Teach your Children Well—Hot Topics in Education Radio Program
“If You Haven’t Learned It, I Haven’t Taught It”
Rich Weinfeld and Michelle Davis M.Ed.
Rich: Hello everybody and welcome to Teach Your Children Well – Hot Topics in Education. I am Rich Weinfeld.
Michelle: And hello everyone, I am Michelle Davis. Our show is dedicated to excellence in education. And we are going to explore issues every week that relate to schools and school systems because we believe that with high expectations and an education system that works we can make the difference between what we are now as a society and what we actually could be. We hope that educators and parents alike will learn tools and strategies to effectively advocate for the children in their lives. And children are our best natural resource so let’s teach our children well and create an education system that works to develop a future of leaders who will make our world a better place to be. And Rich, why don’t you tell the listeners what we are up to today and what our topic is all about.
Rich: Hmm, Michelle and I both on a daily basis advocate for kids to get appropriate education whether they are special education students or gifted education students or a combination of the both and we feel like in order to effectively advocate the first thing an advocate needs to know is what are they advocating for. What does that ideal classroom look like? That is something that Michelle and I are going to be emphasizing in our Special Needs Advocacy Institute which is going to run for the first time the first weekend in October. And we invite you to visit specialneedsadvocacyinstitute.com to learn about that. But in focusing on that ideal classroom we are honored today to have a real leader in efforts to educate folks about what does an ideal classroom look like and what should be the elements. And we are calling today’s show “If you haven’t learned it, I haven’t taught it.” And that is a direct quote from today’s guest Carol Ann Tomlinson. And maybe we will ask her to talk a little bit about that quote. Today we will ask Carol Ann to talk about and we will discuss with her what does the ideal classroom look like? How would you know if your child has one? How would you the teacher know if you’ve developed this ideal? In order to have an outstanding classroom, Michelle and I believe teachers must both challenge and meet the needs of all learners in the classroom, must provide instruction about important concepts in a way that all children can be successful. And so how do teachers plan these lessons that have these characteristics? How do parents know that their children are effectively educated in this way? We are going to talk all about that with Carol Ann who is the author of The Differentiated Classroom: Responding to the Needs of All Learnersas well as countless and I do mean countless other books and articles along the same topic. We like to start each week by talking about some of the hot topics of the week that are in the news about education and I know Michelle and I have both found a couple of topics that we want to share with you today. First of all this is teacher appreciation week and we both want to say how much we appreciate the many wonderful teachers who have enriched our lives, the many wonderful teachers that each of us have worked with and teachers don’t get recognized enough and deserve incredible recognition. One of the hot topics that I came across this week is a way to encourage teachers to get even higher scores on students’ test scores which Michelle and I don’t think is the best way to recognize teachers or to appreciate them but it is certainly something that is hot and ongoing in the news and Education Week this week reported about value added research methods which specifically is a way to look at test results to see not just how high a student scored but to look at what kind of trajectory were student is on before they came to the present teacher and then what difference did this current teacher make in those test results. And the US Department of Education gave the go ahead for every state to apply for approval to test these growth models as a way to measure annual yearly progress and to really see if students are making the gains, I’m sorry students and schools are making the gains they should under No Child Left Behind. And Education Week points out that it is problematic because first of all looking at any one year is just a snapshot and some of the experts in the field are really encouraging that a multi year look would be need more than just one year. Also in some studies that have been done the teachers that appear to be making the difference one year are not making the difference the next year and so leads to the question about whether it is really the teachers whether it may be the students that were placed in their classroom, are the students being placed randomly or are principals perhaps choosing to place certain kids with certain teachers which influence the outcomes. So a lot of things are problematic with this value added piece and we would encourage school systems to think more deeply before just jumping on this bandwagon. Michelle, any thoughts about that?
