, and make it a fun and educational week for our kids.

In the words of Rita Pierson, “Every child deserves a champion: an adult who will never give up on them, who understands the power of connection and insists that they become the best they can possibly be”.

I have also attached a copy of this week’s scheduled activities so that the students can be reminded of each day’s activities.

Thanks.

Empathy

Good morning,

Last week I attended a Professional Development. Although everything was valuable, one specific word the presenter shared stuck out to me-Empathy. 

"Empathy is the ability to experience and relate to the thoughts, emotions or experience of others. Empathy is more than simple sympathy, which is being able to understand and support others with compassion or sensitivity."

Empathy is extremely valuable in and out of the workplace. One of the most important skills that you can practice is empathy. When empathy is present it leads to great success personally and professionally. All in all, when empathy is practiced more and more you will become happier. 

With anything we ask WHY...so, why should we practice empathy?

• You will be more likely to treat the people you care about the way they wish you would treat them.
• You will better understand the needs of people around you.
• You will more clearly understand the perception you create in others with your words and actions.
• You will understand the unspoken parts of your communication with others.
• You will better understand the needs of your co workers at work.
• You will have less trouble dealing with interpersonal conflict both at home and at work.
• You will be able to more accurately predict the actions and reactions of people you interact with.
• You will learn how to motivate the people around you.
• You will more effectively convince others of your point of view.
• You will experience the world in higher resolution as you perceive through not only your perspective but the perspectives of those around you.
• You will find it easier to deal with the negativity of others if you can better understand their motivations and fears. Lately when I find myself personally struggling with someone, I remind myself to empathize and I immediately calm myself and accept the situation for what it is.

You will be a better leader, a better follower, and most important, a better friend.

I think the last sentence put this into perspective. We all want to better ourselves and this is a perfect way to do so. We all shine and lead in our own way. We all are important, whether we feel it or not. We all are friends, we care, love and support one another more than we know. We are a family and should practice, teach, and share empathy.

“Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care.”

How true is this quote? This is VERY true for our relationships in and out of school.

Please take a few minutes to read the article below. It has alot of useful information about empathy within our school and classroom. 

A small snapshot of this powerful article: 

With a full plate every day, what do we often dismiss first? Empathy—for our students, our colleagues, and ourselves. But without empathy, we cannot understand the diverse students and communities we serve. That lack of understanding may limit our focus to generalizations and assumptions. A mindset without intentional empathy narrows focus, and prevents us from accurately identifying the barriers to learning for our students. In turn, students come to be viewed as academic producers rather than social-emotional beings.

In our educational roles, it is vitally important that we model how empathy has power to influence a variety of contexts and interactions. Investing in the well-being of both our students and our colleagues promotes a positive, empathic culture that makes classrooms and school a safe haven. If we want to make a lasting impact on our students and prepare them to for success in college, career, and citizenship, we must prioritize empathy as an essential mindset.

This all takes strength, which we all have. Even in those tough situation we are strong. We push through, we tackle our students every day needs, we are the shoulder for our co workers, we inspire, motivate, and encourage others in a way we never knew we could. I challenge you to be strong, and promote positive empathy in and out of the classroom. 

http://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2016/01/20/building-empathy-in-classrooms-and-schools.html

Resiliency

If you are feeling anything like I am feeling, I imagine that you are all trying to keep your head above water.  The last few weeks have been draining both emotionally and physically.  I know that we all hit the ground running as soon as we came back from our Hurricane days.  Like all of you, I was met with lots of deadlines, team planning, data digging, and deliberate practice selection activities that were due right away.  On top of these expectations, it seems as if there is always another thing to add to our platters.  The one thing that keeps me motivated is knowing that our students need us.  Our students were so excited to get back to the school they love and to their teachers and staff members who care for them. 

