Why differentiate instruction?

With my summer semester on the horizon (classes start Monday!), I’ve been reflecting on the major themes of my previous semester – the biggest of which has been differentiated instruction.

What has most impressed me about differentiated instruction is its emphasis on the fact that our learners are human beings, and as such they will all come to the classroom with their individual experiences, opinions, needs, backgrounds, and talents. Addressing this fact is just as (if not more) important as addressing our content and instruction, because ultimately our students will dictate the success of the latter.

Denying this, and expecting that all students must “fall in line” with whatever the teacher deems is “correct,” is unrealistic and unfair. At the same time, the “real world” is not always going to cater to individual needs either, so we must prepare students for that reality.

I feel like sometimes teachers go too far in one direction or the other – either they try to make their classroom a “bubble” where students can be protected from the injustices and inconsistencies of the “real world,” but more often they try to run their classroom as if it were the “real world” all of the time. While I agree that teachers play a role in molding students to be productive students and citizens in the long-term, expecting students to come into your classroom with all of those skills and expectations already in place is extremely impractical.