Michelle: Well yeah, I would like to piggyback actually on the topic of you know I also found in Education Week you know what is going to make the difference in our school systems and you know Rich you and I have explored this topic when we had our very first show and we interviewed Todd White. Education Week picks up on the Time Magazinearticle that we discussed in that show with Todd White which was “How to Make Great Teachers” and Education Week has published an article saying, it is a commentary called “The Teaching Penalty”. And it starts out by saying how to make great teachers referencing again the Time Magazine article was the issue was the cover story of a recent issue of Time Magazine forgive us for wondering why there was not a subhead with three words that say it all- “Pay Teachers More”. And then Education Week and this commentary goes on to say that compared with other professionals teachers earn on average about $154 less per week or almost 14 or 15% less than other people in other professions. And I think that that is related to the topic that you just talked about which is how in the world do we encourage good teaching and how do we continue to explore this very important issue that of course is pinnacle in student performance.
Rich: And I would refer listeners back to our first show which where Todd White from the Milken Family Foundation talked about specific characteristics that they are looking in their evaluation system, looking to develop in teachers, looking to measure in teachers, that consider test scores but go way beyond just using test scores to look at other factors as well. And while I am thinking of that I want to remind listeners that you can hear any of our old shows either go by going to voiceamerica.com website or by going to our own website at specialneedsadvocacyinstitute.com.
Michelle: Hey Rich, there is a lot happening in Florida. I will go ahead and talk about that as another hot topic.
Rich: Great.
Michelle: In Florida there are the Mc Kay vouchers. And these vouchers allow, the purposes of the vouchers is to allow parents to choose or select where their students will go to school, whether the students have special needs the vouchers allow for funding public funding for private schools for example. And there is an article of April 29th, 2008 in the Washington Times by Marcus Winters and co-authored and it talks about how 14% of public school students have been diagnosed with a disability and receive special education services which sounds pretty high to me. And the first of its kind Mc Kay Program has offered vouchers to students with disabilities but also just students in general. And the Mc Kay Program has grown rapidly and is really the largest school system voucher program so that got re-authorized and we are going to continue to keep track of different ways that parents can exercise school choice options.
Rich: We have an upcoming show I think it’s perhaps June or early July talking about school choice and school vouchers. The pros and cons, I know it is a hot issue on both sides of that so we will explore that in detail. Another article that I came across, this was from Eschoolnews which is an online news service really gives a good preview of our next show, which next week we are going to have Ray Kurzwell who is an inventor of many things but I guess Michelle and I are most interested in the fact that he has invented the Kurzwell 3000 reading assistive technology that allows any print material to be scanned and read aloud to the students and has many other wonderful features as well. And we are going to have Ray talk about that technology and also about what he sees as some future trends as he is a brilliant futurist. I came across this article “Blogging Helps Encourage Teen Writing”. And this was an in depth study that was done by Pew Internet and American Life Project in support from the College Board national commission on writing and interesting results while they did not find a correlation between kids who have more gadgets, cell phones, their own computers, just having the gadgets didn’t have any impact on their interest or performance in writing. The kids who were blogging, who were spending time posting online; there was a definite correlation between that and their overall interest in writing, their overall performance in writing. So, I am thinking ahead to our discussion with Ray we want to really explore, how can all that is going on with technology and all the interest that today’s generation has in things technological how can that inspire greater performance and skills and also conversely what should we be doing in our schools that really prepares students to be using the technology as adults that they are going to be using on a daily basis. Are our schools keeping up with that? Are they really preparing kids for what they are going to be facing?
Michelle: That is a really important issue. And you know I think different ways to explore the classroom including online classrooms and we are going to be exploring that with Ray Kurzwell clearly but you know one of the things that has captured my attention in the news this week is teacher cuts, teacher risks and I have found a commonality in California and in Paris. In California the teachers are facing almost 15,000 job cuts and in Paris, France the same, the same the approximately the same number may be cut. And the students actually had a rally or a demonstration to oppose this holding signs up “RIP to the National Education System” and “Fewer Teachers More Students Fail”. I think that in this climate of budgetary confinements along with you know what it takes to really explore great teaching I hope that our guest today which who we will introduce after the break that is coming up will certainly help us to understand these, the relationship here and the complex issues that we are facing.