My goal setting meeting was scheduled two days after returning to school.  I did not have a moment to think about the deliberate practice indicator that I was going to select to accompany our school improvement goal.  As I was reading through the indicators, I came across indicator 10.1 Resiliency: The leader demonstrates resiliency in pursuit of student learning and faculty development by:

§  staying focused on the school vision,

§  reacting constructively to adversity and barriers to success, acknowledging and learning from errors,

§  constructively managing disagreement and dissent with leadership,

§  bringing together people and resources with the common belief that the organization can grow stronger when it applies knowledge, skills, and productive attitudes in the face of adversity.

I thought this indicator was perfect.  In this career, we are faced with many challenges daily.  It is so easy to get bogged down with all of the “Stuff”.  Things that may not be in our control.  I believe that the way one reacts to a difficult situation or obstacles that they face, is a reflection of that person.  In my first year as a building principal, I have had several experiences with adversity.  I know that through these difficult challenges, it is important to maintain a clear vision and provide students with a learning environment that will allow them to succeed. This indicator will allow me to show that I can overcome adversity and learn from the feedback I receive.  I will be resilient and help my students and faculty achieve greatness.  Resiliency builds a stronger organization. 

I came across an interesting blog the other day that related directly to indicator 10.1.  You can read the full blog at the following webpage. https://www.edutopia.org/blog/8-pathways-cultivate-student-resilience-marilyn-price-mitchell  

Here are a few highlights from the blog and ways that you can cultivate resiliency in your classroom. 

The ability to meet and overcome challenges in ways that maintain or promote well-being plays an essential role in how students learn to achieve academic and personal goals. Resilient young people feel a sense of control over their own destinies. They know that they can reach out to others for support when needed, and they readily take initiative to solve problems. Teachers facilitate resilience by helping children think about and consider various paths through adversity. They also help by being resources, encouraging student decision-making, and modeling resilient competencies.

Five Ways to Cultivate Resilience

1. Promote self-reflection through literary essays or small-group discussions.

Short written essays or small-group discussion exercises that focus on heroic literary characters are an excellent way, particularly for younger students, to reflect on resilience and the role it plays in life success. After children have read a book or heard a story that features a heroic character, encourage them to reflect by answering the following questions. (See the Heroic Imagination Project for additional resources and videos.)

• ·         Who was the hero in this story? Why?
• ·         What challenge or dilemma did the hero overcome?
• ·         What personal strengths did the hero possess? What choices did he or she have to make?
• ·         How did other people support the hero?
• ·         What did the hero learn?
• ·         How do we use the same personal strengths when we overcome obstacles in our own lives? Can you share some examples?

2. Encourage reflection through personal essays.

Written exercises that focus on sources of personal strength can help middle and high school students learn resilience-building strategies that work best for them. For example, by exploring answers to the following questions, students can become more aware of their strengths and what they look for in supportive relationships with others.

• ·         Write about a person who supported you during a particularly stressful or traumatic time. How did they help you overcome this challenge? What did you learn about yourself?
• ·         Write about a friend that you supported as he or she went through a stressful event. What did you do that most helped your friend? What did you learn about yourself?
• ·         Write about a time in your life when you had to cope with a difficult situation. What helped and hindered you as you overcame this challenge? What learning did you take away that will help you in the future?

3. Help children (and their parents) learn from student failures.

In her insightful article Why Parents Need to Let Their Children Fail, published in The Atlantic, middle school teacher Jessica Lahey touched on a topic near and dear to every teacher's heart: How do I teach students to learn and grow through failure and setbacks when their parents are so intent on making them a shining star? The truth is that learning from failure is paramount to becoming a resilient young person. Teachers help when they:

• ·         Create a classroom culture where failure, setbacks, and disappointment are an expected and honored part of learning.
• ·         Establish and reinforce an atmosphere where students are praised for their hard work, perseverance, and grit, not just for grades and easy successes.
• ·         Hold students accountable for producing their own work, efforts from which they feel ownership and internal reward.
• ·         Educate and assure parents that supporting kids through failure builds resilience -- one of the best developmental outcomes that they can give their children.

