Welcome to Coaching Conversations, where we explore innovative approaches to teaching and learning. Today I have the pleasure of speaking with my dear friend and extraordinary voice in education, Carol Tomlinson. I'm your host, Jim Knight, and I'm excited to bring you insights from the forefront of education.
With a focus on curriculum, differentiated instruction, and formative assessment, Carol’s work at the University of Virginia has always aimed to empower classroom teachers to enhance the learning experiences of diverse learners. Through over 300 publications, including bestselling books like How to Differentiate Instruction in Academically Diverse Classrooms and The Differentiated Classroom, Carol has strived to provide practical strategies for educators worldwide.
Named Outstanding Professor at UVA's School of Education and recognized as #12 in the Education Week Edu-Scholar Public Presence Rankings, my commitment to advancing educational discourse remains steadfast. Whether it's through her writing or collaborations with educators nationally and internationally, Carol’s goal is to foster learner-centered classrooms where every student can thrive.
Join me on Coaching Conversations as we delve into the principles and practices of differentiation, formative assessment, and creating inclusive learning environments. Whether you're a teacher, a school leader, or simply passionate about education, this podcast is your resource for transformative ideas and actionable strategies.
Tune in as we embark on a journey to elevate teaching and learning for all students.
I'd love to hear your feedback about my weekly Coaching Conversations. Please consider leaving a rating or review and subscribing to our channel.
To learn more about our Instructional Coaching Institute and how to attend, click here.
To learn how to join out System Support: What Administrators need to know virtual workshop, click here.
Welcome to Coaching Conversations, where we explore innovative approaches to teaching and learning. Today I have the pleasure of speaking with my dear friend and extraordinary voice in education, Carol Tomlinson. I'm your host, Jim Knight, and I'm excited to bring you insights from the forefront of education.
With a focus on curriculum, differentiated instruction, and formative assessment, Carol’s work at the University of Virginia has always aimed to empower classroom teachers to enhance the learning experiences of diverse learners. Through over 300 publications, including bestselling books like How to Differentiate Instruction in Academically Diverse Classrooms and The Differentiated Classroom, Carol has strived to provide practical strategies for educators worldwide.
Named Outstanding Professor at UVA's School of Education and recognized as #12 in the Education Week Edu-Scholar Public Presence Rankings, my commitment to advancing educational discourse remains steadfast. Whether it's through her writing or collaborations with educators nationally and internationally, Carol’s goal is to foster learner-centered classrooms where every student can thrive.
Join me on Coaching Conversations as we delve into the principles and practices of differentiation, formative assessment, and creating inclusive learning environments. Whether you're a teacher, a school leader, or simply passionate about education, this podcast is your resource for transformative ideas and actionable strategies.
Tune in as we embark on a journey to elevate teaching and learning for all students.
I'd love to hear your feedback about my weekly Coaching Conversations. Please consider leaving a rating or review and subscribing to our channel.
To learn more about our Instructional Coaching Institute and how to attend, click here.
To learn how to join out System Support: What Administrators need to know virtual workshop, click here.
I think a coach needs to understand differentiation at some depth and complexity because otherwise it is it still is that it's about a instructional strategy. Should we how to do a tiered list? And then I could go differentiate and it'll be fine. I think the coach needs to be attentive to teachers who are as different among themselves as kids are among themselves, and be attuned to listening to that. Teachers, strengths and areas of confidence and misgivings and help the teacher sort of understand about themselves. Let's let's start here from an area of strength and build on there. And if the coach has to have some vocabulary, let's look at these areas. Which ones? Which one might you say you were stronger in? Can you give me a story about that? Is there something that you'd like to do better in that thing that you're confident up instead of coming in and saying, okay, now everybody has to do a tiered lesson, Let's work on that together. I'm Jim Knight, co-founder of the Instructional Coaching Group. And you're listening to coaching conversations where I talk with coaching experts from around the world so that all of us can learn better ways to make an unmistakably positive impact on the people around us. Hi, everyone. It's ICD consultant Jessica Wise, host of the Coaching Questions on the Coaching Conversations podcast with Jim Knight. Are you interested in learning about tools and resources to build and maintain a successful instructional coaching program? If so, join our Instructional Coaching Institute designed for instructional coaches and administrators in this 16 week course led by Jim Knight, you'll learn how to establish a proven foundation for success, develop a deeper and complete understanding of the coaching process and practices, and cultivate necessary communication skills for healthy conversations. We will also explore engagement in the classroom and coaching tools and resources. Learn more by visiting Instructional Coaching Icon. I look forward to seeing you at the Institute. So Carol, I'm super excited to have this conversation for a whole bunch of reasons and I'm going to make you sit there and listen to these for a second if it's okay. First one is, I think if you made a list of in my lifetime, ten people who've had a profound positive impact on education, you'd have to be one of the ten people on that list, maybe even a shorter than ten people list. When I think about sort of the big themes in improving schools, professional learning communities might be one, but differentiated instruction is definitely on that list. So. So I'm grateful that you've taken the time. The second thing I want to say is that you and I have had some conversations about how