Rich: We look forward to speaking at length with Carol Ann Tomlinson when we come back from this break.
COMMERCIAL BREAK
Michelle: Welcome back to Teach Your Children Well with myself, Michelle Davis and my co-host Rich Weinfeld. And I am going to introduce today’s extraordinary guest Carol Ann Tomlinson. Dr. Tomlinson’s career as an educator is extensive and expansive including twenty-one years as a public school teacher, twelve years as a program administrator, Virginia’s teacher of the year in 1974 and she has been a member and studied as the University of Virginia. She is a reviewer for numerous journals and an author of over 100 articles, book chapters, books and other professional developmental materials. And Carol if I just read some of your publications I think the listeners will get a sense of what you are all about and those are How to Differentiate Instruction in a Mixed Ability Classroom, The Differentiated Classroom: Responding to the Needs of All Learners, Providing Leadership for Differentiated Schools and Classrooms and differentiation is definitely the theme here and I do not want to neglect to say that I had the absolute privilege of having Dr. Tomlinson as one of my professors undergraduate many, many, many years ago. Well actually not that many, right Carol.
Carol: Yeah, really let’s not go too far there!
Michelle: And I hope that you will understand if we say that we have always, we meaning myself and other educators, have always thought of you as the queen of differentiated instruction and we, your contributions have been uncountable and I am sure continue to affect children lives positively so. I have thanked you privately but I will thank you publicly for your role in my launch in my special education career. So welcome very much and thank you so much for being here.
Carol: It is a privilege to be with you and with your audience.
Rich: Thank you for being here Carol.
Michelle: You know, Carol we are talking about today what is an ideal classroom. And I guess I would like to start off by asking you why is it important that we explore this topic.
Carol: Well, I think the question before that is what do we really want to have happen in schools for our students. And if we just kind of like to keep them off the streets or self contained then it probably doesn’t matter too much as you long as you have something that resembles a marine corps drill sergeant in the classroom it should work fine. But if we really believe that teaching and learning is a process of constructing lives than those of us who believe that believe that what happens in the classroom really does shape how students come to see themselves as human beings, how they come to see each other has human beings and how they come to see themselves as learners. And learning for me really is one of the great human gifts. It is one of the marks of being a human being and so for me a classroom that is really going to work for students is one that helps them develop certainly a certain amount of self-confidence but also really a sense of self-advocacy. The sense of being a person who is powerful in their own learning and for whom learning has merit and benefits. And learning is sort of a dicey thing. We don’t all get it the first time and sometimes some of us get it faster than others and because school and really much of life’s focus is on this notion of learning and success than how that whole process is presented in the classroom either makes it satisfying to learn or to risky to learn, makes it too easy in which case kids don’t grow or makes it too difficult in which case students give up. So it really is raising young lives is a tricky thing which I think most parents know. It is not something that kids do to well on their own and so we need teachers who really can make classrooms work for kids so that kids see themselves as increasingly more powerful learners and develop both the skills and the motivation to continue that process.
Michelle: That is so well put. It is just a beautiful statement about the intension behind learning. You know Rich and I were talking and we both see so many classrooms on such a regular basis, just week in and week out all over different states, and we have the opportunity to really snapshot different classrooms. You know there is some type of affective, I mean I can see the classroom, I can hear the classroom, I experience the classroom in a real way but there also seems to be a feeling of it that, where you walk out of it the ideal classroom and you say, “Wow, that is an ideal classroom.” What do you think that is? And can you quantify that?
