Differentiating to Meet Different Student Needs with Rick Wormeli, ep. 248

Differentiating to Meet Different Student Needs with Rick Wormeli, ep. 248, Instructional Coaching with Ms. B Podcast

Chrissy Beltran  00:01

Coach, if you’ve been waiting for the confident literacy coach course to open up, your wait is almost over. The course is opening soon, and I want you to be the first to know make sure you’ve signed up at confident literacy coach.com to be included on the wait list. You’ll be notified as soon as it opens for enrollment. This year is going to be even better than before. I’ve updated the reading and writing modules to provide you with the knowledge. You need to support your school in implementing practices that are proven to build skilled readers and writers. Get the PD. You need to provide the PD and learning. They need join the wait list so you can join the course. Welcome to instructional coaching with Misty where we believe that every teacher deserves a coach, and every coach does too. I’m Chrissie Beltran, an elementary teacher who became a coach, and I had to create my own coaching program that worked. Now I teach coaches how to design their coaching programs, build a school wide action plan and use differentiated strategies to support teachers. Plus, I’ve got a special spot in my heart for literacy coaches. Now let’s dig into the episode. Hey coach and welcome to episode 248, today, we are talking about differentiation to meet varied student needs with Rick. Warmly, he’s a great guest. I am so excited to share this with you. He has so many great ideas, and he kind of brings everything full circle. You’re going to love it before we get started. I do want to remind you that you can grab my free define your role as a literacy coach. Webinar. You can get that at buzzing with Miss b.com/episode 248, and scroll down to the bottom so you can enter your email address to get the free webinar. It’s really good information. It’ll guide you step by step to define your role, which is so important if you’re feeling like you are unsure about what you’re there to do and you are trying to do too many things at the same time. So that is a good free webinar. And again, I also have my confident literacy coach course that is open very soon. You can grab that in a couple of weeks for now, why don’t you go to confident literacy coach.com? Confidentliteracy coach.com and you can sign up for the wait list. You will be notified, and you get a little coupon in your email, so that way you can get a few dollars off of that, course. So I think you’re going to really love that. Without further ado, let’s welcome my fantastic guest, Rick. So I’m so glad to welcome you Rick to the podcast

Rick Wormeli  02:19

today. Thank you for letting me come and play in the sandbox.

Chrissy Beltran  02:23

Well, thanks for being here as a quick way to introduce yourself. We would love to hear about a few things. Who do you help and how do you spend most of your time and energy at work?

Rick Wormeli  02:33

Well, after being in the classroom and associated with the local school system here outside of Washington, DC for years, like 25 years I moved into right while I was writing while I was also in that school system, but I moved into writing even more articles and journal pieces and so on, and then books. And now today, I train principals, superintendents, teachers, instructional coaches in North America and and abroad around the world. So I spend the most of my time writing, answering a lot of emails. Rick, we have this challenge, how might you respond to that? Can you give us some language to use, or five quick tips that sort of thing? And then I actually do the live physical training wherever people want want me to go, whether it be a district, an organization or an individual

Chrissy Beltran  03:19

school. Awesome. And then my second part of this question is that I’ve kind of made it my mission to share with instructional coaches about hobbies, because I feel like sometimes when we work in schools, we can forget to be a whole person, and our whole identity is school. So what is a hobby that you love to do?

Rick Wormeli  03:37

I really love hiking, and we do national parks, we’re really into that, so that’s a huge one. But I’m also a fairly new grandfather. My grandkids are two, four and on the way, so there’s three. So I’m really into rediscovering the crafts and activities of engaging two and four year olds. And so it’s become a bit of a hobby. And then I just love science fiction and murder mystery and archeological thrillers. I just think that’s a blast. So reading is another close hobby, let alone occasional biking. I love recreational

Chrissy Beltran  04:13

biking. I did not know archeological thrillers were a thing, so that is amazing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that sounds really fun.