4. Bring discussions about human resilience into the classroom.

Opportunities abound to connect resilience with personal success, achievement, and positive social change. Expand discussions about political leaders, scientists, literary figures, innovators, and inventors beyond what they accomplished to the personal strengths they possessed and the hardships they endured and overcame to reach their goals. Help students learn to see themselves and their own strengths through these success stories.

5. Build supportive relationships with students.

Good student-teacher relationships are those where students feel seen, felt, and understood by teachers. This happens when teachers are attuned to students, when they notice children's needs for academic and emotional support. These kinds of relationships strengthen resilience. When adults reflect back on teachers who changed their lives, they remember and cherish the teachers who encouraged and supported them through difficult times.

Do you have a teacher who played this role in your own life? What do you remember about him or her?

MARILYN PRICE-MITCHELL PHD'S PROFILE

There are a lot of great articles and resources on this blog.  It is well worth the visit.  Have a wonderful first week of October. 

Welcome

Good Morning MRE Staff

I am thrilled to have the opportunity to join the MRE family as your school counselor. My hope is that I can use my experiences as an elementary and high school teacher and a school counselor to enhance the dedication and commitment that you show to our students’ learning.  

My goal is to work together with teachers and administration for students’ success. I look forward to working closely with students in areas of their personal, social and academic growth and to assist students with overcoming barriers that may prevent them from achieving academic success. Working closely with teachers, I would like to include individual, small group and large group counseling as activities to help students build positive social skills, develop confidence in their ability to interact with their peers and others and learn ways to deal with problems and conflicts in a constructive manner.

I am looking forward to forming healthy and professional relationships with students, parents, faculty and staff, and the community. I have an open door policy and would be very flexible in adjusting my schedule to be supportive. As your school counselor, I am here to help.

Happy Monday!

Marie Gibson

From Chaos to Coherence: Managing Stress While Teaching

We feel it more than we should...stress. It's all around us, home, work etc. No matter how hard we try to remain calm and stress free it's almost impossible. The article below reminds us how important it is that we take care of ourselves first.  At the end of the article they share how educators can cope with stress.

Please take a second to click the link below and read the article. We are a team, we work together to create less stressful environment. We are happy that we have a team that we can rely on daily. Our team is our second family. Our second family is dependable, reliable, and supportive. We hope you had a stress free week and enjoy time with your students. As always, please let us know if you need anything. 

Coping With Stress:
Tips for Educators
Before educators can help students cope with their problems and be ready to learn, they must first take time to care for themselves, says Dr. Leah Davis. The following are ways educators can take control of their lives and manage their own stress so that they will be available to assist their students.

Make a list of things that you enjoy doing that are good for you. Arrange to do one a day.

Write down how you see yourself a year, five years, or ten years from now. Share your ideas and goals with someone you trust.

Write down at least five of your worries. Rank order your list by their importance in your life. By each worry write Accept, Change, or Reject. For each worry decide what your first step will be toward accepting, changing or rejecting it. Carry out the steps you listed.

http://www.educationworld.com/a_admin/admin/admin413.shtml

Principles of Effective Differentiation

Before I begin, I know this post is long, but it's valuable and important. Please take a few extra minutes to thoroughly read the information below.

New year, new students, new needs...These first few weeks you spent getting to know your students. You took notes, gave assessments, started planning...all what GREAT teachers do. Now how do we make sure we are constantly meeting every students needs? Some require more than others, we all know that. There is no black and white model. Every students is different, no two people are the same. It's our job to differentiation instruction....all in the hands of us! Remember, we are a TEAM...you have the support! 

You may be using various aspects of differentiation right now in your classrooms, but are you being explicit about the ways in which you differentiate? In others words:

• Are you conscious of the efforts you make to meet the needs of all your students?
• Do you keep track of the ways you address individual learning styles and preferences?
• Do you arrange classrooms and structure lessons to increase student motivation?
• Whenever possible, do you provide students with options and choices regarding how they
• are going to learn and how they are going to show their learning?
• Do you vary the ways in which you assess student learning?
• Do you use cooperative learning and grouping strategies to increase student participation?