instructional coaching and differentiated instruction go together, how coaches might be best prepared to help. Hopefully that'll lead to a book. But I wanted to say to that those conversations and the learning I've had as a result of of understanding better what differentiated instruction is and not just the sort of the technique but the beliefs behind it and understand it is one of the most rewarding experiences I've had this year. Maybe the most rewarding. It's just been sped my soul and I think it's important. So I'm grateful on a number of levels that we get to have this conversation. So thank you. Well, for starters, that's a nice way for me to start my day. And it's especially those coming from someone for whom I have great respect. And I would have to say that I'm sure I've learned at least as much, if not more, In reading your work on coaching and trying to see how that juxtaposes with differentiation as you have. So maybe that's a good omen. Maybe we'll keep learning together and that would be a really good thing. Well, I have more to learn, that's for sure. So that's that sounds to. my. But, you know, if I did it, I don't think I'd want to get up in the morning. So. So. Okay. Yeah, I'm with you on that. So I have sort of a background question, and I was wondering if you could tell me sort of how this all started. What's the origin story for differentiated instruction? And, you know, before you were doing differentiate or maybe you were doing differentiated from the moment you walk in the classroom, but what did you teach and how did that whole thing of all that I think of it just be interesting to hear what's the history of differentiated instruction. But it's a wonderful part of my history, so I'm always glad to share that. But I'm going to back up down the highway for a little bit to say that the idea of differentiation, of course, is really quite old. You can find it in some of the writings about tutoring and tutoring, you know, hundreds of years ago was a thing among many other reasons for that. But and we know that there were and still are some one room schoolhouses in the United States. And none of those teachers said, I'll let you sit down and I'm going to teach you the same way they had. Kids were from, you know, 6 to 18. And sometimes the six year old was better off in reading than the 18 year old. And so they had methods of rotation, which are really fascinating to look at. I was in Taiwan a number of years ago and try to make a long story short, a woman was wearing a pendant that was really attractive in Chinese characters and had a break. So that's kind of a jewelry free bet necklace is really pretty. What does that say? The don't remember the phrase exactly, but it had something to do with appreciating the uniqueness of every human or something. Hannah said, Wow, that's exactly what we're talking about today. I'm pretty impressed to see that around your neck. And she said, no, this is the differentiation. Quote, There's another differentiation. Quote. And I'm thinking, What do you mean? And she said, We have a saying in a, you know, statement of wisdom in Chinese that's been around for centuries. And it was something like people differ in their gifts and talents to teach them, you have to start where they are. And I almost jumped out of my skin. But that what she introduced me to Joe the jeweler and Joe the jeweler made that little pit for me, which I still wear from time to time. So I was sharing that with a group and somebody with a Jewish background shared with me the quotation from the Jewish wisdom, ancient wisdom that says pretty much the same thing. And after that I was sharing that and the Chinese one with a group and a man with a muslim religious background came and they handed me a napkin in which he had written out the equivalent in in their holy writings. So differentiation is not a new thing and it shouldn't be. But this version of it that started a long time ago, I didn't mean to teach. I won't go into that whole story for you. And in fact, I meant not to teach that. It was my only vow as a kid was whatever I did do, it would not be teaching. And I worked it. Duke University Press for years sounds really wonderful. And there, you know, beautiful place. But that was just the worst job in the world for me. So I one Friday at lunch just thought I could keep doing this and got a want out out of the newspaper. It was the end of October to fill a high school teaching position. And so I called the office and said I wouldn't be back that afternoon. And I was again, I didn't, as I recall, it didn't even go clear at my goods. But the school was in the Deep South, truly remote, and it was the first year of mandated racial integration. And I got one bear of education that you're not only did I not know how to teach, but it was an opening up of the whole world around me, the things I'd taken for granted and a goodness that I was sure was always there, which clearly was not always there. I had no sense of approaching teaching as as thinking about kids, as individuals, because I'd always been taught as part of a one size fits all troupe to. So that year I spent a lot of time learning about myself and learning about kids and learning about teaching. And much of the foundation from that year is where the foundation of differentiation comes from, and that is if you have deep respect and trust in kids and a deep belief that they're on a road to somewhere that's going to keep getting better and better and better and you can get through almost anything with them and that that makes a massive difference. My second job, which I was equally unqualified to do, was to direct a child development center, and we had a license when we began, I think for some odd number, like 81 students, and we started with three. And by six or eight months down the road we were at the ceiling and had a waiting list. And many of those kids came with no English language whatsoever. Many of their parents had just arrived in this country and they could hardly speak to us. And the trust that they had in us and the hope that they had for their children because they felt that they were in a so much better place to make that happen than they've ever been. Was uplifting. I learned a lot about differentiation there from watching kids. None of the adults could speak the language of the new kid that came in this morning and the truth was sometimes nobody of the younger group could either. But the kids who were there would take the new kid and moving around to everybody in