A Tale of Two Classrooms

I haven't read A Tale of Two Cities, but from the shmoop.com summary, I saw how vastly different conditions were in London and Paris in the late 18th century.  There is a vast difference between the traditional classroom and the differentiated classroom, too!  Let's stop in and check them out!

Comparison #4 really stood out to me.  When I was a student. . . well. . . okay, I'm still a student. . . when I was a younger student, I always felt I was competing against my classmates.  That's an unfair competition to be in!  Excellence should always (I wish I could underline this twice!) be looked at individually.  Students should never be made to think that if they don't achieve a certain score or run a certain time (running a 10 minute mile, for example. . . YUCK!) then what they did achieve wasn't good.  Students should see their own excellence by looking at how far they've come from where they began!

This comparison of these two very different classrooms boils down to this: students are different.  If you think they aren't, then you're kidding yourself. Super-teachers learn about their students differences, what they're interested in, and how they learn best to shape their instruction so that ALL students learn during every lesson.