By definition even if a teacher tries to differentiate and use UDL as aeh discusses it just becomes impractical at a certain point. A brand new teacher was crying to me recently that she had 25 kids in her classroom 2 with significant special needs and no para. She could either work to meet their needs or work to meet the needs of the other 23 kids in the room. There is just no way to properly do both. She's ready to quit teaching after one year. And she is a mainstream teacher with a sped certification. I just don't know how one person can meet these needs - especially without appropriate specialized training.
Just my 2 cents...
THIS.
The hypocrisy in pretending that differentiation by ONE teacher can somehow occur simultaneously as opposed to sequentially has got to GO. As long as politicians and educators get to act as if the physically impossible were possible, there cannot be progress.
Yes, it costs money, I get it. I work in the public sector, I used to work in the treasury, i know what budgeting constraints are. Put your money where your mouth is or admit that for economy of scale, at some point you have to do instructional grouping.
And if you want to save money, stop being hung up on age segregation, as aeh insists. I get that too, it’s another form of industrial scaling, making sure you can process children in yearly age segregated batches. With that, as Spaghetti pointed out, you need to get rid of urriculum age matching as well - if I were in the US, I’d be a big proponent of common core - as a curriculum to be worked through by 98% by 12th grade at the latest...and by some by 8th.
