Sixth in a series
Re “Robins: Differentiating – Tall Challenge for Today’s Teachers”
[img]2049|right|Suzanne Robins||no_popup[/img]After exploring what she described as the necessity for today’s teachers to differentiate the stark distinctions among a classroom full of children, School Board candidate Sue Robins said there is not a lone philosophy for a teacher to maximize her face time with students.
“There is no one thing that is going to work for everyone,” she said.
But listen closely to her elaboration.
“You have to teach a single concept in multiple ways so that people who will get it in multiple ways can get it, whether you need a visual or a hands-on, a verbal explanation or one-on-one – or combinations of those,” Ms. Robins said.
“You have to provide them all in some manner for each set of concepts so that all of the kids get it.”
Having taught for six years at the Middle School, when June arrived, what determined in Ms. Robins’s mind whether she had enjoyed a successful year?
“I think that we as teachers, like students, look at various ways of evaluating our students. There is no single means of evaluating students. We can’t say they are doing well or poorly just based on test scores or just based on their written work or just based on their classroom performance.
“It is a combination of things, and it is the same for teachers. I would, every year, look at my scores, and look at them by standards, look at how my students worked with each of the standards, compare it to past years to see if I was improving, but also to look at where I was strong, where I was weak, and use that as a means of changing the pacing of things for the following year.”
(To be continued)