the room until somebody sort of could understand and then they'd leave. It never occurred to me to do that, but they got it. Then I'd be happy to tell you if we had a ten hour podcast. Many of the stories that I learned from them. But differentiation itself began in my third place, and that was in a middle school, which was great because I had vowed that not only would I never teach, but if I did, which I wasn't going to, middle school would never be it. And that was because I was such an unhappy early adolescent that I didn't want to. Was that pain for the rest of my life. But that was the place I was born to be. I taught there for 21 years and had the most amazing colleagues to work with and kids who were quite varied in many, many ways. My colleague and I who were going to teach teach were hired to teach reading once again, had never had a course on reading, didn't know how to teach reading, was just convinced that we could make that happen. And we sort of did. But during the course of that, I think it was about the third year that I was there. I was standing in the hall and a little sort of cocoa colored paste kid was about this high on me. Beautiful curly black hair came up and said something to me, but he whispered it to the floor and it was the class change and nobody could hear it. So after 3 hours to get him to say something loud enough and me squatting down to try it ear, I realized what he was saying to me. I thought he was asking me to help him open his locker because that was traumatic for kids. But it was the beginning of the fourth week of school. He was coming for the first day. He was in my seventh grade class, first period. He was 15, and he didn't know the alphabet yet completely. What he was saying to me was, I can't read and and I'm that sort of like an electric bolt through my head down to the floor. And I had like that skidding on ice feeling where your whole life goes had brought up. And I'm thinking, I don't know how to teach somebody that doesn't know how to read. I don't know how to teach reading. I'm thinking maybe I shouldn't tell people that that's what I've been asked to do. But I have no idea how to start that. And I don't have materials and I don't know where to put him in the class and how can I find time for him when I have to teach the normal kids, which I learned differently pretty quickly most of the time when we don't have enough time anyhow. So all of that was going through my head. But as the bell rang and we walked into the room, the one thought that I took with me was it took huge courage for them to say what he said to me and I couldn't let him down. His name was Golden. And so my first real experience and commitment to what we now call differentiation is that I would find things for him to do and I would find things for him to do in the context of what the rest of us were doing when I possibly could, and when I couldn't do something else. I learned a huge amount. That year was probably the best year of teaching I ever did. And again, I had no idea what I was doing. But he started off at a pre-primary level and he was reading at a pretty solid third grade level when he left, which is much better than 15, and I don't know a little alphabet yet, and I learned so many things about that. Among them was that every kid in that class, once I started looking at them as individuals instead of a herd, they all needed me in different ways. And so my colleagues and I spent the ones others in the same building talked almost daily about what we were doing, the ones who came from other buildings to join us. We met once or twice a week, really for 18 years, and that conversation among people about what seems to be working, What ideas do you have? How do we know if this is working on? How can we talk to kids about it? How can we talk to parents about it? We're stuck here. How do we get unstuck was the origin of all of it. It's a really long process and I love the answer. And like you, middle school is my favorite place. The kids show up with the teddy bears and they talk about politics. I mean, there is such and the place is abuzz with energy, you know, And that's yeah, to me, middle school. I mean, everybody has their place, I suppose, as educators, you know, I don't I think that there's a special place in heaven for kindergarten teachers. I don't know how they do the stuff they do, but you walk in, they're like, Yeah, I can't get one kid to do it. You got all those kids doing so. So yeah, but I really I really do love middle school. I loved your stories, too. And I think you're you're moving in this direction. But my next question is, could you give us and I know you could spend five or ten days on this topic, but what would you say? You know, briefly, what is differentiated instruction? How would you describe what it is? And I'll just interrupt myself right away to say that it to me, what's interesting is differentiation in and of itself, that concept has been adopted across the board in every field. People the same way you might talk about a learning organization or agile systems, people talk about differentiation. So when you take differentiation and apply it to instruction in a nutshell, what's that all about? I guess the bottom line for me always is that if you've been in a classroom for more than a day and you're watching the kids, it's really they're not all starting in the same place, that they don't bring the same interests or strengths that they have different needs that to many of them glaze over when we start the one size fits all business and that what we're trying to do is learn who they are, meet them where they are, and then design ways for them to be able to move forward as quickly and effectively as possible. And that's a pretty simplistic way of thinking about it. But that's really the point. If we had a really high quality basketball coach, that coach would never come in and say, You're all going to do all the same drills, you're all going to, you know, work on the same things for the same amount of time. I would never take the most advanced basketball player and say, You too good for this team. You sit down and when the others catch up with you, we'll do something with you. If it's a team, if it's a school where you know, an athlete, a PE class, where kids are all playing, nobody says, I'm sorry, you're too lousy, you can't play. They help them develop that. And that's really what we're looking at in teaching is being in this sort of falls in your lane in a way, at least at some point, or being good