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The Differentiated Classroom: Responding to the Needs of All Learners
Chapter 4. Learning Environments That Support Differentiated Instruction
A really good teacher is someone who: knows that a student can teach and a teacher can learn, integrates him[self] or herself into the learning environment, literally taking a seat among the conglomerate of desks, proving that he or she enjoys associating with the minds made of sponges, ready to absorb, appreciates that what one thinks and says is more important than what one uses to fill in the blanks.
Krista, Age 17 Jane Bluestein, Editor, Mentors, Masters and Mrs. MacGregor:, Stories of Teachers Making a Difference
Not long ago, a teacher asked me an intriguing question. Her inquiry was earnest—and I responded accordingly—but I have refashioned my answer to her dozens of times since I left the place we shared for a day. Her question was, "Is it possible to differentiate instruction in a class where all the students sit in rows and where most of their work is done alone and in silence?"
Her brow was furrowed when she asked the question, and I'm sure mine was furrowed as I replied, "Yes, I think you could apply many principles of differentiated instruction in that setting. You could still offer students appropriately challenging content. You could offer activities at levels that provide moderate challenge for different students. You could offer product assignments that wrap around individual interests and intelligence strengths."
I paused and added, "You'd have difficulty with students whose learning styles are itchy for collaboration, conversation, and movement." Another pause. "But if I had a choice between a class in which everyone sat silently in straight rows and worked on the same things, in the same way, over the same time spans—or one in which they all sat silently in straight rows and worked on tasks at appropriate degrees of difficulty and with links to their interests—I'd opt for the latter in a heartbeat."
I did go on to say that having only those two options limited both teacher and students. I did not stop in my tracks and say, "Much of what we're talking about here loses its power if the classroom environment is defective."
The teacher who asked the question was "asking between the lines." That is, her words posed only part of her question. She really was saying something like, "Okay: I know I have students who come to me at varying points of readiness for my curriculum. I know I'm losing many of them from confusion or boredom. I can even accept that tapping into student interests and learning profiles could help them learn more effectively. I can go along with you on much of that. I don't think I can give up my image of the lady in front of the room who runs a tight ship. You're already suggesting that the way I look at my curriculum should change. Surely you're not asking me to reconstruct my image of myself as a teacher, too!"
I haven't changed my mind about what I said to this teacher. I still think that student tasks should focus on essential understandings and skills. The tasks should be presented in varying ways so that each student has to stretch beyond his or her comfort zone. These kinds of tasks are far preferable to "standard issue" work. It's just that I also believe so much more about the pervasive importance of classroom environment than I was alert enough to say that day. This teacher was asking me if it makes sense to cure a patient's cold when the patient also has a badly broken leg. Yes, it does. But without a healed leg, the patient still suffers from pain, distress, and a hobbled life.
The rest of this chapter contains some of what I could have said to this teacher. It is pivotal to the concept of differentiated instruction. Children, teachers, and classrooms come together as microcosms of human existence. In unhealthy microcosms, some good things still happen. Great things, however, consistently come from robust, healthy places.
Teaching as a Learning Triangle
I once watched a young, bright, dedicated math teacher engage in an unspoken battle with his disenchanted students. The teacher's knowledge of geometry was deep and broad. His activities were relevant and intriguing. Yet his adolescent students vacillated between detachment and hostility. What should have been an exemplary class was rife with unspoken animosity. I watched the situation for what seemed eternity, and I was as happy as the teacher and students when the bell delivered us all from more suffering.
"Why isn't it working?" he asked me later. "What's wrong?"
Like many teachers, I never had many occasions to state explicitly my beliefs about creating a learning environment. I just taught day after day, trying to build on what worked and eliminate what didn't. I think my answer to this teacher, however, was an important verbalization of what my students and colleagues had taught me during two decades in the classroom.
"Artful teaching is a like a learning triangle," I responded. "It's an equilateral triangle with the teacher, the kids, and the `stuff' at each point. If any side goes unattended and gets out of balance with the others, the artfulness is lost."
This young geometry teacher had problems with two of the legs of the triangle (see Figure 4.1). While he knew the content brilliantly, he was insecure and didn't have a deep devotion to his kids. As a result, he was a peacock in his classroom, strutting about with a show designed to convince his students (and himself) that he was a hot commodity. A one-sided triangle—a triangle with only the content—isn't a triangle at all.
Figure 4.1. Artful Teaching
It's important to understand what probably should happen with, for, and among students, teachers, and the content in a classroom. Then teacher and students together can construct the sort of environment that strengthens the learning triangle.
