Delivering What They Seek

   
     A differentiated classroom sounds easy in the pages of a text book or in a video, but in a classroom it can be come very difficult.  Each student may be seeking the same things in our classroom, the five items mentioned in the prior post of challenge, power, affirmation, contribution, and purpose, but to each student they are different.  Students come from all different backgrounds and each has a different way of obtaining the the sense of fulfillment in the classroom.
     The text offers a couple of different stories of students who are not from the background of most teachers and possibly a different background than the majority of their classmates.  As teachers we must be very careful not to fall into the trap of massing all of our students into one ball or into a one size fits all group.  We think a lesson is a success because most of the class was engaged or we think we flopped on a lesson as most of the class was not engaged or did not perform well on an assessment.  This is the difficult part of differentiation, we must look at each child as an individual and see what they learned and if there needs are satisfied.  We must reflect on how the lesson benefited each individual and not the entire group. 
     As mentioned before differentiation is easy to put into words bit difficult to actually execute.  How do we do it?  How do we make each lesson and our entire classroom meet the needs of individual students?  I am only in chapter two of this text and I am not an expert on this subject in any way, but I do have some ideas.  First, teach each lesson using as many strategies as possible.  Try to incorporate group and individual work.  Plan physical movement, art, and music into as many lessons as possible.  By differentiating our instruction, not from lesson to lesson, but within each lesson we stand a much better chance of reaching every student.  Secondly, we must get to know each student in our class as an individual.  We must know where they come from and what makes each child tick.  Even students who have similar backgrounds may not get their needs fulfilled in the same environment.  Nothing is more critical than developing that relationship, how can you provide a child with their favorite meal if you do not know what foods they like?  In order to provide a classroom that gives all children what they seek, we must know each child on a personal level.  Yes, it will take time and effort, but as explained before in practice differentiation is hard.