In inclusive classrooms access to the content for all learners is the objective for all teachers.  In the Theoharis article “The Golden Rule of Providing Support in Inclusive Classrooms she states  “Inclusive classrooms are places where all students are ‘integral members of classrooms, feel a connection to to their peers, have access to rigorous and meaningful general education curricula and receive the collaborative support to succeed’(Theoharis pg 37)  All students need differentiated access to the material at a rigorous level. “For students with disabilities, inclusive school should promote intellectual growth, independence and interaction with peers(Theoharis, pg 37) This cannot be accomplished in isolation.  Students with disabilities must be able to work non disabled peers in the same setting as way to teach how to interact and engage with the same peers in life.    

In Tomlinson's article “Teach me, Teach my Brain A Call for Differentiated Classrooms, she talks about  “What does a differentiated classroom look like”.  One great example is  “Teachers are hunter and gatherers who energetically continue to find out all they can students’ current readiness, interests and learning profiles.”(Tomlinson, pg 55)  Everyday teachers are faced with assessing student ability, in the moment, seeing where each student is at and adjusting the lesson to meet the varied needs in response the assessment.  Another point that stood out from the same article was “Teachers often present several learning options at different degrees of difficulty to ensure appropriate challenge for students at various readiness levels.”(Tomlinson, pg 55)  Meeting students needs at their appropriate level of access always proves to be challenging.  And lastly, “Teachers often give students choices about topics of study, ways of learning, modes of expression, and working conditions.”(Tomlinson, pg 55)  I have found that my students respond better and are more actively engaged when they are offered different methods of access to the content.

For me, reality lies somewhere in between.  Believing, in theory, that differentiation can work effectively versus the reality that makes it difficult to implement.

In “Differentiation Does In Fact Work” Carol Ann Tomlinson directly responds to James R. Delisle assertion that differentiation doesn’t work as teachers “ do understand that the pursuit of expertise in teaching is a career long endeavour. They aren’t sprinters expecting quick success, so much as marathoners in the race for the long haul” (Tomlinson, pg. 1) and that implementing it is part of a process and skill set that does not develop instantaneously overnight. She goes on to state that the reason why differentiation is beneficial is because when students are separated based on their ability, students in the remedial classes do not have access to the same educational opportunities as their peers in more advanced classes. This then creates an unequal access to both material but also future success. One reason for this is  “students in lower-track classes don't achieve as well as they do in heterogeneous settings. Those classes tend to be taught by newer or less engaged teachers. The quality of curriculum and instruction is less robust than in most heterogeneous settings” (Tomlinson, pg. 2) further allowing those students to fall behind their peers. Another drawback to separating students is that, unfortunately, when students are isolated based on their capabilities, those classes that have have “not only heavily populated by students whose lives were marked by "plenty," but that continual engagement with the kind of learning opportunities in those classes predicted a continuing life of plenty for students in them” (Tomlinson, pg. 2) further increasing the achievement gap. 

I personally agree with both sides of this argument, and see both the positives and negatives of both differentiation and heterogeneous classroom settings. This year, I’m teaching in a self contained setting where all my students have IEP’s and thus require the lessons to be tailored to their needs, with multiple points of access to the content. While I think this is wonderful because it creates opportunity for students to learn and understand material that they may not be able to without the proper supports and scaffolds, I also think that it places an unfair burden on the teacher. In a perfect system where there’s time to collaborate with content teachers or where content teachers provide the curriculum or lesson plans to be modified for students with learning needs by the special educator, differentiation is possible and a wonderful tool for both student learning and a teacher’s toolbelt. But, in a reality such as mine where the content teachers do not provide curriculums or lesson plans to be modified it presents the situation where the teacher is both creating the content and differentiating said instruction, which is two jobs. In my particular case, this extends to all four major content areas leaving me unable to differentiate instruction to all my students needs. Not often enough am I able to differentiate lessons as I’m also creating the content. To create both educational and engaging lessons and then differentiate the lesson to the eight learning styles in my classroom is an impossible task. I could see how this could work better in an ICT setting, where both the content teacher and the special educator work in tandem to address all their students needs. But as it stands in the reality I’m living in, differentiation is not tenable.  

 

After having many conversations with fellow teachers, I agree with Delisle about oftentimes beating ourselves up for not providing adequate differentiation—something I personally struggle with everyday. (Delisle, p.2) Differentiation can be difficult at times and yes there are classrooms like Delisle describes that have students, “Toss together several students who struggle to learn, along with a smattering of gifted kids, while adding a few English-language learners and a bunch of academically average students and expect a single teacher to differentiate for each of them.” (Delisle, p.2) Even with an ENL teacher working alongside myself and the general education teacher, differentiation is still tricky at times. We find ourselves scrabbling to support quite a few students in a limited amount of time, which is not always easy.

 

What Tomlinson describes as a reasonable counterclaim known as “teaching up” (Tomlinson, p.3) where teachers just plan for the gifted students and scaffold for the less advanced, is easier said than done. In the classes that I co-teach, we have been implementing this most often than not and what I noticed that has been happening is our less advanced students are clueless during most of the lesson and then all three teachers have to assist the various students with the independent work. The part that we may be missing is the effective scaffolding strategies, even though we do try. 

 

Then, on the flipside in another class I have been co-teaching in I have been pulling students out that have been struggling and working with them in a small group recently foe a specific lesson. The content is the same as what they would have in class but I move at a slower pace, explain more, relate the content more to them, and involve more activities that help them comprehend the material. So far, this has worked very well for my students for this particular assignment. So, in this case differentiation is working very well but not in the manner Tomlinson advocates. 

