One of the greatest challenges facing schools today is learning how to meet the needs of diverse students in the classroom, said Carol Ann Tomlinson at her Special Feature. Tomlinson, a 30-year veteran of teaching and author of The Differentiated Classroom: Responding to the Needs of All Learners, told a packed audience why treating all students equally actually does them a disservice.
Carol Ann Tomlinson
"The problem is that a quality education for Jonathan might be very different from what Golda is capable of doing right now, and a quality education for Golda may not challenge Jonathan," she said. Children are unique, and they need to be seen as individuals if they are to be pushed at levels commensurate with their current abilities.
Teachers need to recognize that every child who comes into the classroom has special skills and talents that make him or her unique, Tomlinson said. "We need to say to the children in our schools, ‘I know you, and I care about you. You matter. And because you matter, I expect a great deal from you, and I will be your partner in getting you where you are capable of going.'"
As an illustration, Tomlinson related a story from her first year of teaching. "A teacher who was finishing her last year told me that she had a goal every day. That goal was to make sure each child went home that night with a ‘Ms. Gardner story' to tell. She met her students every day, spoke with them on a personal level, put her hands on their shoulders, knelt beside them as they did their work, and gave them the understanding that she was someone who valued what they did and that they were important."
Such individual attention, Tomlinson said, is essential in an era when schoolwork must compete for students' attention with video games, cellular telephones, and television. "A lot of people say the struggling students cannot achieve," Tomlinson said. "But students cannot get where we want them to go unless we take responsibility for getting them there. It's up to us to get them to succeed."