mentors, being good coaches, no kids. And that means knowing where they are and knowing where it is they need to be and being able to track that trajectory, but also impact that trajectory by understanding them better and better and responding to what we understand. Hi everyone. It's ICG consultant Jessica Wise, host of the Coaching Questions on the Coaching Conversations podcast with Jimmy right here to talk about our virtual workshop titled System Support What Administrators Need to Know. We know that the impact coaches have is directly related to how effectively they are supported or not supported by their administrators. For that reason, it is crucial that administrators participate in professional development, that clarifies what coaches do and how they can be supported. Our virtual workshop system support will provide administrators with everything they need to know about instructional coaching. Join us to learn about the partnership principles that guide coaches interactions with teachers. The six specific actions administrators can take to support coaches effectively. The five Simple Truths of Helping and more. Join us or learn more by visiting Instructional Coaching Icon. I remember when I first started the formative assessment was kind of baked into the instructional practices that I was doing and I was looking at the student results. I was just astonished that what I thought was happening, what was really happening, were dramatically different. Yeah, I just assumed when people know their head and they talk and then I was kind of like, why didn't they apply the knowledge that they'd all learned? But when I started to do formative assessment and keep track every day of how kids were performing, I realized, holy smokes, it was a real revelation that what I thought was happening, what was really happening, were dramatically different, really different. So I'll tell you another story that sort of an answer to what differentiation means to me, but when I was at the university, after 21 years of teaching in public school, it also didn't have a clue what I was doing there. A young woman who was a differentiation coach had been hired to be a differentiation coach in a town that was about an hour and a half, 2 hours away from the university, called and asked if I would meet with her some time. She said, I'm the only differentiation coach, and there's nobody to talk to and it would be really helpful. So she did come meeting times that year and we had conversations, but she when I went to the university, I would have said differentiation is an instructional model and it is at its core. That's what you're trying to do is change teaching and learning. But she came in and she said, You know, I don't think I'm doing my job right. Well, tell me about that. She said, Well, there there is a teacher I'm working with and I'm supposed to teach her how to differentiate, but she doesn't like the kids. And if she doesn't like the kids, I don't know how to teach her to differentiate. Right? Then I would get a I'm working with some teachers who really don't know what they're teaching in any deep way. They kind of are going at the surface and want the kids to go at the surface. And if I'm trying to teach them how to teach in ways that are really impactful, they can't do that if they don't understand what they're teaching. And then sort of you're saying with the formative assessment, we had a conversation about that. And so ultimately what I realized was that we have five at least tools in the classroom, elements that all of us have every day, whether we name them or not. And if you teach well for any student and also for every student, you have to use all five of those elements. And those are a learning environment, which I believe is again, I've said this already, but I believe it's by far the most powerful element in a classroom to be a catalyst for student growth and success. A kid needs to feel safe and valued and seen and heard and respected and dignified and like a contributor and engaged in what's going on. And when that teacher student trust is built and then the teacher helps the student the student trust, that's a powerful forward momentum curriculum, right now in many schools, we teach the most awful stuff. That doesn't mean anything to the teacher or the kids because we're told over and over that if they don't pass that standardized test, we're going to all be in trouble. And when you teach kids things that are flat out boring or nonsense to them in a world where they have all kind of media that can feed them exciting things all the time, we've lost that. But if we aren't using formative assessment, you're exactly like it's exactly like what you were saying. You know, the terrible said teaching in the dark is questionable business. And it is. And by the way, if we're not helping kids understand the formidable steps, what you can add to that learning in the dark is questionable business, too. They don't understand the learning and then the instruction, which really has to be adapted for kids strengths and interests and the and then try to figure out how to manage all that, how to lead kids to be your partners in success and how to create and develop routines that you and the kids can work out together are all part of differentiation. So that's a longer answer than you meant, but it's a little bit more multifaceted than not trying to do the best we can to get kids to go as far as it's a well, I think that people start to talk about what's the impact of differentiated instruction. I think it's really important that they keep those five variables in place, but the evidence in support of each of them individually is pretty strong. So just take formative assessment. What's the evidence around the power of formative assessment? Whether you look at the old William or John Hattie, whoever it might be, or same thing with the environment and obviously curriculum is critical. So when you start to talk about this, it's it's not it's not some little magical thing. It's it's it's getting to the core of what good teaching is all about is kind of how I see it actually. That's been an interesting thing for me in the beginning, just kind of instinctively I kept thinking, It seems to me like what we're doing is making a difference and we're getting better at it all the time. But how do I know that? How can I know that? And so working out just, you know, ideas, we began developing some assessment tools on our own to look at the big picture between classes, between periods, between