The Top of the Triangle
By its definition, an equilateral triangle is a geometric figure with three equal sides. Thus, technically, it has no top, since any one point of the triangle can be the "top." For our purposes, however, the teacher has to be atop the learning triangle.
The teacher is the inevitable leader in any effective classroom. Leadership can and should be shared with the learners, but responsibility for the leadership resides with the adult who is charged by professionalism, tradition, and law with that task. A teacher who plays that leadership role effectively must be secure about himself—must like himself. A teacher who is essentially insecure about himself is unlikely to create a climate of acceptance an affirmation between himself and the students, or among the students. That does not mean a secure teacher lacks doubts, is free of uncertainty, or is unwavering in direction. Quite the contrary: The variables in a classroom are so great they make uncertainty both inevitable and proper.
Instead, a secure teacher expects to be a learner all day, every day, and he is comfortable with the ambiguity of that role. It's not so important to be right as to be open. It's not so important to have all the answers as to be hungry for them. A secure teacher comes away from today with important questions to puzzle about overnight and the belief that today contains the insights necessary for a more effective tomorrow. A secure teacher believes that having these kinds of insights is professionally challenging and personally satisfying.
Further, the secure teacher accepts the reality that he controls the climate in the classroom. His approach to students and instruction determines whether respect, humiliation, delight, drudgery, possibility, or defeat wins the day. He knows that he will err some days, but he also knows that he has the capacity and responsibility to avoid the same error another day.
Bob Strachota (1996) reflects what it means to be a teacher who knows he does not have all the answers—but that he has the power to find them.
Neither my life in school nor my life away from school is particularly blissful. My car breaks down, I quarrel with my friends, I get sick, and I worry about my children. I have to keep a watch on my moods, needs, biases, weaknesses, and limits in order to see how they are affecting my work. If I can monitor how my emotions are at play in my classroom, I can better put a brake on them when they are destructive, and better allow my joyful, level, nurturant side to dominate (p. 75).
Strachota's primary goal is to develop students' capacity to take control of their own lives and learning. He also is aware that he is atop the learning triangle in facilitating that end.
Students in a Healthy Classroom
Mary Ann Smith is one of my mentors. She doesn't know that, because she moved away before I had the sense to tell her. She taught primary students when I taught early adolescents, but the students' age difference is irrelevant. What she knows is essential whether the learner is 5 or 55.
Every year, Mary Ann's principal gave her a hefty supply of misfits. I often received those students five or six years later. As I listened to their parents talk, I realized that the only year those youngsters felt comfortable in school was the year they had Mrs. Smith.
The mother of four boys, Mary Ann simply created a classroom in much the same way she created her home. Here are some things she knew about kids in both places.
Each kid is like all others and different from all others.
Kids need unconditional acceptance as human beings.
Kids need to believe they can become something better than they are.
Kids need help in living up to their dreams.
Kids have to make their own sense of things.
Kids often make their own sense of things more effectively and coherently when adults collaborate with them.
Kids need action, joy, and peace.
Kids need power over their lives and learning.
Kids need help to develop that power and use it wisely.
Kids need to be secure in a larger world.
Mary Ann's goal with her own sons was to make each of them whole, happy, and independent. She adored each boy, as much for his dissimilarities as for his commonalities. She emphasized what each boy did best. She spent time with each child, but they didn't necessarily do the same things. She provided opportunities for each of them, but they weren't always the same opportunities. She monitored their growth, but she provided guidance and discipline in response to their specific needs and issues, not according to a common prescription.
Her classroom was a lot like her home. It was a given that students would differ. She found time for each child at many points during each day. She provided opportunities for everyone's growth and offered guidance as needed. The time she spent with individuals differed in format and content, and the opportunities and guidance differed according to the nature of the dreamer and the dream.
With each child, she looked for strengths and set out to find ways to fortify them. Charlie needed different art materials than some of the others. Eli needed different books to read. Sonja needed to feel the reassuring presence of the teacher to help keep her temper in tow. Michelle needed the teacher to remember to "let go" more often.
All these children were dreamers. Mary Ann and her students talked about how they were growing. They also spoke of how Mary Ann was proud of each one for his or her particular growth toward a dream. It was fine that Micah read more than the others, that Philip wiggled and moved around the classroom more, that Chauncie asked unusual questions, that Bess worked first with cubes and then with numbers, that Jorge sometimes asked his questions in Spanish first, then in English.
Mary Ann's room was big in heart, options, and support. It was big on standards, but it was short on standardization. And the 8-year-olds understood that just fine. They were not standardized people. They knew it, and they liked themselves and one another better for that.