Although additional work and effort are required up front, the payoff comes later in the lesson of study or even in the school year. The payoff comes when students achieve more in your classrooms, become more involved in classroom discussions, smile more during their school days, and, yes, even score higher on various assessments.

Teachers can create differentiated, personalized, or responsive classrooms in a number of ways. Figure 1.1 presents a concept map for thinking about and planning for effectively differentiated classrooms.

Figure 1.1. A Concept Map for Differentiating Instruction

A Definition of Differentiation

In the context of education, we define differentiation as a teacher's reacting responsively to a learner's needs. A teacher who is differentiating understands a student's needs to express humor, or work with a group, or have additional teaching on a particular skill, or delve more deeply into a particular topic, or have guided help with a reading passage—and the teacher responds actively and positively to that need. Differentiation is simply attending to the learning needs of a particular student or small group of students rather than the more typical pattern of teaching the class as though all individuals in it were basically alike.

The goal of a differentiated classroom is maximum student growth and individual success. As schools now exist, our goal is often to bring everyone to “grade level” or to ensure that everyone masters a prescribed set of skills in a specified length of time. We then measure everyone's progress only against a predetermined standard. Such a goal is sometimes appropriate, and understanding where a child's learning is relative to a benchmark can be useful. However, when an entire class moves forward to study new skills and concepts without any individual adjustments in time or support, some students are doomed to fail. Similarly, classrooms typically contain some students who can demonstrate mastery of grade-level skills and material to be understood before the school year begins—or who could do so in a fraction of the time we would spend “teaching” them. These learners often receive an A, but that mark is more an acknowledgment of their advanced starting point relative to grade-level expectations than a reflection of serious personal growth. In a differentiated classroom, the teacher uses grade-level benchmarks as one tool for charting a child's learning path. However, the teacher also carefully charts individual growth. Personal success is measured, at least in part, on individual growth from the learner's starting point—whatever that might be. Put another way, success and personal growth are positively correlated.

The remainder of Figure 1.1 expands on our definition of differentiation, providing a handy framework for thinking about, planning for, and evaluating the success of differentiation.

Principles That Govern Effective Differentiation

As Figure 1.1 suggests, some key principles guide differentiation. Understanding and adhering to these principles facilitate the work of the teacher and the success of the learner in a responsive classroom. Among the fundamental principles that support differentiation (not all of them shown on the concept map) are the following:

• A differentiated classroom is flexible. Demonstrating clarity about learning goals, both teachers and students understand that time, materials, modes of teaching, ways of grouping students, ways of expressing learning, ways of assessing learning, and other classroom elements are tools that can be used in a variety of ways to promote individual and whole-class success.
• Differentiation of instruction stems from effective and ongoing assessment of learner needs. In a differentiated classroom, student differences are expected, appreciated, and studied as a basis for instructional planning. This principle also reminds us of the tight bond that should exist between assessment and instruction. As teachers, we know what to do next when we recognize where students are in relation to our teaching and learning goals. We are also primed to teach most effectively if we are aware of our students' learning needs and interests. In a differentiated classroom, a teacher sees everything a student says or creates as useful information both in understanding that particular learner and in crafting instruction to be effective for that learner.
• Flexible grouping helps ensure student access to a wide variety of learning opportunities and working arrangements. In a flexibly grouped classroom, a teacher plans student working arrangements that vary widely and purposefully over a relatively short period of time. Such classrooms utilize whole-class, small-group, and individual explorations.Sometimes students work in similar readiness groups with peers who manifest similar academic needs at a given time. At other points, the teacher ensures that students of mixed readiness work together in settings that draw upon the strengths of each student. Sometimes students work with classmates who have like interests. In other situations, students of varied interests cooperate toward completing a task that calls on all the interests. Students might work with those who have similar learning patterns (for example, a group of auditory learners listening to a taped explanation), and some tasks call for a grouping of students with varied learning patterns (for example, a student who learns best analytically with one who learns best through practical application). Sometimes working arrangements are simply random; students work with whoever is sitting beside them, or they count off into groups, or they draw a partner's name. Finally, in a flexibly grouped classroom, students themselves sometimes decide on their work groups and arrangements, and sometimes teachers make the call. Figure 1.2 shows the possible grouping combinations that can be achieved by mixing all the options between “levels” of the three-tiered diagram. Flexible grouping used consistently and purposefully has a variety of benefits: opportunity for carefully targeted teaching and learning, access to all materials and individuals in the classroom, a chance for students to see themselves in a variety of contexts, and rich assessment data for the teacher who “auditions” each learner in a wide range of contexts.