Rick Wormeli  04:23

Okay, so actually, I will say, for like, 30 years of my life, it was giant squid. I did a ton of work with the Smithsonian and with my students and lots of other people, with the expeditions via the Smithsonian and National Geographic to find and film giant squid. So that’s also kind of a passion, but I’ve sort of moved away from that.

Chrissy Beltran  04:43

Okay, wow. Well, maybe you’ve done what you can do there in that area, and now you’re, you’re branching out.

Rick Wormeli  04:48

The squid are just bashful. They don’t want to come to the surface and be filmed, yeah,

Chrissy Beltran  04:53

maybe that’s for the best. It is. They’re pretty big. Okay, so, okay. So what we’re going to talk about today is do. Differentiation and how we can support different groups of kids, kids with varied student needs through differentiation in the classroom. So I was looking at some of your resources that you put out, and I saw you shared about differentiation as an equity issue. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Rick Wormeli  05:17

Well, you know, it kind of goes back to people’s interpretation of fairness. There are a lot of teachers who really do succumb to the idea that fair is same. I can’t teach that way. I can’t grade that way or assess that way. It wouldn’t be fair, oh no, it’d be totally fair. It wouldn’t be equal, it wouldn’t be same. So the idea that fair is providing what is needed so the kid can maximize his learning over what that which could be achieved with the one size fits all, or that first tier, if you’re in a multi tiered system, whatever it is, are you committed to that? Are you an advocate for that? And are you duly vigilant and attentive to find out how your kids are different? And don’t see that as a burden, but see that as a wonderful strength and a beautiful way to find more meaning. So sense making, but then also meaning making and connection and move things to long term memory in a way that couldn’t be achieved if you had not known the kid and then responded in some way that was developmentally appropriate to that the other thought, there is equity. People forget that equity is more than one motion, one more than one force. It is removing barriers or hurdles to learning or some of the higher challenges, undeservedly So, and sometimes just naturally occurring, whatever it is, but I remove those burdens and those challenges, but at the same time, I give you the tools to handle this new path, not Oh, I took away the burden, and then I put you in this program, and you just floundered. Well, that’s that’s deflecting, and that’s avoidance on the part of the educator. So the idea is that I have to help you remove this thing that blocks you also give you the tools to navigate for it simultaneously. And in the course of that, I could, from time to time, remedy an injustice, if necessary, or just open some doors that previously were not perceived. For example, there are a lot of teachers who say, myself included earlier in my career, by the way, well, there’s only two ways to assess that. You know, if you can’t do it, my hands are tied. Nothing to do. And we realized that we were actually chasing the kids compliance with a test format, rather than chasing the learning and their eventual progression is, you know, success. So one of the things we’ve had to do is say, Well, if you have a very limited repertoire, you get defensive and threatened by the suggestion of differentiation really fast, because it’s not in your wheelhouse. So we really practice what are 15 ways you could get to the exact same evidence, other than this one format, yet might be a part of a test. But are you looking at these other do you increase your repertoire so you have dexterity? It’s the same thing with instructional design. Do I have a mindset that, oh, there’s, there’s 789, 10 different ways to teach it, not just my way or the highway? So the idea that I would honor what students bring in their inherited narrative and their earned insights to learnings table, and as opposed to just imposing my narrative or insight upon them and saying, make do. So it’s a real advocacy, and it’s kind of that sense of the higher calling is always to serve, and I have to find meaning in that, or I will find a lot in education that frustrates me and may not keep me in the profession very long. That’s rambling, but that’s kind of initial attempt.