The Content in a Healthy Classroom
A teacher once told me a story about how she came to know what and how to teach in her science class. She had wrestled with curriculum guides that were too long, texts that were too dense or too simple, labs that were sometimes fun but not illuminating, and labs that were neither illuminating nor fun. She watched her students drift away too often, and she felt smothered by what she perceived to be immutable mandates.
A colleague said to her, "Forget all the books and manuals for a minute. Go back to what it was that used to make science magic for you. Think about what it used to feel like to do science. Then assume the kids you teach will only have your class to learn about science. It's their only science class—ever. What do you need to teach them so they will love science? Think about that for a minute. Then change one part of what I just asked you to do. Assume you only have three kids to teach: your own three children. And assume that at the end of the year, you will die. What would you teach them about science in that year?"
The teacher said to me, "I've understood what I have to do ever since that day. I don't always know how to do what I have to do, but knowing what I have to do has changed the way I think about what I teach."
Judy Larrick taught a group of disenchanted high school students during sixth period. The curriculum guide required that she teach "classics" that her students found inaccessible and unintelligible. Attendance was down, and Judy's spirits were just as low. Lethargy was the only commodity on the rise. Judy struggled through the year cheerleading her students and trying to inject energy into essentially dead class periods. The year ended, but Judy didn't berate her students or lament the approach of another year. She went hunting for solutions.
When September came, the curriculum guide was still in place. Sixth period was still a collection of discouraged and irascible adolescents. But as school began, Judy asked, "Anybody here ever been a victim? What does it mean to be a victim? What does it feel like? Can a victim control anything in life? What? When?" A classroom full of "victims" engaged in spirited exchanges. With their teacher, they built a concept map of "victim." Finally, Judy offered, "Want to read a book about somebody else who was a victim, to see whether things play out like you said?" The students read "Antigone" as though they were discoverers of ultimate truth. Class attendance soared and remained high.
Seventh grade teacher Judy Schlimm reflected a similar viewpoint: "My goal as a history teacher is to help my students realize that history is not the study of dead people. It's students holding up a mirror created by the past and seeing themselves in it."
These three teachers understand the essential purpose of learning. It is not an endeavor that is marked primarily by accumulation of random data. It is something far more powerful. We are born trying to gain power over our environments. We live and die trying to figure out who we are; what life means; how to understand joy, pain, victory, and death; how we must relate to others; and why we are here. The disciplines we study—art, music, literature, mathematics, history, science, or philosophy—give us lenses that help us answer life's ultimate questions. The skills of those disciplines—reading, writing, map making, computation, or illustrating—give us power to use the understandings in meaningful ways (Phenix, 1986). Thinking and puzzling about unknowns gives us far more power than rote regurgitation of isolated names, dates, facts, and definitions.
The content in a healthy classroom is rooted in these realities. Thus, in a healthy classroom, what is taught and learned
is relevant to students; it seems personal, familiar, connected to the world they know;
helps students understand themselves and their lives more fully now, and will continue to do so as they grow up;
is authentic, offering "real" history or math or art, not just exercises about the subject;
can be used immediately for something that matters to the students; and
makes students more powerful in the present as well as in the future.
In a healthy classroom, what is taught welcomes youngsters as reasoning members of the human family, not to a standardized test or to a trivia match. As noted scientist Lewis Thomas (1983) reflects, "Instead of presenting the body of human knowledge as a mountainous structure of coherent information capable of explaining everything about everything if only we could master all the details, we should be acknowledging that it is, in real life, still a very modest mound of puzzlements that do not fit together at all" (p. 163). When subject matter is dynamic, intellectually intriguing, and personal—when it bestows power to the learner—the "details" also become more important and memorable.
Creating a Healthy Classroom Environment
Let's assume we have a teacher who is comfortable with both of her roles as leader and learner in the classroom. She understands and responds to students' essential human needs, and she understands what her subject matter really means for students. What sorts of things would that teacher do to create an environment in which she and her students continually grow in respect and caring for one another? How would she create an environment where subject matter is a catalyst for individual and group growth and appreciation? What does this teacher do to keep the learning triangle dynamic and balanced, to create a true community of learning?
Teaching is a heuristic endeavor, not an algorithmic one. Principles of teaching guide us, but are not recipes. Following are some characteristics of teaching and learning in healthy classroom environments. They are starting points for reflection, not a complete guide. Feel free to edit the list, to revise it, to add and subtract from it as you see fit.