genders, between races, whatever it was we could figure out in some time. It was as simple as how many people are really speaking up. And then the fact that we're never speaking up in here. And then we were fortunate because we were pretty close to the University of Virginia. And so somebody said doctoral student. So we wanted to do research and they really did some for us and that was pretty interesting. But throughout my whole career, again, much more simplistically in the beginning and hopefully a little more sophisticated later, I have a sense of responsibility of saying, how does this thing align with our knowledge of best practice as a profession? I don't want to go to a doctor who ignores the best practice in the field that that doctor practices. I don't want to go to an architect who says I learned how to build houses or buildings 4550 years ago and haven't changed a thing since. So for me, trying to understand what our best sense of good practice is from psychology, research and psychology and pedagogy, neuroscience, and then just observing the art of education, because I think education is as much an art as it is a science. And trying to continue to grow the model so that it aligns with our best practices is a real thing for me that matters. To keep up with those expert in the field. And of course they've been my mentors too. I haven't even met all of them, but they've been my mentors and I learn from them all the time. How has your understanding of differentiated instruction changed over time? So what are maybe a few benchmarks in terms of your learning as you look back at the work you've done in the many books you've published? Well, giving you a couple of those, right? Sometimes my hallmarks are not quite as sophisticated as University of all Marks are, because I live for 21 years in rooms full of kiddos and met with like teachers, you know, in the afternoon. And so you sound different. You look a little look at things a little differently. But when I left the public school teaching and went to the university and I was not hired there to work with differentiation, it didn't even have a name then. But I began to understand partially from that teacher who was hired to be the differentiation coach, but from going to places all around. First, the state of Virginia. I did that and then more broadly, but listening to teachers and what their thinking was, I went to the university and would have said to you, differentiation is an instructional model. It's about what you do when you're teaching and what kids do when they're learning. And it has become more and more important, as I've already said to you, to me, to look at all of those classroom elements from a standpoint of what our best knowledge is and figure out what it means to use each of those elements in ways that are both true to the understanding that we have of what they mean, but also flexible enough to make room for the human beings and so one big step for me was that in my own work and I think it's important when I am with teachers to say this, I and even when I left public school, I was thinking about learning environment and curriculum assessment instruction and how those turned together, you know, how they lecture together. And I didn't give equal weight to all of those areas at the same time. So I was a late comer for formative assessment and wish I could go back and start that over the place where I was based and understood at best, even instinctively was learning environment, the curriculum I loved and my colleagues did love doing things with kids that caught their imagination and helped them look at the world differently. But I didn't really understand a number of key things about that until a couple of years before I left public school. Once I understood them, I changed my sense of what I was trying to teach, what curriculum was radically on a dime, but it was an evolution over time. Know. So part of the evolution for me is looking back at where each of those elements sank in for me When I was at the university in the first year I was there, I was working with a couple of school districts on a long term basis and I was fascinated by teachers, what I'd go into their rooms to talk with them and usually at their invitation, and the teacher would say to me, You know, I can tell you what these different kids need. I can tell you what I should be doing today for them. And if I were to do it, this is how I would do it. And this is how I would explain it to them and this is how it would work. But they didn't. And what I discovered was that they didn't because the last element of how do you make all this stuff work together scared the limit dickens out of them. And their sense was I was in chaos my first year, like most teachers are, and I don't want to go back there and I don't know how to do that. My colleagues and I had figured out how to do that management thing right off the bat, because if we hadn't not, we didn't get it the first week or the first month or the first year of the first two years. But it kept getting better and better because we couldn't have done what we were doing. And sometimes I think we skipped that. We asked teachers to differentiate, but we really don't talk with them about the mechanics of that and how those pieces come together and what you can do slowly to help kids live in a more flexible environment successfully. So for me, those have sort of been the stages kind of in a way, those elements. And then when you start digging into them more deeply, of course you see the connections among all of them. And that is important to connect or that you have to function together smoothly if things are to be as powerful for kids as they can. I wonder what you think about this next question. What would you say are some common misconceptions about differentiated instruction? I'm going to I'm going out on a limb and assuming that there are some, because I hear lots of misconceptions about instructional coaching so well, we've got an hour and a half. I'll be glad to go through. Many people think differentiation is a lesson point and for everybody, it never has been that. It can't be. There's no teacher that can go home and do in the elementary level 30 different lesson plans in five subjects. And there is no body in high school that can teach 150 kids and do different lesson plans. And if you could, it wouldn't be worthwhile because you'd have to reduce that to just mechanical things. I started teaching in what was supposed to be individualized instruction, and you