Mr. Fitsall is a veteran teacher who knows how to teach. He has taught students who have achieved at very high levels, and many parents would regard him as an effective teacher. He serves on committees in his building, has been recognized in the past by his colleagues as a teacher-leader, and does not hold back from sharing his professional opinion within the building. From time to time, Mr. Fitsall may touch on a few of his reasons for not embracing a differentiated approach. He makes himself available to discuss his reasons for those who ask. Some staff seem to like it when Mr. Fitsall talks the way he does about how he has taught a particular way for so many years.
Some teachers also cringe when Mr. Fitsall shares his views. They also notice that Mr. Fitsall often can’t offer any pedagogical reasons for adopting his own style of teaching. In other words, rather than being providing a rationale as to why differentiating instruction is not a best practice, or why research doesn’t support a differentiated approach, or what alternative methods are consistently superior to differentiation, Mr.Fitsall seems to rely on his position as a teacher, his prominence in the building, and his own personal teaching philosophy based on years of what has worked for him. Also lacking is the kind of data Mr. Fitsall could use to substantiate that his approach works for all students. That kind of data doesn’t exist because it can’t exist in cases where his students aren’t learning.
Here is a sample of some of his comments to give some perspective on why he teaches the way he does:
Before we are too tough on Mr. Fitsall, we need to recognize that there are probably glimpses of the views he harbors in all of us at some point in our teaching careers. As Jim Collins, author of the acclaimed book Good To Great (2001) suggests, we should all develop a “To Don’t” list to go along with our list of commitments. Often we fail to achieve our goals because we have not developed a list of things we won’t be doing any more. In the case of Mr. Fitsall, he has a highly developed sense of his “To Don’t” list – but it just so happens to go against many of things that professional recommending bodies would suggest we need to be doing more of, not less of.
Don’t We All Differentiate At Some Point?
I don’t think any one of us wants to be characterized as I have painted Mr. Fitsall – but to the extent that we can see his approach, the implications of it, and reflect on how our own approach does and doesn’t match his, we are indebted for his perspective. Perhaps we all use teaching strategies that fit within a differentiated approach at some time, in some way, on some level. Because differentiated instruction can involve nearly every aspect of the teaching and learning process, each of us falls along a continuum representing the range of our skill, motivation, and experience in approaching our roles from a differentiated perspective. We can assure ourselves that no matter where we fall on that continuum, there will always be a colleague on each side of us. Some will differentiate less and some will differentiate more. We can also probably imagine either teachers we’ve had, or perhaps colleagues we know, who would fall at the end of the differentiated spectrum that reads “one size fits all.” Framing the discussion about differentiation as a simple either/or, or “yes I do” vs. “no I don’t” option is making it too simple. We probably need to push our reflection a little further to make sense of where we fall on that continuum and why we fall there, not whether we do or don’t differentiate.
Ok, now let’s be tough on Mr. Fitsall.
From Good To Great
In their book, The Skillful Leader: Confronting Mediocre Teaching (Platt, Tripp, Ogden, & Fraser, 2000), the authors outline the type of negative impact a teacher such as Mr. Fitsall can have on students, teaching colleagues, administrators, and eventually on himself as a professional. They outline a series of commonly considered and thoroughly negative impacts that a teacher similar to Mr. Fitsall can have. The term that best summarizes the negative impact they can have on others is “toxic.”
In their work identifying what separates “excellent” teaching from “mediocre” teaching, Platt et al. (2000) reported that student comments during interviews regarding what distinguishes the range of teachers in their minds is quite perceptive.
Mediocre teachers were characterized by students as:
Excellent teachers were characterized by students as:
Some of the comments relayed by students follow.
Bonnie, urban high school, honors student:
He was a “burn-out teacher.” He has been teaching too long, and he knew it, and he still taught in this style: “I’m here to teach, and don’t ask questions, you’re going to do it my way.” He didn’t listen to me. If I had a question he went right on. He had something in his ears, and he has been like that for years – just burned out.