The Teacher Appreciates Each Child as an Individual: In The Little Prince (Saint Exupery, 1943), a young traveler encounters a fox who asks the little boy to tame him. When the child is uncertain of the fox's meaning, the fox explains, "One only understands the things that one tames" (p. 83). He explains further that the process of taming takes a long time. "You must be very patient. . . . First you must sit down at a little distance from me. . . . I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstanding. But you will sit a little closer to me every day" (p. 84). The little boy comes to understand that through "taming," we learn to see the uniqueness in the thing we tame. "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye."
Teachers in healthy classrooms work continually to "tame" their students: to see who they really are, what makes them unique in the world. There is no such thing as a child who is unattractive. There is no such thing as a child who is "okay" without teacher intervention. The teacher "tames" all comers. Teachers in healthy classrooms also take the risk of allowing their students to know them as people. They take the risk of being "tamed" themselves.
The Teacher Remembers to Teach Whole Children: The teacher understands that children have intellect, emotions, and changing physical needs. He understands that he teaches children about writing or mathematics, not that he teaches mathematics or writing to children. He knows that sometimes emotions must come before the French lesson, and sometimes the French lesson can heal the emotions. He understands that a child without self-esteem will learn little. He also knows that genuine accomplishment will produce something more potent than self-esteem: self-efficacy. He knows that what the child brings from home cannot be left outside the classroom door, and for a lesson to be truly powerful, it must go home with the child.
The Teacher Continues to Develop Expertise: Genuine expertise in a subject area is not so much mastery of facts as it is the application of insights and skills. An expert historian does not answer questions at the end of a chapter; she looks for new levels of understanding about places, people, and events. A writer does not just put words on a page and follow rules of grammar. He investigates meanings in the ordinary and extraordinary stories of life.
Experts use the essential skills and understandings of their disciplines at a demanding, high-quality level. A colleague remarked to me recently that the plight of teachers is that we were taught to teach science, not to be scientists. We were taught to teach public speaking, not to be orators.
The Teacher Links Students and Ideas:Poet, novelist, and historical writer Paul Fleischman (Robb, 1997) described how he hoped teachers would use his book, Dateline: Troy, which illustrates the events of The Iliad with headlines from contemporary newspapers. His comments should spark meaningful reflection among all teachers.
My real hope is that teachers will be inspired to do what the best teachers have been doing all along—making seemingly remote subjects real and relevant to their students. . . . I think that showing them meaningful links to their own lives will make real readers of them, rather than takers of tests and memorizers of facts. This applies to every subject in the curriculum. Why else did I get a D in trigonometry? I was unconvinced that mastering sines and tangents was interesting in its own right or of any practical value to me. I'm confident, however, that the right teacher could convince me (p. 41).
The Teacher Strives for Joyful Learning:Both words in "joyful learning" are important. In a healthy classroom, the teacher is serious about learning. It is a human birthright to be a learner. There is little we do that is more important. Further, the teacher knows we have too little time for exploring and understanding. Thus, he focuses on what matters most about a subject and ensures that the essentials are at the core of students' experiences.
On the other hand, he knows that children are somehow programmed to respond to joy. They are still full of the energy and rhythms of young life. Moving, touching things, laughing, and telling stories are prime entry points for important skills and understandings. Thus, the teacher seeks to ensure both engagement and understanding for all learners in every lesson.
Recently, a teacher in a summer program for advanced learners left a note on my office door after her fourth day of class. It said simply, "I went for rigor and got rigor mortis." Even highly advanced learners needed joy and challenge, as they made clear to this teacher.
The Teacher Offers High Expectations—and Lots of Ladders: In a healthy classroom, the teacher helps students dream big. She understands that not all of the dreams will be alike, but each student needs big dreams and concrete ways to climb to them. Thus, the teacher teaches for success. That means she knows quite clearly a child's next learning benchmarks and the scaffolding needed to get there. This may include time lines, rubrics, carefully delineated product assignments, varied working arrangements in the classroom, multiple resources, partnerships with instructional specialists, or small-group reteaching or extension.
Most young learners don't know how to grow beyond where they are today until a teacher shows the way. In a healthy classroom, the teacher plays the role of a winning coach. She provides a game plan that ensures maximum success for each student. Then she stays on the sidelines, encouraging and offering advice as students "play the game."
The Teacher Helps Students Make Their Own Sense of Ideas: As learners, we seldom "repeat our way to understanding." That is, giving back information through a recitation, worksheet, or test seldom produces a learner who retains and uses ideas and information. Many teachers have seen a powerful illustration of this through their own teacher education classes. Because they had no context for what professors were telling them, they often thought the classes were pointless. Once they were teaching—and had a context for the information—they had forgotten it.
