25 years of teaching and no two kids are the same...How do we do it?

As an educator, we are constantly learning and growing ourselves.  We are in the business of growing minds.  Each year we are blessed with about 25 little minds ready to learn at the elementary level and many more in older grades.  I always get asked, how do you do it.  The most impactful strategies I have learned over the years centers around differentiated instruction techiniques.  By teachers getting to know the learner, we can use their interests, background, and various levels to engage their minds to help them grow.  A great article that explains how this works is actually found in the National Library of Medicine.  The basics of the article include several ways that learners are different and how teachers can use those differences to help them grow.  I will give you a quick run down, but then the rest of the blog will go in to specific strategies or ideas used in the classrooms at our school.  

The Basics:

Educators will get to the know the learner and then customize the learning around that learners likes, strengths, or learning styles to help the learner stay engaged and grow.  This helps the learner feel valued, successful, and engaged in the learning process to keep working hard.  

Classroom examples:

4th graders might be required to learn information about the American Revolution.  That information might come in the form of reading, lectures, videos, notes, partner work, reinactments or simulations, evaluating art, etc.  Each one of those options is a different way someone learns.  So teachers will provide a variety of learning opportunites to help meet those different types of learners.  Then, to show the learning has taken place, there could be some choice in the final assignment.  Students might pick from a list of options like writing a journal entry, creating a newspaper article, recording a video, drawing a poster, etc.  This allows students whose minds work differently show their understanding in a variety of ways.  

My Goal:

By posting about different strategies teachers are using, I hope to help parents understand what their child might be experiencing in the classroom.  It will also help parents be able to talk with their child about their strengths and weaknesses and goal setting for themselves as learners.  As an educator, we have so many requirements to teach and so many learners that are different, that I hope to give you a little insight into how we make that happen and why sometimes it is trial and error.  Sometimes we are not successful.  But, according to Thomas Edison, "I have not failed.  I have just found 10,000 ways that will not work."  Educators will keep trying until we find something that works.  

Graphic by Carol Ann Tomlinson