Carol: Well, I don’t know that you can quantify it but I do think that we have some indicators that we’ve known for a long time and as you said we can see them present or absent in almost any classroom we enter. For one thing, I think it’s a different type of endeavor to teach young people than it is to do many other jobs which is not to negate the importance of what other people do. But there are not too many other jobs to where the person in charge is upfront of thirty kids at a time all day long, day after day. And that can be both wearing and exhilarating. I think one of things that makes an ideal classroom is a teacher who really sees the power of that job and understands it is not about going to school and spending a certain number of hours there and leaving but it really is about going to engage human beings with something. And so a teacher, I think in an ideal classroom, and to me all that means is a classroom that really works for kids, is one who comes in excited about what they are going to do that day. Something that kids can discover, something that will be curious, something that will push their thinking forward, something that will push their emotional buttons a little bit but in the same way that all of us get excited about sharing with a friend a movie that we saw that was wonderful or a really cool thing we saw outdoors or a book that we have just read or a gizmo that we have just discovered some place that is really fascinating the teacher who is fascinated with that process of something cool is going to happen in here today really starts an energy and a dynamic I think that is critical. But to me a second part of that that is equally important is being fascinated by the kids that come in the room everyday. One of the great privileges of teaching I think is that there are no two lives alike and there are no two days alike and of course it is a little scary because you cannot predict the day but you can pretty much guarantee that you will have something happen everyday that you couldn’t anticipate and that will challenge your abilities. I think a great teacher has two fascinations. I think they are really fascinated by the ideas that they teach and want to learn more and more about those ideas. Many moons ago I read a book by a guy named Phil Phoenix who really reshaped my teaching, he said that when human beings finally were able to break away from spending all day building fires and cooking woolly mammoths and got a little bit of leisure time they began to organize knowledge according to the disciplines and each of the disciplines Phoenix says answers the same question and that is what is life? And who am I in it? And Phoenix says human beings are born asking that question and in essence we die asking that question. And he says each of the disciplines was developed to help answer that question. Science answers it, history answers it, art answers it, literature and he says our job really as teachers is to help learners see how it is that the discipline that we are teaching helps them understand their lives. A teacher who is fascinated with their discipline in that way I think goes into the classroom with a real energy. The second thing that teachers need to study with as much excitement and as much depth and persistence is each of those individual kids. And to understand that there is endless parade of human lives which certainty have things in common but also have differences and that we are privileged to learn from those lives and to become better in interacting with them means that great teachers I think consistently ponder those two things. What is the meaning of what I am teaching and who is it that I am teaching? And then for me teaching becomes this wonderful thing of being able to say, “I have the coolest job. I get to teach people that I really value ideas that I really value.” And as you noted my passion is differentiation and that kicks in by saying in whatever it takes to make that connection work for each student I’ll do it. So I think the ideal classroom really is predicated in large measure on a teacher who cares deeply about students, cares deeply about ideas, wants to connect students with ideas and wants to connect students with each other. And I think you do see that and feel that in some of classrooms and in others it is missing.
Rich: Carol, I have had the privilege to hear you speak many times and read many of your books and the last time I heard you speak one little sentence just stuck with me and keeps coming back to me every day which is, “If you haven’t learned it, I haven’t taught it.” I would love to hear you just expand on that a little bit.
Carol: That is actually, I think a quote from Ben Aclick (sp?) who is a wonderful educator and I find it both challenging and pesky because it is absolutely true but it makes our job harder. And I think it is something that we don’t talk about too much with teachers. Her comment is there is no such thing as teaching without learning. If they haven’t learned it you haven’t taught it. And what that does is really remind us that it is about the kids. And if we know what is important our job isn’t to stand in front of the room and cover stuff or dispense things it is to make sure learning happens. And I think she is absolutely correct then only when students learn what really matters have we taught well.
Michelle: Carol, what do you think is, you know I, what resonates for me, when I recall being in your classroom is this self-evaluation piece in an ideal classroom. Can you talk a little bit about that? I know we haven’t gotten into the differentiation quite yet which we will do in the next segment but what is the role of a student self-evaluating their learning in this type of environment that we are talking about.
Carol: I think kids are born wanting power over their worlds from early on. They even cry in a way that tells mom whether they need a diaper changed or need food. Constantly what they are wanting to do is to have more dominion over their world having more charge of themselves. And I think in the classroom we do best if we understand that learning happens in students not to them and so consequently I think we are the best teachers when we help students understand what learning goals are and what success would look like and what the requirements are for moving themselves towards that success. And when we engage them in the process of constantly reflecting on themselves in other words being learners who can guide their own work rather than being puppets and waiting for the puppeteer to come by and so helping students understand what are the goals today? What is the game plan? How will I know if I am getting where I need to be? What do I do if I get bogged down? What resources can I use to help myself here? All of those things really empower students to become people in charge of their own lives and in charge of their own learning and I think it really should be a critical part of a classroom.