Chrissy Beltran  08:33

No, I think that’s great. The point, there was a point that you made about teachers feeling defensive whenever they can’t think of another way to do something that kind of sets people immediately. They feel like it’s an attack. Oh, you’re asking me to do something I don’t know how to do. And so I think that’s so interesting. As instructional coaches, we can provide teachers with opportunities to learn lots of different things, lots of different methods and approaches. And if they’re exposed to different things, then they can possibly go to those things in those moments. But if they have never been exposed, then that’s whenever they feel right. I mean,

Rick Wormeli  09:03

you can’t be creative with what you don’t have right? Yeah. And the thing is, the way you do your instructional design and really the way you assess and grade, all three of those are very clear, revealing statements of your core values and your true teacher colors. And for me to come in and suggest anything other than they’re wonderful. Yeah, it’s like critiquing you as a person, and I can really see that. So as a coach, whether I’m truly an instructional coach, just a thoughtful, caring colleague, a supervising person, a principal, whatever it is, my goal is to ask you the questions, to get you to arrive to at the discovery, not me, just hand you a band aid or scold or arbitrate from on far or be some kind of come across as a program monitor. If, if, if I come like when I’ve coached teachers, I in my mind, because I’ve been doing this for so long. This is my 47th year coming this fall, and. Teaching and education so on. And when I come in, I’ve got like, 2530 ways to do this. I can see them so clearly, I can just grab them. And a part of me screaming in my head, why can’t you see that? It’s so clear in my head. But then I realized my gift, my craft, the thing I share with them, is to get you to see those. And so I might say, well, out of these five, what would you like to try and do you know? What would you like to start doing rather than, here’s 50 things, choose one. And you should have already known this. That’s not going to help them grow at all. So I realize that a big part of this is wrapped up in their identity. And there’s a sting, there’s a blow to ego when you’re asked to let go of one thing with which you associate identity while you reach for something else, and we have to do both. I wrote an article one time called the grief of accepting new ideas, and it’s how we go through even Kubler Ross, five stages of grief when we find out logically, you’re right that’s ineffective. I shouldn’t be doing it. Why didn’t I know that before? I don’t know I’m still sad. I’m still angry at just the whole situation. Totally get that. So sometimes that instructional process is coming from a place of emotion, not rational thought, and that’s very human, and I don’t want to diminish that. I remember Doug Reeves one time was wonderful researcher and educator, and he said, if you’re trying to help people change something like a faculty wide, and it doesn’t cause some of them to cry out a bit in pain and frustration, it’s probably not the thing you should be changing. And one of the ways that we have as a default to sort our thinking is to push back and be a little cranky, but that’s a sign that you’re really taking the measure of a new idea, and it’s a very natural process. And I don’t want to undermine that by saying, oh, shape up. Toe the line. Just do it. I need to let you really sort through that, that frustration just a little bit, and realize I need to honor everything expertise, your wisdom, your insights, your years of wisdom, all that stuff, everything you bring to the conversation. I cannot be dismissive of it. I need to embrace it and use of it what I can as we try to make the next steps in progression.

Chrissy Beltran  12:16

That’s so good. I wrote down the name of this article. I hope I can find it, because I feel like I need to cite that article about accepting for

Rick Wormeli  12:26

conversation, if nothing else. And all the articles I write, you’re welcome to reach out by email, which I assume will post at the end, and they can have further conversation. All the articles are posted@rickworley.com so there’s no you don’t have to go too far.

Chrissy Beltran  12:41

Okay, I will definitely check that out. Thank you. So when we think about differentiation specifically in the classroom, who are we differentiating for?

