Reply to Why does mcps do a crappy job with magnet/enriched opportunities

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I agree that differentiation is what we need to argue for.

Meet each group of kids at their level instead of mixing them all up together.  It helps nobody.  And the teachers are left feeling like they can’t serve any of the students well.[/quote]

It is actually possible to meet most kids at their level while mixing them together. But the assignments need to allow for different results. Teachers would have to grade papers and projects that didn’t necessarily come with a one size fits all answer key or result in all children coloring in the same quickly recognizable pattern. [/quote]

It really depends on the type of class. For classes that most kids (advanced/less advanced) need a lot of the teachers's guidance during  class time (e.g. math classes where most kids still need the teacher to show how to solve various problems), this (mixing them up) will not work.

For classes where the aftershool assignments account for most of the learning process (e.g. reading, writing), the teacher can probably make this work by assigning different levels of homework etc. to different levels of students (and providing extensive feedback of course).[/quote]

Learning measurement and perimeter, rigidly or differentiated:

Class lesson on the term perimeter and some examples of how to measure it. Then...

Rigidly: Here is worksheet with an aerial picture of a building on it. Measure the all the sides of the building in this drawing. Add them up to show the length of the perimeter. Teacher checks for same answer on each page.

Allowing for differentiation: Here is a blank piece of graph paper. Draw our school building on your page and then measure each of the sides. Add them up to show the perimeter. Teacher will get some papers with just four sides and some in which children remembered to include the shape of the entryways and the courtyard. Some will remember that the gym steps out and draw that, too. There will be many different drawings and answers and children will have largely adjusted to their own ability. [/quote]

Well, the thing is, that this very rarely is the way it plays out.  In reality, the teacher is just trying to get through the day, and the kids who have already mastered the material are left to play games on the Chromebooks, while the teacher does small groups with the kids who need extra help.  [/quote]

Well... yeah. That is the point. of this thread. It is awful and rigid now. Teachers spend their time at a little kidney-shaped desk with rotating groups of kids and they all plow through worksheets that are uninspiring, to say the least. But if MCPS would encourage true differentiation (not by paying lip service to GT education with an occasional extra rigid “enrichment” worksheet for some kids) and support that by giving teachers enough professional time to go through unique student work, the classrooms might feel less dreary and unsupportive. Sometimes, my kids have a teacher who tries to do this, and I am so grateful. But the teachers have to use the 2.0 worksheets and they are caught in a system which is relentlessly unimaginative and inflexible. The result? 30% of the class feels restless and stifled and 20% feels inadequate and horrible, kids act up, and teachers get bored and burnt out.

Basically, every time a teacher expects the same exact answer from all the kids in their class, differentiation didn’t happen. And that should be the exception, not the daily reality.

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