Michelle: Those are really skills that we use on a day to day basis in our adult lives as well. So I love that transferability of that piece in an effective classroom and we will be right back after a short break with Dr. Carol Ann Tomlinson.
COMMERCIAL BREAK
Rich: Welcome back, this is Rich Weinfeld along with my co-host Michelle Davis and our guest today Carol Ann Tomlinson. We are talking about the ideal classroom. Before we get into the next segment I want to encourage you to not only call in but also to email us at specialneedsadvocacy@msn.com. I did that right, right Michelle?
Michelle: Absolutely.
Rich: Ok, we are talking about the positives today. About, what a great classroom looks like. What a great teacher does. Fitting for teacher appreciation week. To flip over to the negative for a second in our book, Michelle and I, our Special Needs Advocacy book we have a list of what might a class look like if it not a good environment for children. And I am just going to highlight two of the things that I think really pertain to the next part of our discussion. Carol, we say only hold group instruction as being used and if there are groupings in the class they always remain the same. Talk to us a little bit about the differentiation and about how differentiation maybe combats those two pitfalls of the class that is not working.
Carol: Sure, of course differentiation is a complex topic, so I will try to do the nickel version. But differentiation really is simply common sense. I think all of us as adults have had moments where if we thought a teacher went over something one more time we would scream because it feels like she has been doing it for two weeks and we knew it two weeks ago. And I hope most of us have also had the experience of being in the classroom and feeling totally lost and not having any real sense of what we do next to get out of what feels like a mud trap. Differentiation simply says that kids do differ when they come to us, in their readiness to learn particular things, in how they learn and what really motivates them, what they care about. And that, teachers who that teach best really try to attend to students readiness needs so that work is a little too hard for a particular student most of the time and there is a support system to get him over the hump. That teachers really try to open up the classroom and provide a variety of ways to learn and express learning so that students learning profiles can be addressed and that teachers try really hard to connect students’ interests with the things that they have to teach so that students see it is relevant and worthwhile what they are learning. There are a number of principals of differentiation but in regards to the question that you particularly asked one of the key principals is principal of flexible grouping. And what that really asks teachers to do is after they have thought about the flow of a week or the flow of a unit to say when is it going to be really important to put students together in groups based on readiness so that I can teach right to their needs. When is it going to make better sense to put students in mixed readiness groups so that they can learn from each other or share ideas? When is it going to make sense to put them in groups based on particular interests so they can make those connections? Maybe sometimes it will be a good idea to put them in groups based on mixed interests so kids can bring different perspectives on a topic. When can I put kids together based on just how they want to express their learning? When is it better for the teacher to make the decision on grouping? When does it make best sense for kids to make that decision? And might it be okay sometimes just to put kids together randomly. The assumption of flexible grouping is that when students see themselves in a variety of settings they don’t feel pegged into one particular mold. They don’t feel like they are a certain thing that they are expected to be. Certainly students of any age, for example, know whether they are reading well or doing math well, but in a flexibly differentiated grouped classroom that is not the only thing that matters. I may be in a readiness group sometimes but may be in an interest group or random group at other times and that lets kids audition each other in different settings, lets teachers see kids in different settings, help kids realize that they have multi faceted personalities and ways of learning and expressing learning and it is really often the case that in such as classroom a student really becomes a very different person because they are not always the geek, they are not always the kid who can’t do math, they are not always the kid who dominates the group. And so it really helps kids have a much better stock taking of themselves, I think. Having students in groups is important even if you don’t differentiate instruction because once again learning is sort of a communal process certainly if the teacher is doing all of the talking and the kids are doing all the listening not much processing is going on. But it is also…
Michelle: That is on our list as well by the way Carol.
Carol: I am sorry.