Rick Wormeli  12:52

At any point, do I see a student where I could improve the learning over that which otherwise could have been achieved with my initial lesson, I’m going to go for it. I feel like we have an ethical obligation to give it a go, even if we crash and burn in the attempt, so to speak, because we’re learning our way through some new ideas. It means that we have an ethical obligation to get out of our comfort zone. I teach the way they learn, not the way I learn, or their classmates learn, my goals, their success, their learning, not me being able to prove I taught something. So I tell a lot of people I really don’t care, and nobody I know cares what you teach. So I’m not being flippant. It’s what kids carry forward when they’re done with you. And it’s arrogant to imagine that all those kids learn just like you do and just like other classmates do, and then think about that, that we all evolve, we all progress. We come to different stages of readiness at different moments in our progression. So for you to limit kids to a uniform timeline, to me, is a willful act of failure. You learned it earlier. You learned it much later, maybe with some supports, but you do fly solo ultimately at the end, that’s the goal. But for a teacher to say February 15, that is the day of the test, or there’s no hope for you, goes against everything we know in human psychology, it is a matter of convenience and almost like, well, I’m trying to teach you to shape up and be able to respond to a demanding world, but that’s a false understanding. If you study executive function and how to cultivate that in others, if you study the maturation and teaching self discipline and motivation and how to come to understand and move things to long term memory in eight year olds for or what’s developmentally appropriate for 17 year olds, doesn’t matter. You would not do that if you understood that cognitive psychology. Mind it. Or are you just there to perpetuate some kind of stereotypical, superficial understanding that students learn in lockstep and if they suffer for not learning in the same manner, same time? Line same style as their classmates. Well, that just makes them stronger. No, it doesn’t. It makes them resent school, and they find ways to cop out or to rationalize, basically, school sucks. Why should I care? And we don’t want to do that. We want to engage them in that. And nothing is as motivating as competence and developing maturity, and that visibly demonstrated to students. That’s why I love in differentiate classes at any class set up for this, student led conferences and portfolio assessment and students doing the heavy lifting of analyzing their efforts against evaluative criteria, rather than the teacher just saying, I pronounce you here in relation you are here versus here. And here’s what you need to do to close that gap. No, the students should own that. And when that happens, they’re far more engaged and they care about it. And basically what I’m advocating is that self efficacy, excuse me, self agency. That becomes efficacy, which is empowerment. But some teachers, I feel like they say that, but when they do the deeper dive, they realize, oh, I don’t know if I really know that, because it would require me to be very dexterous in my instructional design and to let kids have more control over their learning and to use feedback to inform next steps and help monitor that learning not as a way to judge them. And so now suddenly the grading issue becomes an issue, or formative versus summative, and also becomes an issue. So to what degree are kids aware of their own progression towards the learning and owning that it goes a long way to diminishing that that need for external validation, or that learned helplessness that kind of seeps into some of it, and I want to empower the kids and give those tools, but it’s scary to a teacher for whom it might be very new and not associate with the more typical, traditional teaching they may have experienced in the past.

Chrissy Beltran  16:58

Yeah, it can be overwhelming. I think it feels like a lot to manage,

Rick Wormeli  17:01

yeah, oh, yeah, yeah. But it’s like anything, you know, it’s a process, not an overnight event. It takes practice. But once teachers are there doing it, they’re like, why didn’t I do this years ago? They regret not doing it for me. You know, in the early 80s, and then moved to the middle 80s, the later 80s and the early 90s, I was already feeling, oh my I need to call my four former students and apologize. Oh yes, I know how to do it. And oh, you have grandchildren. We’ll bring them to it’ll be fine. And you can’t do that, but you can make a promise that I will constantly avail myself of new learning and modern pedagogical practice, particularly when it comes to increasingly diverse classrooms and the variety of needs within that I will not accept the comfort of a homogeneous classroom as homogeneous. In homogeneous classrooms, I differentiate, sometimes more than I do, and heterogeneously group classrooms. I’ve had teachers because I’ve taught some advanced courses at in the middle of high school level, and they go, well, it must be easy. If all the advanced kids you have to differentiate, said, no, they’re all the place. And I need to, I need to know them well enough that I can find just the right metaphor if something is eluding them, and when they have an aha, mini epiphany, and that’s joyful for me. I get teacher Mojo and oxygen when that happens. But if I don’t know them and what lights them up, then it’s hard for me to find the right thing where they finally understand that math, idea, science, idea, coding, idea, whatever it is to go, Oh, now I get it. And it’s it goes a long way for that relationship building and classroom management stuff. So when I differentiate, they said, all my classes and those teachers whom I coach in this, they have less of the classroom management stress because kids are engaged. They’re learning. There’s more Aha. They just find the whole reason why they went into teaching. When they don’t differentiate, they’re really stressed out, because they get a lot more of those problems, and they have to now do reactive things, like a heck of a lot more of punitive discipline, rather than proactive interactive, which is, I think, the world of differentiation rather dramatically.

