Month: January 2024

Happy New Year 2024!

As we move into a new calendar year and the second half of another school year, I wanted to reflect a little with you about our differences.

The great Fred Rogers once said:

“Something else children need is the understanding that 

every person is 

DIFFERENT.

With that understanding can come children’s appreciation

of their own differences and the courage to 

be who they are – 

each one different from everybody else.”

Sometimes variations of this word DIFFERENT can get confusing in education and in how it is implemented into a school’s best practices.

There is an enormous focus and demand for DIFFERENTiation in the classroom as a result of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and ESSA (Every Student Succeeds Act).

We need to meet a student where they are. Then, we can figure out and accommodate all the different ways that child learns and succeeds. We don’t want to leave any child behind, and we do want them to succeed. 

However, I feel that what is said and what is practiced in education sometimes are very far apart. In fact, they are usually quite opposite.

I am a like a broken record now with voicing my perspective that we are preaching out of the box, differentiated and accommodating strategies for learning, YET…we are standardizing everything and expecting every child to jump into the same box WE have created for them.

AND, there is now a current trend to allow for fewer and fewer differences among children. 

There is even legislation being passed to not allow children to see something or someone different from themselves because of fear of indoctrinating them to a different way of thinking or being.

It is a fact that our brain is wired to see differences first before similarities. Perhaps that is so that we can be curious to learn more about those differences rather than be afraid of them?

Or is it for survival – what is different is a threat to my safety, well being, etc.?

As Fred Rogers says, it takes COURAGE, and as we know, there is a lot of fear permeating the walls of the classroom today.

So, how can we differentiate as well as allow for differences in the classroom 

in order to create a more nurturing, supportive learning environment 

for children (and teachers, for that matter!) and therefore,

MAKE A DIFFERENCE?

(more…)