Michelle: That is also on our list of what might a classroom look like that is not a good environment is that the teacher is doing all the talking.
Carol: Yeah, and kids have to learn that they need to talk to each other to learn it is a way to get additional ideas to correct misconceptions and for many students that notion of being with a different group of peers is a real high motivator as well. And it is important not to have kids in the same groups all the time because then what you get is bluebirds, buzzards and wombats. You have a clear group of losers, a clear group of winners and that doesn’t really help any body at all.
Rich: Right. I think it is very clear what you are saying but just to underline it one more time what is the difference between what you are proposing and tracking kids.
Carol: Well to me they are the antithesis. And it is a big decision for us in education. We sort of have three choices about how we deal with student differences and student differences to exist I don’t know that I have ever met a teacher who has said, “Oh, no they are all alike.” They exist so we have three choices on how to deal with them. We can throw all the kids in the classroom and pretend that differences don’t exist and teach them as though they were all alike and that doesn’t work we have ample evidence there. We can track kids and we say okay I get it the classroom teacher should have sort of normal or regular or grade level kids. Anybody who doesn’t fit that mold we will address their needs by putting them in special classes so if you are kind of broken because you have a learning disability we will put you over here and if you are kind of broken because you learn slowly we will put you over here and if you are kind of broken because you don’t have a full command of English yet we will stick you over here and if you are kind of broken because you know more than the teacher meant you to we will stick you over here in this room. And interestingly enough society now as we have become more and more diverse pretty soon I think that classroom teacher who is waiting for the normal kids is going to be in a classroom pretty much alone.
Michelle: Absolutely.
Carol: But what that ends up with is that we have kids again that we are developing expectations for here are rooms full of kids that can’t learn very well and so therefore what we will do is sort of lower our expectations and not push them very hard and make structures much more rigid. And it is very easy to see what starts happening to those kids in that classroom and even high end kids can suffer from being in classrooms where they tend to believe ability is entitlement or that they have to compete all the time or that they are supposed to be perfect in all things and where perhaps they don’t see contributions that other people can clearly make to their lives so tracking is the second way we do try to deal with students’ differences but again we have a hefty amount of research that suggests to us that it is not a particularly effective way of dealing with it. The third way I think we can deal with students differences is differentiated instruction and that is to say let’s create classrooms that represent the world. And have diverse learners in them but within that context lets work in such a way that we attend to students needs where they can still be in a community of learners and share together but still have those needs addressed so to me tracking and differentiation really are antithetical. You can certainly differentiate in a tracked class that is not the point but the point is that to do that you have already loss part of the battle.
Michelle: What do you say Carol to educators or parents who might have a fairness issue. You know if kids are being treated differently how is that fair? Related to academics or behavior.
Carol: Well I don’t think if folks who were parents thought of their own children it won’t take particularly long to find out that treating everybody alike is not necessarily fair. If you have one student or one kid in the family that loves baseball most of us wouldn’t make all the other kids in the family play baseball even if they hated just because this one kid likes it nor would we want to rob that one kid of the chance to play baseball. I think most parents have had the experience of students of kids who don’t need as much sleep and kids that they know if they don’t get extra sleep they are in real trouble. We never make the kids all eat the same amount at dinner regardless of whether they were hungry or the same size so and seldom do we make all the kids in the family wear identical clothes when they leave the house. So I think the notion of fairness is really probably best seen as doing what we need to do to help each kid succeed and making sure that each kid gets that kid of help rather than force fitting them all to do the same thing, in the same way at the same time.
Rich: Carol, we in education have been hearing about and talking about differentiation I say for at least two decades. Why is it so hard to get schools to do this well? Why is it so hard to get individual teachers to do this?