Chrissy Beltran  19:14

Yes, yeah. Um, so I would love to hear about exactly what places you can differentiate in the classroom. So I know you’ve done work about instructional design and about assessment and grading. What are the different places that we can differentiate?

Rick Wormeli  19:29

Well, I guess I would like to make sure people know, and I apologize if this gives anybody a harmful moment and that Rick warmly. Let me tell you I really disagree with Mike smoker rather dramatically. And I’ve written a whole article on that. So if anybody wants that, that’s also on the website. It’s called setting the record straight a response to Mike smoker. Mike smoker has some really good ideas in results now focus on other things, but he didn’t do. Homework when it came to differentiation, and so the chapters of differentiation just know that I have rebuttal, if anybody’s interested down the road, but it’s one of these. He says is differentiation is a bunch of snake oil, because it’s teachers running around like chickens with their heads cut off, kind of thing, trying to, you know, do everything, and it’s not even close to that. So one thing I’d want to get across is you chat, chances are, and this is the kind of way we all do it, to save our sanity, we do one really good, effective lesson based on what we know about the students right now, in general, I’m teaching second grade X, eighth grade y, whatever it is, what would be a really highly effective lesson. And then I look at my learner profiles for the students, and I go, is there anything here I would need to augment or revise? And I only augment or revise those subsections. It is rare that a whole class period is a completely differentiate everything else. Now I might have multi age classrooms, which I love. They’re okay. They’re fine. Where I have, you know, fifth graders and fourth graders working together, and it might be fifth grade curriculum or fourth grade. Okay, that’s two different lessons. But most of the time, if I had the kids again, have to differentiate. It’s, in a sense,

Speaker 2  21:11

One Ring to rule them all in the land of Mordor, it’s lovely.

Rick Wormeli  21:17

It’s one it’s one lesson. And then I go, Oh, I have a bunch of English language learners. I need to double check where their proficiency is, because they could be all over the place too. But in general, they might be really conversant in everyday conversational English, but they don’t know the academic English, and I just said compare and contrast, and they don’t know what those terms are. By the way, many people are not ELL and they’re raised in America and no English, don’t know the difference either. But anyway, I have to overtly do a mini lesson on what does compare mean? What does contrast mean? Mm, hmm, oh. And if I say compare and I don’t say contrast, it means both of those entwined in the one word. So I take the time to do that, and that was the only moment I ever had to differentiate otherwise, one size fits all for the whole class. Another example, I’m teaching something super important that must stick in your mind. On Wednesday, I’ve got seven kids, two kids or 11 kids who do not have any background in that. So on Monday or Tuesday or the Friday before, I do a background building experience, because I’m very mindful the cognitive science principle that nothing goes into long term memory, or at least very little does unless it’s attached to something already in storage. You know, it kind of fits in that psych, psychology. So I build prior knowledge or previous background, personal background where there was none. Now you walk into my class on Wednesday, and I’m not differentiating one thing because I did my differentiation the days before, or it might be where I differentiate the practice they do at night, very rarely. In fact, I’ve often told my people that I coach, I can count on 10 or two hands or 10 fingers, the number of times in a whole year I’ve given the same homework assignment to the whole class. There’s always one kid or five where I adjust it slightly because I’m not going to do a really good job of responsive teaching and differentiation and maximizing learning, and then undermine it by one size fits all practice when these kids might need to practice this, and these kids might need this practice, and these kids don’t need any practice at all. So I wrote a book on this, but the topic comes up a lot, and that was a shameless plug, in case you didn’t recognize it, fair isn’t always equal, and the idea is that I will always be fair. I will hardly ever be equal. And you, moms and dads and and students that I teach you better pray I’m fair, which means I’m developmentally appropriate for what you need. I’m always looking out for you. And if you don’t need the practice, I don’t assign it, but if you do need the practice, I assign it. And we’ve entered into such a mutual ethos. That’s what my definition of accountability is. I’m looking out for your success as much as you’re looking out for my success as a teacher. I’m looking out for you as a student. So we come together and try to make this thing called school. You know where that I will extend to you the same courtesy. If you don’t understand something, I don’t want you practicing something you don’t fully understand, because practice makes permanent. Mm, hmm, so I’d rather teach wisely the next day, give you different practice. And so the idea that it’d be open to that that’s not going soft, that’s probably under one of the most demanding things I ever asked of students, trust me, do as I say and do this extra practice to get you to this level and jump through these hoops. And so it takes a lot of guts. What’s a cop out is saying there’s one way to get it done. I’m preparing you for the larger world. And I’m saying No, the thing that prepares them for the larger world is really learning it rock solid, whatever. Way it takes and personal maturity, and I truly believe it is through a differentiated approach responsiveness that actually that is achieved way more than a one size fits all ever could achieve.