had these you may remember this, but I'm older than you are the little kids that the kids use and they work at a certain place in the kit, depending on what their skills were. And the only way you can do that sort of linear kind of thing is to reduce the content to a meaningless, you know, a little teeny bit. But that scares people off. I don't I hear that still over and over. I don't have time to do, you know, a whole bunch of different lesson plans every night. I think there are people who certainly now struggle with the idea that the most important thing in my life is getting kids to get passed until standardized tests. You're telling me not to standardize the instruction. How can you help them pass that test if you're not doing the same thing with all of them? And of course, if covering stuff and doing exactly the same thing with everybody worked, all of our students would be soaring high because that's what we're all doing now. For the most part, we've been pressed into that, but that sits that you can't differentiate and then do have a standardized test. It's a big struggle for lots of people. There are certainly the number of people who see differentiation as kind of mollycoddling kids to tough it out and give them stuff they couldn't do and keep their feet to the fire. They'd get stronger. It's not too likely for four year olds and six year olds and ten year olds. And from my experience, not too likely for 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17 year olds either. I think teachers say differentiations too hard, it's too much to do, and so is parenting and so is aspiring to be a great cook, or at least an inviting cook. And it's difficult to be a great golfer or to be a really good friend or a neighbor. It's impossible to get good parenting down in anything shorter than a lifetime. And differentiation is is really a model for teacher with teachers, with high aspirations that says have a big picture and then let's figure out how to make it unfold better day after day after day. So that sense of I'm supposed to do it all Monday, and if I can't, then I just don't want to try is a big issue as well. There are lots of issues. I mean, well, you're making me think that what you're doing is saying the teacher is a professional. And what what worries me about a lot of professional development is that it kind of positions the teacher as an unskilled labor. We're going to tell you, here's the pacing guide, here's the way you know, this is the way you have to teach it. Here's the things you have to do. This is how we're going to prepare for the test. And then the teachers rather than me. And to me, a professional. What defines a professional is the ability to use their discretion to adjust what they're doing in the moment. It's a doctor. They don't read from a script. They they gather all the data, they diagnose what you need, and then they try to come up with a plan that works for you. They use their expertise and their knowledge and ideally in an artful way to help you get better. And I think if we're going to have a successful teaching, successful differentiation, it seems it starts with seeing teachers as professionals and not just robots implementing a plan. Yeah, and of course, one of the problems with that, asking them to teach robotically is that over time they become robots and our creativity as teachers is not called on very often, but our is for somebody to say so. A principal school principal say this on in a video one time and I love the woman from that moment. But she said, you know, we talk about this a lot and we understand that we have a great diversity of kids in this middle school, and we're not teaching to that diversity. We're trying to mask it. So I want you to hear me say this today. I would be much happier for you to try something new that's based on good thinking and make a bad mistake than to do what's safe and keep doing that over and over again. We kill teachers in that way. And there's, of course, a very strong link between your professional psyche and your personal one. And I think when we ask teachers to give up that sense of possibility and creativity and the power of making mistakes and learning from them and rejoicing, when you learn something that you can see as better than it's ever been, more effective than it's ever been. But I think there our personal lives have to be impacted in that way, too. It's hard to leave school after 8 hours of hard work and then suddenly be joyful and feel and really positive about yourself. I think we have way too many teachers weighted down because we weight them down. Well, I don't think complexity is a bad thing. I think actually complexity is interesting and I think, yeah, I think what's bad thing is complexity. When you don't have hope, you know, but when you have when you have pathways to your goal, which in the case of differentiation I suppose would be that every student flourishes, you know, when you can see a way and when you see success, complexity is kind of an exciting and fun thing. That's why people like to be professionals, so they can use their brains to create and interact. It's when you don't have hope that it becomes hard. And that's what wears you down, is where every day you start to question. I don't know if I'm making any difference, and I think it's going to be hard to do that if we try to if we turn teachers into robots, as you said, Can you go ahead? No, go ahead. I'm good. Well, Joanna, you've already shared such great stories, but if you got another story you'd like to share about the power of differentiated instruction, you know, one of the places that I see that most clearly now, although I could tell you many examples from my teaching, and maybe I'll head to one of those and go back to it, but because of good old Facebook, I have many, many, many students that I taught when they were 12, 13, 14, 15 who are on Facebook with me and many of them now, almost all of them now would be at least in their fifties, and many of them are in their sixties and her grandparents and that kind of thing. And I'm amazed at the things that they remember that we did and the power of those things in their lives. And some of them telling me, you know, this thing that we used to do, I kept all those materials and I used them with my own children. Or one of the things that I hear most often, it's probably not the thing I hear most often, but it probably has the greatest impact on me is when somebody who now has had a full profession and is you know, again at or into Grand Parenthood, says I remember back at this point when you us to do X and I knew that I couldn't do that and I didn't want to let myself down and I didn't want to let the class down. But somehow you got me through that and I did it. And I have never felt the same sense about myself. That comes in many, many different forms. And it depends, but it is different with different students. But it's that sense of you gave us something that seemed totally impossible, and then we broke it down into pieces. And at the end I look back and I thought I did that. I shouldn't have doubted myself. That kind of thing, I think is immensely powerful. But I would have to say, starting going now to where I started, the thing that the people, the girls, my children that are now 60 say has to do with a feeling of excitement in the class or working together with one another or feeling a sense of trust from the teacher or it all this keeps coming back to me over and over that that is the seedbed from which everything else arises. Belonging. Yeah, that sense of belonging. What would advice again, if I feel like every one of these questions demands a three day response, but what advice do you have for instructional coaches who are in the position of they're asked to do differentiation? What's your thoughts about that? And you may want to add to that a second part, which is are there things that need to be in place in the system for the coach to succeed? Yeah, that's another whole podcast we got going here. That's I will try to be busy and not not strong. Yes. So I think it's really important. I'm going to combine your two questions right here at the outset. It's really important for systems when they ask people to do stuff to make sure that it's possible for that stuff to be done. And so we'll have coaches or one of the things that I recommend often to heads of schools principals is that they think in terms of a differentiation council or steering committee and bring together people like special educators reading second language learner media specialists, all of the social workers, whoever is in the school that whose job causes them to look at kids and their strengths and needs and bring them together to do a lot of thinking and planning together. So it gets out of silos and becomes more shared and also talk about trying to help those people go into classrooms not just as a special educator, but a teacher of all the students who can show that teacher how to do things with kids who have complex learning needs but at the same time is moving around on other teachers of the kids and working with them. That's so much better than the coach going in and thinks they're supposed to change the world in there. But the world doesn't want to be changed. And the coach has had 15 minutes to get ready to start with this differentiation stuff. And as you say, it is complex and it's really important for a coach to feel free to talk with the head of school and say, Boy, that young woman did. To me, this seems to be out of place and we need to think about what we can do to help teachers build confidence in some of these areas so that they feel like they can take the next move. I think a coach needs to understand differentiation at some depth and complexity because otherwise it is it still is that it's about a instructional strategy. Show you how to do a tiered list and then I could go differentiating. It'll be fine. I think the coach needs to be attentive to teachers who are different among themselves as kids or among themselves and be attuned to listening to that teacher's strengths and areas of confidence and misgivings and hope. The teacher sort of understand about themselves. Let's let's start here from an area of strength and build on that. And if the coach has to have some vocabulary, let's look at these areas. Which ones? Which one might you say you were stronger in? Can you give me a story about that? Is there something that you'd like to do better in that thing that you're caught it up instead of coming in and saying, okay, now everybody has to do a tiered list and let's work on that together. And so in other words, the coach being attuned to the individuality and strengths and needs of a teacher as opposed to cookie cutter coaching, we're going to go coach the same different people to do the same thing at the same time. And of course, I say this often to people like instructional coaches and folks who have similar tricky kinds of jobs like that, and you're probably familiar with this, but people who say, well, you're one of these are people who study change a lot, say that sometimes people change because they see the light and sometimes they change because they see the heat, feel the heat. And ultimately, what those people have mostly said is people seem to change when they both see the light and feel the heat. It's what my colleague Mike Murphy, with whom I've written some somebody else is saying, but it takes kind of a hug and show philosophy. And the only heat source in a school really is the principal. Look, that role has been designated to somebody else. But the light source is the coach. The light source is the teacher next door. The light source is the grade level chair of the department chair. All these other people that have opportunity and responsibility to help make change. But they can't basically do anything. They really can't put the screws on very much. And mostly, I think humans respond better to light than the heat. But moments where we need he the principal needs to be the heat source and the coach does not need to be left out there to be that heat source when he or she has very little capacity to apply. Heat coach doesn't have to have a whole lot of heat in many cases, but if stuff's not moving smoothly in a classroom or especially within a school, a light goes in with that coach if it's a good situation. But with light is not adequate to help things move forward. The principal, because that's who it is, needs to accept that responsibility of applying some heat as well as some light adult things move ahead. I worry about people like coaches and other people in similar categories that feel so responsible for making everything happen. And you look around and there is no plan to help teachers develop that knowledge of differentiation. Or if I had a dime for every one of these, I'd be living at a palace. We're going to do differentiation this year. This year differentiation. That's what this year I'm doing parenting and then I'll have it all week long. So if the structure