Carol: That is a really great question and it also has a really long answer but I will try to be short. I am not very good at short. Well change is hard and we know that in our own lives. Most of us understand what we need to do with exercise and diet and we are pretty clear on that even believe that it would make a difference for us if we did it but we don’t do that very well because change is just really pesky and it certainly not easy to change when you are surrounded by thirty young bodies and life is going full speed ahead. So change is hard. The second thing is that most of us learn habits of one size fits all instruction. And differentiation really causes us to have to re-think not only those habits but our attitudes and our beliefs about teaching. It really calls for changing what folks call deep structure beliefs and so we have to work in such as way that we are not only changing our practice but we are changing our mindset and that makes it difficult as well. But in schools where we see good differentiation happening how they got there isn’t real magic it is a leader who understands very clearly what the need is and then consistently leads and supports teachers in that direction over a long period of time and when you have intelligent leadership moving toward a clear goal and the faculty becomes a community of learners in the same way you want that to happen in the classroom the change is pretty amazing to watch. Our trouble is that we often mandate something like differentiation and then leave teachers hanging there to figure out how to do it on their own. Or we we’ll have a staff where some one will say okay we will do differentiation this year and what that means is that we will have one speaker and read a book. And that’s ….
Rich: What I am hearing is that you have to do it with support with training. I am going to end this segment. We are going to be back in a couple of minutes with Carol Ann and continue this wonderful conversation in a few minutes.
COMMERICAL BREAK
Michelle: Welcome back to Teach Your Children Well. I am Michelle Davis and we are here with my co-host Rich Weinfeld and our extraordinary guest Dr. Carol Ann Tomlinson. And Carol before we get to the subject of No Child Left Behind and highly qualified teachers and what that has to do with differentiated instruction and the ideal classroom. I have a question which is does size really matter in terms of class size.
Carol: You know that is really a great question and I am asked that often. Research is kind of odd in that way. It doesn’t tell us that class size makes a huge difference. You have to get down to something very, very small, smaller than most of us will ever have before you start seeing a direct connection there but I have never known a teacher who says, “I don’t care if I have 25 or 35, it is all the same to me.” I think there are so many ways; again this means teachers who want to make a difference. But teachers want to make a difference can reach out to 25 better than they can to 35. They can know those students better. They can move them around in the classroom better. And so while research may suggest to us that class size isn’t the key indicator of student success I believe that it affects teacher attitude and teacher energy and I think it is a good thing when we can to lower the class size. I just don’t get any logic that it doesn’t matter. It may not in a classroom where a teacher is just simply going to stand and cover material but for teachers who really want to reach out and make a difference I have to believe it matters.
Michelle: So, if I am hearing you right we would agree that you could have a very, very small class size and if we don’t have a teacher whose interested in this idea of the mindset of a differentiated classroom then that can be far from an ideal classroom while on the other hand you can have a larger sized classroom, a typical sized classroom with a teacher who is powerfully delivering on the things that we are talking about and that can be an ideal classroom.
Carol: You bet. I will give you a great illustration from an email I got a couple of weeks ago from a teacher in China actually. And she was talking about the fact that differentiation was really important to her and how it was changing her teaching and she could see her students were doing better. And she listed for me many things that she was doing in her classroom that she was doing to reach out to different students and that she was looking forward to doing more things and then she said to me but I wrote to ask you just one question. I am wondering if you could give me any hints to make it easier to manage a differentiated classroom when you have 60 students.
Michelle: Whoa!
Carol: And I said to myself oh, my goodness. I think we would not have a good conversation with you and many of our classroom teachers here. She simply took it for granted that even with 60 students she could do better than just stand and deliver. And she is really working well at that. Now would I prefer that she have 30 sure, and would she absolutely but I think teachers who mean to make it work make it work.
Michelle: I would have to be seated when I got that question. (laughing) Sitting down for that one. Now does the same thing occur in terms of the qualification of teachers especially in light of No Child Left Behind and the requirement for as of for the school year 2005-2006 that all teachers be highly qualified. Can you have a highly qualified teacher and not have an ideal classroom and how does that work?