Figure 1.2. Flexible Grouping Options

• All students consistently work with “respectful” activities and learning arrangements. This important principle provides that every learner must have tasks that are equally interesting and equally engaging, and which provide equal access to essential understanding and skills. In differentiated classrooms, a teacher's goal is that each child feels challenged most of the time; each child finds his or her work appealing most of the time; and each child grapples squarely with the information, principles, and skills which give that learner power to understand, apply, and move on to the next learning stage, most of the time, in the discipline being studied. Differentiation does not presume different tasks for each learner, but rather just enough flexibility in task complexity, working arrangements, and modes of learning expression that varied students find learning a good fit much of the time.
• Students and teachers are collaborators in learning. While the teacher is clearly a professional who diagnoses and prescribes for learning needs, facilitates learning, and crafts effective curriculum, students in differentiated classrooms are critical partners in classroom success. Students hold pivotal information about what works and does not work for them at any given moment of the teaching-learning cycle, they know their likes and preferred ways of learning, they can contribute greatly to plans for a smoothly functioning classroom, and they can learn to make choices that enhance both their learning and their status as a learner. In differentiated classrooms, teachers study their students and continually involve them in decision-making about the classroom. As a result, students become more independent as learners.

Elements of Curriculum That Can Be Differentiated

Content. A teacher can differentiate content. Content consists of facts, concepts, generalizations or principles, attitudes, and skills related to the subject, as well as materials that represent those elements. Content includes both what the teacher plans for students to learn and how the student gains access to the desired knowledge, understanding, and skills. In many instances in a differentiated classroom, essential facts, material to be understood, and skills remain constant for all learners. (Exceptions might be, for example, varying spelling lists when some students in a class spell at a 2nd grade level while others test out at an 8th grade level, or having some students practice multiplying by two a little longer, while some others are ready to multiply by seven.) What is most likely to change in a differentiated classroom is how students gain access to core learning. Some of the ways a teacher might differentiate access to content include

• Using math manipulatives with some, but not all, learners to help students understand a new idea.
• Using texts or novels at more than one reading level.
• Presenting information through both whole-to-part and part-to-whole approaches.
• Using a variety of reading-buddy arrangements to support and challenge students working with text materials.
• Reteaching students who need another demonstration, or exempting students who already demonstrate mastery from reading a chapter or from sitting through a reteaching session.
• Using texts, computer programs, tape recorders, and videos as a way of conveying key concepts to varied learners.

Process. A teacher can differentiate process. Process is how the learner comes to make sense of, understand, and “own” the key facts, concepts, generalizations, and skills of the subject. A familiar synonym for process is activity. An effective activity or task generally involves students in using an es- sential skill to come to understand an essential idea, and is clearly focused on a learning goal. A teacher can differentiate an activity or process by, for example, providing varied options at differing levels of difficulty or based on differing student interests. He can offer different amounts of teacher and student support for a task. A teacher can give students choices about how they express what they learn during a research exercise—providing options, for example, of creating a political cartoon, writing a letter to the editor, or making a diagram as a way of expressing what they understand about relations between the British and colonists at the onset of the American Revolution.

Products. A teacher can also differentiate products. We use the term products to refer to the items a student can use to demonstrate what he or she has come to know, understand, and be able to do as the result of an extended period of study. A product can be, for example, a portfolio of student work; an exhibition of solutions to real-world problems that draw on knowledge, understanding, and skill achieved over the course of a semester; an end-of-unit project; or a complex and challenging paper-and-pencil test. A good product causes students to rethink what they have learned, apply what they can do, extend their understanding and skill, and become involved in both critical and creative thinking. Among the ways to differentiate products are to:

• Allow students to help design products around essential learning goals.
• Encourage students to express what they have learned in varied ways.
• Allow for varied working arrangements (for example, working alone or as part of a team to complete the product).
• Provide or encourage use of varied types of resources in preparing products.
• Provide product assignments at varying degrees of difficulty to match student readiness.
• Use a wide variety of kinds of assessments.
• Work with students to develop rubrics of quality that allow for demonstration of both whole-class and individual goals.

Student Characteristics for Which Teachers Can Differentiate

Students vary in at least three ways that make modifying instruction a wise strategy for teachers: Students differ (1) in their readiness to work with a particular idea or skill at a given time, (2) in pursuits or topics that they find interesting, and (3) in learning profiles that may be shaped by gender, culture, learning style, or intelligence preference.

Readiness. To differentiate in response to student readiness, a teacher constructs tasks or provides learning choices at different levels of difficulty. Some ways in which teachers can adjust for readiness include

• Adjusting the degree of difficulty of a task to provide an appropriate level of challenge.
• Adding or removing teacher or peer coaching, use of manipulatives, or presence or absence of models for a task. Teacher and peer coaching are known as scaffolding because they provide a framework or a structure that supports student thought and work.
• Making the task more or less familiar based on the proficiency of the learner's experiences or skills for the task.
• Varying direct instruction by small-group need.

Interest. To differentiate in response to student interest, a teacher aligns key skills and material for understanding from a curriculum segment with topics or pursuits that intrigue students. For example, a student can learn much about a culture or time period by carefully analyzing its music. A social studies teacher may encourage one student to begin exploring the history, beliefs, and customs of medieval Europe by examining the music of the time. A study of science in the Middle Ages might engage another student more.

Some ways in which teachers can differentiate in response to student interest include

• Using adults or peers with prior knowledge to serve as mentors in an area of shared interest.
• Providing a variety of avenues for student exploration of a topic or expression of learning.
• Providing broad access to a wide range of materials and technologies.
• Giving students a choice of tasks and products, including student-designed options.
• Encouraging investigation or application of key concepts and principles in student interest areas.

Learning Profile. To differentiate in response to student learning profile, a teacher addresses learning styles, student talent, or intelligence profiles. Some ways in which teachers can differentiate in response to student learning profile include

• Creating a learning environment with flexible spaces and learning options.
• Presenting information through auditory, visual, and kinesthetic modes.
• Encouraging students to explore information and ideas through auditory, visual, and kinesthetic modes.
• Allowing students to work alone or with peers.
• Ensuring a choice of competitive, cooperative, and independent learning experiences.
• Balancing varied perspectives on an issue or topic.
• Providing authentic learning opportunities in various intelligence or talent areas.
• As you can see, differentiation of content, process, and products is achievable in each of the areas of student readiness, interest, and learning profile.

Instructional Strategies That Facilitate Differentiation

Instructional strategies are tools of the teacher's art. Like all tools, they can be used artfully or clumsily, appropriately or inappropriately. The person who uses them determines their worth. No instructional strategy can compensate for a teacher who lacks proficiency in his content area, is unclear about learning goals, plans an unfocused activity, or does not possess the leadership and management skills to orchestrate effective classroom functioning.

Nonetheless, a teacher who is comfortable and skilled with the use of multiple instructional strategies is more likely to reach out effectively to varied students than is the teacher who uses a single approach to teaching and learning. Teachers are particularly limited when the sole or primary instructional strategy is teacher-centered (such as lecture), or drill-and-practice (such as worksheets).

Numerous instructional strategies invite attention to student readiness, interest, and learning profile. Among these strategies are learning centers, interest groups, group investigation, complex instruction, compacting, learning contracts, tiered activities, tiered products, rubrics constructed jointly by teacher and student, use of alternative forms of assessment, and many others. (For more information on instructional strategies that support differentiation, see Tomlinson, 1999, The Differentiated Classroom: Responding to the Needs of All Learners, listed in the resource section at the end of this chapter.)

By sharing a common vocabulary and beginning with a common set of principles related to differentiation, school leaders have more tools to provide guidance and direction for all staff members as they begin the journey toward developing more academically responsive classrooms.

Additional Reflections about Differentiated Classrooms

Attending to learner variance and need historically has made common sense in a classroom. This approach also reflects decades of proliferating knowledge about the brain, learning styles and varieties of intelligence, the influence of gender and culture on how we learn, human motivation, and how individuals construct meaning. Teachers and school leaders who spend time in a classroom see the significant array of learner differences. People who study the scholarship of this field understand differences and the need to attend to them, if we are to serve properly the children and families who trust us.

Beyond the general framework and principles of differentiated instruction are at least three additional considerations for educators who desire to provide leadership in differentiation. These interrelated considerations provide a compass for our journey.

First, differentiation that is rooted in ineffective classroom practice cannot succeed. Trivial and fluffy curriculum remains trivial and fluffy even after differentiation. Varied versions of an ill-focused product are no more helpful. A pernicious classroom environment cannot invite learners to be comfortable with themselves and one another. A teacher who does not see assessment as a continual window into the needs of her students has little sound footing from which to differentiate instruction. A teacher who cannot learn to trust and share responsibility with her students would, at best, have students seated in rows and completing varied worksheets silently and alone. Perhaps the most singular truth about providing leadership for differentiated classrooms is that you should often feel as though you are moving backwards rather than forwards! You need to spend time reflecting on and providing leadership in the fundamentals of effective teaching when or before you provide leadership in the more sophisticated skills of differentiation.

Second, differentiation is more than a strategy or series of strategies—it is a way of thinking about teaching and learning. In other words, facilitating teacher growth in differentiation is not so much about introducing tiered lessons, independent study, alternative forms of assessment—or even moving to multitext adoption. Practicing quality differentiation is much more about knowing what matters to teach, realizing that learning happens in us rather than to us, continually reflecting on the “particularness” of each of our students, and pondering how to develop both the commonalities students share as humans and the singularities students bring as individuals. If we as teachers understood the nature of our art more fully and deeply, more differentiation would likely evolve from that understanding. Learning some new “tricks” with little sense of why they matter is less helpful.

Third, movement toward differentiation in teaching is movement toward expertise. Regarding differentiation, teachers can say, “I already do that.” Most teachers at some times and in some ways obviously adapt or adjust for students' learning needs. The truly expert teacher understands, however, that even after a dozen careers in the classroom, he could still learn more about his subject and his learners and how to link each learner and subject with power and joy. In truth, providing effective leadership for differentiation fosters the sort of continual growth teachers need throughout their classroom lives in order to help each learner build the best life possible. Effective leadership for differentiation comes from dogged, unremitting insistence on and support for the fact that expert teachers teach students the most important things in the most effective ways. The mission of effective leadership is to maximize the number of expert teachers in a school's or district's classrooms.

While reading this, I immediately thought of our WIN plans. We are using data and creating groups based on our student needs. The groups are lead by professional with skills and talents, YOU! They are standard focused with an end goal in mind, students success. We can do it and we WILL! I am very excited to see our WIN plans in action and I know the students are as well. Remember, teamwork makes the dream work. 

http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/100216/chapters/Understanding-Differentiated-Instruction@-Building-a-Foundation-for-Leadership.aspx