Cycle Two: Challenges & Opportunities in Building Classroom Communities

Cycle Two: A Differentiated Classroom in the Making

When you walk into my classroom, you will first notice everything that covers its walls. Van Gogh's Starry Night, a black and white of Christ the Redeemer in Brazil, a National Geographic info-graphic of the Han Dynasty's many achievements, the Beatles' Let it Be album cover, and Spartan Stadium on a beautiful Michigan State day line my bulletin boards. I also have photos of my family, friends, and travel adventures. There are postcards from all the cities and countries I have been blessed to travel to and from. Most importantly, you will my students' work. Everywhere. It covers the windows, it lines the top of the walls, and scatters the bulletin boards. This always makes it feel more like their classroom, too, and not just mine (TEDTalk: Teaching Design for Change).

When you walk into my classroom, you will also notice students working together whether it be in formal, informal, or base learning groups (Cooperative Informal and Base Groups, Johnson & Johnson). Toward the end of the school year, my students completed a case study on pollution at the summit of Mount Everest. The students were divided into groups in order to study the pollution problem, delve out a plan of action to help Mount Everest conquer this problem, and then present their POA to the class. My 7^th grade students were engaged, excited, and deliberation filled the room (Teaching Democracy: Learning to Lead Discussions, Parker). As their teacher, I made rounds to each group making sure the students were on task, to answer questions, and notion for them to push their critical thinking brains a bit more.

In those moments of teaching, I am at my happiest. It thrills me to see my students being the hosts of knowledge and having the opportunity to study the world around them together. Often when I do group or partner work, students may be assigned a particular role that I know will challenge them but also give them the chance to excel (One Classroom, Many Minds, Schumer). In group or partner work, I also love to have a variety of students working together. I always choose my groups for my students because I want their to be a team atmosphere but I also want a balance of intellects and talents from the students. This type of lesson planning can be time consuming and it can be difficult at first, but I have truly find that it not only works best for me but also my students.

As I peal back the layers of what my classroom looks and feels like, I notice that differentiated instruction is often taking place. Or, at least, attempting to take place. It is a goal that I constantly have for myself and one that I try to attempt as a young teacher. One of the great pieces of differentiated instruction is that it allows each student to openly display their talents and what makes them tick. This opens the door for so many possibilities for me as a teacher to a classroom of diverse students. For example, this past year I taught a student who excelled at everything he did in our social studies class. By the time we began to study the Ancient Greeks, he already knew everything about them because he stayed up late reading history books on the Greeks. Instead of trying to teach him knowledge he already knew, I had this student help me teach his peers. One of his best friends often struggled in the classroom so I had them work together on assignments. Each student gained so much more out of the lessons than they would have otherwise if differentiation had not taken place.

Differentiation is important to me as educator particularly because I am a proponent of inclusion in the classroom. I strongly believe that classrooms should be mainstreamed with students who may have learning disabilities of any kind. For the past two years, I had the immense gift to have a student with Downs Syndrome in my homeroom. This young woman was not only a teacher to me but she also provided her classmates with profound lessons on what equality and justice truly mean. Through my experiences with her, I was able to learn how to teach a child with a severe learning disability but also how to form a classroom community around her beautiful soul.

I have also had experiences of inclusion through my ELL students I taught while student teaching at East Kentwood High School. When I taught at EK in the 2010 – 2011 school year, there were 48 unique languages spoken at the school by students. EK is one of the most diverse high schools in Michigan because of its refugee population from all over the world. My minor is Teaching English as a Second Language (TESOL) so being able to teach ELL students in my regular World History classes was an incredible opportunity. I had one student in particular who was Bosnian and Muslim. During our World Religions unit, he proudly taught us about Islam and his religious life. His lesson made such a difference in our World Religions unit and it allowed him to have an immense moment of success as an ELL student. Likewise, having a peer who was Muslim gave many students in the class a different insight into Islam than what they may just hear on the news. This worked to build our classroom community and I know that it enabled our class to achieve better outcomes in group work.

Yesterday, I experienced one of the greatest professional development conferences of my teaching career. I went to Nerd Camp in Battle Creek, a subset of Ed Camps that are sprouting up across the country. At Nerd Camp, I participated in a talk on the “Flipped Classroom”. In essence, a flipped classroom has students watch brief videos at home which enables teachers and students to have more in class time for hand's on, engaging activities. One of the teachers who spoke at the talk discussed her experiences with the flipped classroom as a 9^th grade ELA and Special Education teacher. She explained that the flipped classroom has allowed her to spend more face to face time with each student, differentiate instruction even further, and provide each student with appropriate and challenging work. After Nerd Camp and spending more team researching the “Flipped Classroom”, it is something that I am extremely interested in attempting for my own classroom. I was advised at the conference to start small and try just a unit to begin in order to gain a feel for the change in instruction. I am anxious to see what the concept of the flipped classroom could do for my students when combined with differentiated instruction.

I know from firsthand experience that differentiated instruction is difficult and there are numerous challenges. It can be highly time consuming to devote time to organizing lesson plans that pertain to a variety of students. However, I believe that differentiated instruction has allowed me to get to know my students more which then allows me to further build my classroom community. I imagine that my classroom environment would appear much differently if I did not incorporate differentiation into my teaching practices. As Tomilson and McTighe explained, “It requires persistent intent for teachers to break old teaching habits and replace them with routines that are flexible enough to support the success of many kinds of learners. Few teachers suggest that it is easy to make such changes, but many demonstrate the benefits of doing so for their students – and for their own sense of professional self-efficacy” (Integrating Differentiated Instruction and Understanding by Design).

Helpful Links for Going Further:

• The Flipped Classroom is not ... (YouTube video)
• The Flipped Classroom info-graphic
• Clintondale High School in Detroit has completely flipped.  And they are 100% urban Detroit.  Here is a link to their school where it details their journey!
• Pros and Cons of the Flipped Classroom
• Special Education: Promoting More Inclusion at Your School

Happy teaching!

Kaitlin