The keynote presentation at the 2008 Learning from Practice Exchange of Teacher Knowledge and Research was provided by Barbara Wotherspoon. Barbara is a teacher at E.D. Feehan High School in Saskatoon.

Differentiated Learning
Barbara Wotherspoon

Part One: Perspective

When my son was about five years old, he carried on a running argument with the kid next door. Every day I would hear them shouting at each other about whose dad was older. The argument went on and on until one day, the neighbour kid got up and yelled, “Your dad has to be older; he’s bigger!” and with that, he slammed the door and went home.

Not long after that incident, I was going to the mall to run some errands, and my son wanted to come with me. He was not well behaved when I took him to the store, but I agreed to let him come with me on the condition that he would not pester me to buy him something; I even gave him a loonie to spend on one little treat. Needless to say, he didn’t live up to his end of the deal and, exasperated, I took him by the hand and dragged him out of the mall. Just as we were leaving, we saw a lady in a wheelchair selling tickets on a car. My son started yelling and begging me to buy his dad a ticket, and because Father’s Day was right around the corner, I gave in. I said to the lady, “I don’t know why I am buying this ticket; I’m not very lucky!” She looked at me, and then at my son, and then back at me, and she said, “Oh! You look pretty lucky to me!” I did a double take, and for a moment, looked at life from where she sat.

It’s all about perspective, isn’t it? Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes and imagining how he or she sees the world.

My granddaughter will be three in January, and my husband, who is 55 and newly retired, spends a lot of time with her. The other day, when she was over at our house, my cell phone rang, and he answered it. When the conversation was over, she showed him how to turn it off. She then proceeded to take pictures with it and she looked at them, one by one. When my daughter came home, my granddaughter asked if she could play computer games; the two-year-old quickly went on to pbs.kids and worked her way through several video games without any assistance from anyone. She’s two years old and already she has more technological savvy than my husband will ever have.

So I ask – how could he ever imagine seeing the world as she sees it? He didn’t even get a television until he was six years old. He barely knows how to turn a computer on. How could he ever imagine life in her shoes?

David Walsh, the founder of an organization called Media and the Family, says that we are in the middle of a technological revolution that is equivalent to the Industrial Revolution. When one thinks about it, every modern day convenience that we enjoy today is available to us because of the Industrial Revolution, but one only has to look at the writing of Charles Dickens to know the toll that it took on the children of the time.

There are a lot of good things that have come with our modern day technological revolution. We can work more efficiently and, in many cases, more creatively, and we now have access to a global world. But it is also taking a toll on our young people. Take, for example, the use of cell phones. Last spring, I took my grade 12 students to a play at the Broadway Theatre. We ended up waiting for a bus for 15 minutes so on a whim, I said, “Take out your cell phones; I want to know how many text messages you received during the play.” And every student produced a cell phone. One guy had received over 60 text messages in the course of an hour, and one of the girls received 52 messages. Most of them had received over 20 messages, and the least number was six. But that wasn’t the scary part. For me, the part that gave me concern was that all 25 students were standing in a circle checking their text messages, and no one was talking! Finally, I said, “Wait a minute! This is period two, and cell phones are not allowed in our school. Who is texting you?” They looked at me and said, “People from period two. Mrs. Wotherspoon, don’t you know what multi-tasking is? That is when you take notes with one hand, text with the other, and pretend to listen to the teacher.” When I found out that texting and Facebook were more common vehicles of communicating than talking face-to-face, I was really concerned.

So, given that this is the world our kids are growing up in, what are the implications for teachers? I really believe that we, as teachers, can fill in some of the gaps that the technological revolution has produced and will continue to produce. I have used eight positive principles that I developed when I taught drama and was active in the arts. I believe these principles will provide balance in this readily changing world.

Part Two: Eight Positive Principles that Work

1. Celebrate each person’s uniqueness. Young people today express their individuality in a variety of hair styles and fashion statements.  We, as teachers, need to accept them for who they are and see their essential goodness, no matter how they look.
2. Celebrate their differences. Not all people learn the same way. Think about the following statement: If a fish were evaluated on how well he climbed a tree, he would spend his whole life thinking he was a failure. Some kids do not learn by traditional means. At the same time, some people do not reach their full potential because they are not challenged in non-traditional ways. We, as teachers, need to give students several opportunities for success.
3. Create an atmosphere of trust and respect. We need to create a “safe place” for students, a community where there is a zero-tolerance for any kind of intimidation.
4. Target the three C’s of Self-Esteem. We need to let each student know that he or she is capable, connected and has something to contribute.
5. Remember where kids are coming from. Sometimes students can’t concentrate because they have a multitude of other worries.
6. Embrace their technology. Whenever possible, we need to incorporate the positive aspects of technological advancement in our courses.
7. Let students know that it is okay to be silent and alone. We all need periods of silence and stillness; students need to know how their imagination and creativity are stimulated.
8. Try to make learning fun. Kids in this generation have never “played”; they have had access to screens in front of their faces for their whole lives. When I taught drama, I noticed that each year, students got more out of improvisational “play”; I think it was because they were missing out on the kind of imaginative, creative play of “make-believe” that I had when I was growing up.

These principles can be used in any classroom, and I could tell you many success stories to support them. I encourage teachers to think about the students they are teaching right now and ask themselves several questions: Do I have any students who are not successful with traditional learning situations? Do those students have any unique gifts that a teacher could tap into? Can I think of any non-traditional learning assignments that could provide opportunities for these students to succeed? Could I collaborate with any other teacher to challenge students in a non-traditional way?

There is nothing like the feeling that a teacher has when he or she can share the feeling of accomplishment when a student who previously was turned off to learning suddenly succeeds.

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