Differentiated Instruction: a Rant

When I was completing my first student teacher experience within the social science content area, I had a lot of issues with my master teacher and her vision and guidance within using Differentiated Instruction (DI) with my students.

You see, most of my students were English Language Learners. I was teaching at a Title I school that was 80% Hispanic. My master teacher kept telling me that I needed to differentiate my instruction, I needed to better engage my students by relating to their backgrounds and experiences. So, when I watched a short video on differentiated instruction for my CEP 842 course at Michigan State University–A light bulb went off.

I WAS differentiating my lessons and continually changing my methods to try to reach the students and in the process lost myself as an instructor. Differentiated instruction is a great method to engage and incorporate students that need assistance–however, many teachers and administrators are focusing on the wrong parts of the differentiation– in my opinion. Hence, the video demonstrates that things can get out of control and the administrator just reverts back to their original critic of the teacher’s methods. Creating a never ending spiral of out-of-control teaching.

Carol Ann Tomlinson, the differentiated instruction Guru, states that there are four parts to differentiating instruction: Content, Product, Process and Learning Environment. The issue at hand is that in order to figure out whether an individual teacher is differentiating effectively–time is needed to see the outcomes. Many supervisors and administrators are not allowing for the growth time in the process. This is demonstrated through the over-valued expectations of teaching students in major content area the subject matter that they will tested on within the same semester. Meaning students and teachers are only given a few months to teach a full years worth of standardized material. Talk about differentiating–many teachers are then placed in the spot of what to teach and what not to teach. This situation can cause numerous issues, especially for students with learning disabilities. Those students are not allowed to have a full process or product portion of differentiated instruction–since teachers must stick to the strict timeline to be able to cover ALL of the material on a standardized test.

This type of approach is not a successful way to use differentiated instruction since it only focuses on content. Which brings up a major flaw that is found in using differentiated instruction–in that administrators and teachers, if not using a balanced approach to differentiated instruction, can use it inappropriately and be damaging the learning process for students who need the extra help to learn the material that is possible through a successful and balanced differentiated instruction.

For my ELL students, in the social science class, they were not given a balanced differentiated instruction approach because my master teacher forced me to focus on process. By focusing on the process of my instruction, I completely lost sight of the product, due to the fact that I need to try a new method or create new learning process everyday or every lesson–without regard to any of them being effective or not. The content was also forced on me because I was teaching within the Spring semester and those students were all going to be tested on the content through the standardized tests that would be administered a mere two and half months into the semester. So that meant I had to teach 15 units in about 8 weeks or so. I had no real time to ensure that my students would even be able to master or grasp the material being taught because I was forced to focus on process and only through the lens of my teaching strategies used not the effectiveness of the learning of the students.

I believe that differentiated instruction is a good method to use, however, it cannot be successful when pressures and requirements are placed on good teachers to teach certain topics within mandated time-frames. That leads to the thought that students either know the information or not. It basically throws out any idea of being able to teach students with disabilities, successfully.

Grant Wiggins, creator of Understanding by Design (UbD), is a champion for differentiated instruction and has many great ideas about successfully implementing differentiated instruction. He had a great response on his blog (Granted, and… ) about an article that said differentiated instruction does not work. Dated January 15, 2015, On differentiation: a reply to rant and a posing of questions:

“Yes, DI is difficult – even Carol Tomlinson admits that. Excellent teaching leading to significant learning of all students is very challenging. So is calculus, but I suspect Mr. DeLisle is not prepared to say that calculus teaching is a boondoggle and farce because it is often done poorly or not at all in some high schools.”

Grant makes a great point and highlights that the real issues with teaching any subject is the effectiveness of the teacher’s actual methods and strategies, as well to my point that the focus of an administration or a teacher can devalue the effectiveness of said teaching methods. Which in this case is differentiated instruction.

Only from my reflection on my student teaching experience and the continued pursuit of my personal education was I able to see the flaws in the approach that I was given during my student teaching experience. Through the actual experience and reflection, I am now able to know that a well-balanced approach and emphasis on each part of DI will allow for the best outcomes for students. If I do decide to go back into the classroom, I would definitely make sure that my approach was different, as well as detailed to allow the best outcomes for my students. I am also now more knowledgeable in the methods of DI and I would be able to stand up and defend my position and my practices that would best benefit my students.