Carol: Sure you can absolutely have a highly qualified teacher which doesn’t reach out to students which is not to say it doesn’t matter to have teachers that are qualified it just that lots of times we become enamored of words and qualified can mean a lot of different things in a lot of different settings. I would certainly want teachers to know content who were going to teacher children that I cared about but qualified doesn’t have much do to on paper with knowing students or having a particular attitude about teaching. And if we go back to what I said in the beginning with teaching as being very passionate about what you teach and who you teach highly qualified doesn’t even ensure passion about what you teach it only ensures that you may know some stuff. So it is absolutely possible that you can have a person whose on paper is highly qualified and not doing very much at all to make a classroom work well for its students. And I have worked with teachers who would never make it over that highly qualified benchmark because they simply have not had the opportunity to specialize in content but they are absolutely tuned into their students and absolutely know what they are teaching and know how to make it work well. So I am not suggesting that qualifications don’t matter I am just suggesting that one set of qualifications, again a one size that fits all but only looks at one or two facets of what needs to happen in the classroom isn’t going to save us.
Rich: Carol when we talked about highly qualified teachers I think about highly qualified in content and it makes me think about the book you wrote with Jay Mc Tide where the concepts of differentiation instruction and understand by design were married together. In the brief time we have left could you talk a little bit about the importance of understanding by design and how it coincides with differentiated instruction.
Carol: Sure. Jay Mc Tide who is one of the two authors with Grant Wiggins of Understanding by Design is passionate about the quality of the curriculum in the classroom and Jay believes as do I that and as most of our research would indicate that we really don’t get learners by teaching them the telephone book just a list of data. The brain isn’t even designed very well to retain that and kids who that learn that way can’t retain, they can’t transfer, they can’t apply, they don’t appreciate what they are learning and so Jay and Grant have written, have developed a model to help teachers teach all students with what they call the big ideas or the essential understandings of the disciplines at the core of what is taught. And so Jay’s model really helps teachers try to work through this notion of what does it mean to teach for meanings to teach for understanding. That is the curriculum model. Differentiation is an instructional model. It says that it really matters how you teach. If you don’t reach kids you really haven’t gotten anywhere so let’s look at how you go about reaching kids how do you go about helping kids really be learners. And so actually of course what differentiation and understanding by design do is help teachers understand that is takes curriculum and instruction to make a classroom work and if the models are in sync they are a good match. And so what we have done by understanding by design and differentiation is to try to show teachers how to begin with important content and then how to reach out to make sure that the full variety of students has access to and success with that content. In other words it really is just the blending of curriculum and instruction which should of course be the case.
Michelle: Absolutely. And Carol in the brief time that we have left and again we have appreciated you being our guest so much and providing this inspiration for us. You know how does the high stakes testing related in No Child Left Behind effect teacher ability to differentiate and what do you see as future trends. What would you like to seen in the future in terms of the priorities for education?
Carol: Well I think there is no problem with teachers being accountable. I want doctors to be accountable and I want the architect who builds the building I am in to be accountable. My complaint is that we have not had a discussion about what we want teachers to be accountable for. We have decided sometimes that just a lot of answers checked on a right answer test is accountability. Our students are going into a world where it is projected that they are going to have many, many, many jobs even before their 30th birthday because so many things are changing. We have so many jobs now that didn’t even exist ten or fifteen years ago. And so we need to prepare kids as thinkers and reasoners and good consumers of ideas, good critics of ideas so I don’t mind accountability. I’d love for us to ask the question what kind of accountability will make our students stronger. When everything is pushed to a right answer test then right answers become the currency of the classroom and that stops us really from doing a lot of things. It stops us from engaging kids’ minds; it stops us from looking at individual differences and asking how we help each kid to become the best he or she can be. We just try to reduce everybody to a single test score and not only do we judge students that way but we judge teachers that way and we judge schools that way and while there may be some benefits to what we have done with the right answer mania over the last few years I think we have long since milked those out and really need to look at the broader sense of what it is we need our kids to become and what kind of classrooms will support that.
Rich: Dr. Tomlinson we are going to conclude on that note. Thank you so much for being with us. It has been great. A lot for all of us to think about. Next week we are going to have Ray Kurzwell with us to talk about technology in the classroom, how it is transforming what we are doing in the classroom, how classrooms need to transform to keep up with what is happening with technology. We look forward to being with you then.