 

Perhaps the struggle for me personally is because I am a new teacher and I still need more training in how to differentiate within an inclusive classroom. Or maybe it’s just that some students work better with slowed down lessons and one-on-one attention? Either way I think it’s a great argument to have so that we all can perfect our teaching to reach all of our students.  

After reviewing the Differentiation doesn’t work article I must say that I might agree with some of the ideas presented. In theory differentiation sounds great and easily obtainable, however in a “heterogeneous classroom” it is extremely difficult (Delisle, pg.2). In a classroom with students with different abilities it is very had to adhere to each individual student. This is very true in one of my ict classes. I have students who are very high levels, students with IEP’s on very low levels, English language learners, and a student has an orthopedic impairment (cerebral palsy). My co-teacher and I often struggle when deciding which differentiations will reach all of our students but somehow it seems some students are still overlooked. I often feel as a teacher specifically a special education teacher, that my responsibilities are far reached and in some cases impossible but for many it is doable. Delisle explains “It seems to me that the only educators who assert that differentiation is doable are those who have never tried to implement it themselves: university professors, curriculum coordinators, and school principals.” In many cases people who aren’t actually those who are differentiating in your classroom have many answers or solutions to what you can do and yet still I do not always feel like these things work. However, I do believe that one differentiation method can work for so many different types of learners. Additionally, the method used may not be successful that day but after it is repeated for a while it can benefit students more than you imagine. For example, I found that graphic organizers help all my students as many of them even on higher levels benefit from tools that help them stay organized.  

On the other hand, Tomlinson disagrees with the idea that differentiation doesn’t work and that it is in fact a hard job to implement but it can be done. Tomlinson knows that when implementing differentiation you may not see “quick success” as the pursuit of expertise in teaching is a career-long endeavor” (Tomlinson, pg. 1). I was especially happy to read this as this idea was exactly how I was feeling for some of the point Delisle was making. Tomlinson also talks about the idea that teachers can use many different resources to help them with differentiation as she did. She consulted “school-based academic coaches and principals who share colleagues the practices of differentiation they used successfully in their own classroom” (Tomlinson, pg. 1). While Tomilson has man resources she went to help her and it was successful, not all teachers have that luxury and may be surrounded by people who leave it up to the teacher to “figure it out”. I have heard stories of people who are expected to just do certain things correctly as they are the special educator and especially with differentiation it is not always that simple. 

 Reading both articles it is difficult not to say that both make good, and valid points; I tend to agree with Carol Ann Tomlinson for a couple of reasons. First of all, in life I have learned to avoid absolutes; in other words, a statement like “this will never work” does not work for me. Second, C.A. Tomlinson has very good arguments in her response, and her work overall, unlike James R. Delisle, who I can’t say much about his arguments, but I can say that he appears to have an elitist and separatist attitude towards education. 

In his article Differentiation Doesn’t Work, Delisle says that “Although fine in theory, differentiation in practice is harder to implement in a heterogeneous classroom than it is to juggle with one arm tied behind your back.”, and then he goes on to give examples of when it did not work. It appears on his article that the author has never actually tried to differentiate for his students, and he bases his claims on findings of other researchers, without putting any real effort to analyze their findings. When he quotes Michael Petrilli,

"Teachers were provided with extensive professional development and ongoing coaching. Three years later the researchers wanted to know if the program had an impact on student learning. But they were stumped. 'We couldn't answer the question ... because no one was actually differentiating,' ",

I can only ask what type of professional development are we talking about, who were these teachers, what type of coaching did they receive? It is only fair for the reader to assume, that just because it failed in a particular setting, that does not mean it will never work. If that was our attitude in life, we would still live in the middle ages. He goes on to say that “Differentiation might have a chance to work if we are willing, as a nation, to return to the days when students of similar abilities were placed in classes with other students whose learning needs paralleled their own.”, I don’t see the point in differentiation in this statement; what I see is segregation and a continuation of an unjust system that caters to the elit. Let’s not forget, a child might appear to be smarter than another based on the fact that it has both parents with college degrees that have high expectations of their child, while the other “not so smart” student comes from a broken home with a struggling parent that really has no time to spent on that student’s education. 

C.A. Tomlinson has taught in differentiated classes with great success, in her article Differentiation Does, In Fact, Work, she tells us . “I absolutely understand that differentiating instruction well is not easy. But then, I've never felt that teaching should be easy.“ I love this statement because it exposes the lazy approach Mr. Delisle is taking with teaching, “Let me teach my smart kids, the rest of you can kick rocks”. Ms. Tomlinson is on point and I will use two personal anecdotes to back her up. First, I have a student called Angelica, she is wonderful and very eager to learn but the results were not there. I went back to her IEP and realised MY mistake, she is not a visual learner unlike the rest of her classmates, she is a tactile learner; I started adjusting my lessons to fit that need, I did not exclude the other students from the new activities, I presented tactile activities as just another type of things we do in the classroom. Success, all students love the new activities--youtube was getting boring--and Angelica’s progress has accelerated. All it took was an extra 30 minutes on my part to come up with another activity. The second is more personal, my oldest son is a second grader, this year he was randomly selected to be in an ICT classroom, he is part of the gen-ed population of the class. Within three months I have seen his performance improve--he is the best student in the class, #proud_dad--but most important for me, I saw something I have never seen from him. Being that he is gen-ed he is the leader of his group, as a result I saw leadership skills that I never thought he had, and I also saw understanding in his eyes, I saw empathy; these are qualities that a student in a sterile “all smart” classroom would never develope. 

In conclusion, I believe it is fairly obvious that differentiation works, and that any attempt to portray it as a futile exercise or a fad shows a hidden agenda of people that really should not be educators.