Connie, urban high school, college prep student:
He went too fast. You couldn’t understand – he wouldn’t take questions from anyone. It was hard to learn when he didn’t explain and just wrote things on the board – just notes he was giving you. I transferred out.
Mary, suburban high school, honors student:
My brother had him in ’88 (my brother is much older than me), and he was fantastic. But every day now he talks about retirement even though it’s 14 years away. He has gotten tired of doing the same thing. I know about his mortgage rate, his son, that he was in a graduating class of 234 students – we’ve heard it all. It’s too bad because I know he used to be a good teacher.
And finally, Bonnie, a 4th grade suburban student:
She was real mean. One time she asked me a question. I did not have a clue about decimals when we first started it. She called on me, “Just answer me.” I said “I don’t know it.” “Just answer me, ANSWER it!” I do not do too well. If she asks you a question and you don’t know, she will say what the answer is and won’t explain how she got the answer, so when you take the test you don’t have a clue. She will get really mad at you if you don’t get it. When we start any subject, like decimals, she’ll act like you should know it right away. Some kids get it right way, and they already know it because they have learned it from their older brothers and sisters. She goes right ahead with them and some people are like left behind. She does not answer questions that well. She uses words kids cannot understand so we cannot learn. My dad helps me; he makes it more easy. If I don’t get something he’ll go back with me. He says it in different words. She would go right on.
Platt et al. pointed out that all of the teachers, both those described as mediocre and those described as excellent, were favorably evaluated by their supervisors. Another interesting thing to note is that the comments reflected here are not from disengaged, disenfranchised, and generally unsuccessful students. One might expect that the kinds of statements made about mediocre teachers would stem from anger at having received poor grades or achieving at a low level, but this is not the case.
When students were asked what suggestion they would like the researchers to relay to administrators that might help in the evaluation process of their teachers, one student answered:
Go to the kids more for evaluation because we’re the ones who sit there every day….we could give an honest opinion…..ask the whole class and you could get a fair opinion. It is still important for administrators to observe, but ask the people who have been observing all year long!
While these reported student comments are difficult and on some levels painful to read, they are instructive. In their content they relay a story about an educational process that for them is skewed somewhere away from their interests, their goals, their needs. It has been oft stated that it takes great courage to teach, and there is no disputing that it does. Adverse conditions, public expectations and scrutiny, parent expectations, challenging student behaviors, and less than adequate resources are just some of the things we consider when compiling a list of our own adverse conditions.
But consider the courage to learn, especially when facing indifference to needs, curricular obstacles, inappropriate teaching practices, the stigma of feeling like a failure – or worse. As stated elsewhere by CAST, many students encounter the opposite of universally accessible learning environments. For far too many students, the adversity created through “one size fits all” instructional approaches, or clearly inaccessible curriculum, takes its toll far too early in their journey as lifelong learners. Dr. William Glasser pointed out that if the students resemble workers just “leaning on their shovels” while enrolled, why wouldn’t they conclude that they’ll be just as fulfilled while unenrolled and still “leaning on their shovels”? From Mr. Fitsall’s perspective, the silence created by a student’s dropping out is most likely welcome.
Concluding Reflections
Mr. Fitsall is a caricature. He is not based on anyone specific whom I have met or with whom I have worked, but rather represents an approach to education that I hope is not one you share. We have to resist the temptation to entirely dismiss the example that Mr. Fitsall provides us because we may in fact harbor some of the seeds of his views. Just as the teachers mentioned by Platt et al. had all received favorable evaluations, we must consider that somewhere in the educational world a real Mr. Fitsall exists and works with students on a daily basis. Our challenge is not to change the Mr. Fitsalls of the world, but rather to be aware of how our own approach may mirror his and look for ways to own our own professional development and growth. The greatest growth in our students will come not from the growth of our colleagues down the hall, but from our looking for ways to implicate ourselves in the process of meeting the needs of all students in our care.
Here are some questions for further reflection: