Sorry to make you nervous, acs. And I'm definitely not saying differentiation can't work. It worked like a charm for us one year, and then failed miserably the next, in part BECAUSE it had been such a success the year before. Case-by-case, it's hit or miss. And there are definitely some big hits!
But I'm not really talking on a case-by-case basis, as you are, I think.
I'm saying that as a
systemic solution to the problem of how to handle the spectrum of learning speeds in a classroom, differentiation is the one that's hardest on the teacher to implement and the one that puts the kids at the greatest potential disadvantage, for all the reasons I listed in my previous post. The damage when differentiation doesn't work is worse than that of most of the other possibilities for dealing with GT kids.
I'm saying that differentiation is last on my personal list of solutions in terms of the big picture of GT education.
I'm saying that I wish differentiation weren't the default mode and sum total for GT education today (maybe with an hour pull-out a week, as if kids are only GT an hour a week...), but instead were an extra thing we did to make things even better for the kids.
We are working within an educational system, and I think trying to think only in terms of case-by-case is limiting what we accomplish. Yes, the kids are all unique and have unique needs, but what solutions could we implement that might do a *better* job of serving *more* of them?
Is that less nervous-making?