is not in place, then a coach is on the bone soggy ground and we ought not to do that to. Yeah, we use the term too. I've got a bunch of thoughts and I rattle off really quickly and we probably should bring it to a close, unfortunately. But one thing is we like to use the phrase sometimes the principle applies the pressure and the coach relieves the pressure. I think that's your idea. I like actually might like your phrase is better of heat and light. You know if you look at so each many saw I think the coach there's a set of principles that guide what the what a differentiation coach would have to come to understand. And to some extent they're manifested in your your five areas of differentiation. But I think just like the teacher who doesn't like kids, the coach has to has to understand what's the theory behind this, What are the beliefs that guide this practice? And then the other thought that I had was I think coaches who are differentiation coaches are going to be more likely to flourish when they in turn have a coach who is really an expert in differentiation and so they can come to them. And then so there's this in the moment, learning happening all the time. The coach is working with the teacher, but that coach can go to somebody else and say, Hey, what am I supposed to do here? And then that expert can say, here's here's some ideas so that the coach's expertise is continually, continually deepening and expanding, you know, and more, more and more valuable. I mentioned Mike Murphy a few minutes ago. I watched him work like that for a number of years, and he was telling me recently that a school district in Tennessee that he's worked with now, I think for at least ten years, and he has been the expert coach working with the coaches and helping them continue to develop both their knowledge of differentiation and also their skills in working with teachers who can often see the coaches. Who do you think you are coming in here? You're just a teacher. How come you're in here and telling me what to do? And he was telling me that he kind of thought this year was the last year he would need to do that. And we had a conversation. But I said, Mike, you know, I've seen you with those people. They don't need you to walk out of their lives. Maybe what you need to do is shift from bi monthly meetings or monthly meetings to schedules where they can get to you one on one. And if they're not, you get to them. So I think it's kind of like many other things. You get to a place where you don't need the training wheels quite as much, but it doesn't mean you've got the whole gizmo, you know, totally figured out and ready to go. I think that that person who can coach on the art of coaching the teachers in that district, by the way, ten years ago said to him as he was beginning with them after the first year, you've helped us really understand the how to work with teachers as a coach, and we have confidence now that we're ready to move forward. But what we don't know is the what, what is it wish to do? And that's where differentiation came in. And so having the how do you coach teachers? And in truth, most of that does involve differentiation or should the you're coaching them in something that's going to help kids you know work better a lot. So it's not just coaching him on how to pass the stairs. But let me say one other thing to Mike that I think the Jim that you said that hits on two or three questions. One of the things that I think the coach needs to understand about differentiation is that it has been rooted in the belief that every student should have equity of opportunity to access really strong learning opportunities. No kids should be concerned at low level classes and be churning out worksheets year after year in my in my district where I taught for 21 years, I watch people try to teach kids who were really struggling with learning to read the same way in second grade. In fourth grade, eighth grade, 10th grade in 12th grade, same thing over and over and over. And it's clearly not working and you just keep it right. so differentiation is a tool for equity, and it's a tool for balancing equity in excellence or joining code. Joining equity in excellence. And if you see it that way, it also gives you so many opportunities to have an impact on that go in any school where you are. And I am in very few places now and I think anybody that I'm around would argue with this. I'm in very few places where we don't still see some strong signs of inequities happening to some groups of kids more than others. And so if you understand those kinds of things and learning what it means to teach up instead of to teach down, which we do when we see a kid with a problem, if you're able to help teachers understand the danger of labels and what you can accomplish by looking at human beings and strengths and needs versus labeling, that gives them a great deal more power to the possibilities of the coach and of the teacher. I'm 100% enthusiastic about those ideas. Well, this is one conversation that there's many more to come, Carol. I'm sure of it. Yeah, I'm looking forward to them. I think we've actually got one tomorrow or next week. But yeah, thank you so much. This was wonderful. I'm so grateful for you. Were saying you're not that concise, but I think you zoned in on the most important things and articulated them really clearly and concisely. So I'm grateful for the ideas and, you know, as a human being in the world, I'm especially grateful for what you're doing for kids globally. It's it's a wonderful contribution to moving the world forward. And I'm grateful as well. Again, I don't mean to sound like an echo, but one of the many reasons that I have respect for you, depth of knowledge. But what is that? You truly are like human being and everybody who works with you feels that sense of dignity and support when they work with you. And I'm pretty convinced that if we don't have some systems like well prepared coaches in place, given the lack of scope that we often have on professional development, how we interpret that, that we really can't make the change. So I feel exactly the same thing. Maybe we're just meant to be a mutual admiration society, but that's not hard in your case, So it's much better than the alternative. Yep, you bet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think we can do it a little more. Appreciate. I think the world could use a little more of that. You bet. Thanks, Carol. Thank you, Jim. Have a good rest of the day and weekend, Larry, Thanks.