Healthy classrooms are characterized by thought, wondering, and discovery. Says elementary teacher Bob Strachota (1996):
Unless we go through the complexities of struggle and invention, our knowledge is empty. If this is true, I cannot transfer my knowledge and experience to children whom I teach. Instead I have to find ways to help children take responsibility for inventing their own understanding of the world and how to live in it. To do this, I have to struggle against both my training and my instincts which strongly urge me to be directive: to tell children what I know, to tell them what to do (p. 5).
The Teacher Shares the Teaching with Students: Teachers in healthy classrooms continually invite their students to be a part of the teaching. They do this in a number of ways. First, these teachers make it possible for students to teach one another. They believe that each student is an effective teacher of some things some of the time, but at other times they need to be taught. Second, they engage students in conversations about class rules, schedules, and procedures. Third, they do "metacognitive teaching." That is, these teachers explain to students such things as how they plan for classes, what classroom issues they puzzle over when they go home at night, and how they chart progress. While they know their leadership role, teachers in these classrooms understand that their students come with vast amounts of tacit knowledge, a clear sense of what works in their world, and valuable insights about themselves and their peers.
The Teacher Clearly Strives for Student Independence: A director of a play has a peculiar job. For weeks, she orchestrates every move made by various people in a variety of roles, from actors to support personnel. Little happens without her intervention in one way or another. When the play opens, however, the director is essentially useless. If the cast and crew still need her, she is a failure.
Teaching is, or at least ought to be, like that. Every day, the teacher should make himself increasingly useless in his students' lives. These kinds of teachers do not provide solutions when students can figure things out for themselves. They provide directions and guidelines for quality, but they leave some ambiguity, choice, and flexibility so that students have to make leaps of transfer and apply common sense. They take careful measure of how much responsibility children can manage, making sure to give them that much—and coaching for a bit more as well.
Because there are too many children in classrooms, teachers often find it easier to do things for students than to contend with the complexities of having them make independent judgments. Teachers often tell me that their 2nd, 5th, or 10th graders are "just too immature to work independently." This leaves me wondering. Can you name the classroom where virtually all students work with high degrees of independence for great chunks of the day? It's kindergarten—peopled by 5-year-olds.
The Teacher Uses Positive Energy and Humor: In healthy classrooms, you hear continual talk about the importance of whatever is undertaken. There is a consistent sense of urgency about what is to be learned. It isn't a sense of hurriedness, but a sense that time and topic are valuable and to be treated as such. You see the kind of planning that's done for a promising trip. Teacher and students are full of anticipation as they calculate destinations, map routes, and adjust to new contingencies.
There is a clear expectation that everyone deals with everyone else with respect and kindness. In these places, you hear laughter. Humor and creativity are close kin. Humor stems from making unexpected and pleasurable connections, from freedom to be spontaneous, from the sense that errors can be surprisingly instructive. The humor is never sarcastic or cutting. It is the sort of laughter that stems from the capacity to laugh with one another.
"Discipline" Is More Covert than Overt:Children in every classroom need reminders about how to work and how to act. It's a necessary part of growing up to be emotionally and socially sound. In healthy classrooms, however, discipline problems are rarely cataclysmic. Students gain attention and power in positive ways. They are accepted and valued, and they know it. They are aware that the teacher not only expects great things of them, but he is their partner in working toward those goals. There is opportunity to work and learn in ways that are most comfortable to them as individuals. Clear guidelines help students know how to make appropriate decisions. Genuine effort more than likely results in genuine success.
In such environments, many of the tensions that lead to misbehavior are eliminated, or at least minimized. When there is a need to deal with a severe or recurring problem, respect for the student, desire for positive growth, and shared decision-making result in understanding and learning, not conflict between adversaries.
Teaching Isn't So Different from Life
One summer when I was a child, I found a litter of kittens tucked away in a small space behind an old garage. I nearly burst waiting for my best friend to come home so I could take her to see the wonderful thing I'd discovered. All the way to the kittens, I told her how amazing my surprise was going to be. Between my exuberance and her anticipation, our walking was a cross between toe dancing and flight. When we got to the garage, I stepped back, pointed toward the tiny space, and said, "It's your turn! You go back and see."
A healthy classroom environment feels a lot like that experience. A teacher continues to explore for wonderful finds. Sometimes she invites individuals to share the journey with her, sometimes a small group, sometimes a whole class. Whoever she takes feels specially chosen, because there is something in the invitation that says, "You are so important that I must show you the treasures I have found!"
The anticipation for this journey is great. The pace is brisk. And then there is the point where the teacher steps back and says, "I've been there. It's your turn. You think about it your way and see what your eyes make of it. You'll know what to do." Then the teacher watches the learner learn, and in so doing the teacher becomes a learner all over again.
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