Chrissy Beltran  25:12

Yeah, I that whole I’m preparing them for the real world always bothers me, because, you know, in high school they say, Well, we’re preparing them for college, and then in middle school, they say, We’re preparing them for middle school, and then everybody just keeps pushing down the line. Pushing down the line, and you know, then we’re preparing pre K students for college, and they’re not ready. They’re not ready. Very good

Rick Wormeli  25:29

point. Well, there’s also this assumption that the only way I have to prepare people for the next level is to copy the practices of that next level. And you have to everybody, I hope, is listening. Universities don’t have the economy of scale, or do the professor training to teach the way 1819, 20 and 21 year old brains for undergraduate and older, way their minds best learn. So it’s inappropriate. So are they really going to say? Are they we’re going to stand by the words, because this is the translation of what they’re saying. Well, they’re going to be miserable later. So miserable now, to misery all along. We’re not going to differentiate here, because they won’t do it there was because they don’t have 25 TAs and all these other tutorials to help those kids who might well young adults who might be struggling in that moment. But why would you succumb to that? Why would you sacrifice what you know to be so effective because people above you aren’t there yet. How dare you give up so readily or cave in to a system that really conspires against a lot of this? I do tell a lot of schools, and this might be uncomfortable, but a lot of schools aren’t set up to do this. They want to protect the status quo. And you know, if you know, if you if you want to teach a different way or a different timeline or use a different assessment, but it gets to ultimately the same result. Schools are institutions. They tend to conspire against that. So I think that teachers have to have a modicum, if not more, some element of gentle insubordination, where they’re willing to defy the protocols and procedures of the institution in which they work in order to live up to the promise, they tell the public or their constituents, oh, we teach everyone, not just the easy ones. You can’t say that unless you’re willing to part ways with the school’s procedures once in a while, and most, most administrators are very supportive that, as long as you have an instructional rationale and they can see the evidence the student learning, they’re going to like, you know. They’re going to basically say, you know, run forest, run you know, go for it. They’re going to think it’s they’re gonna be your advocate. So I think it’s okay for teachers to pipe up once in a while and say the system isn’t working. The requisition system, I need to get this one thing for this one student in my second period class is five weeks I need I need it in two days. Could I circumnavigate the system? And would you help me in that? I think it’s a very reasonable thing to sit there, and if people need guts, you know, the stamina of courage of conviction. I think it’s okay to look at each other and go, Is this the ethical thing we do? Is this the most advocating thing we do? And let’s How do we do this constructively, to step on the minimum number of toes, but nonetheless, have this student achieve success, because the current system wasn’t there for or set up for her. Anyway. It’s a lot embedded in that,

Chrissy Beltran  28:29

yeah, but that’s that’s great. I’m glad that you shared it, because it helps us think about the big picture in the system and how, how it isn’t always set up to be supportive of of teachers or instructional coaches who are trying to support teachers in this way, yeah, because it can be scary to people who want to know, like, just follow the script, follow the next page. You know, this is your curriculum. And I feel like curriculum is like, I know it’s necessary, but it’s kind of like the death of everything, because people get so tied to

Rick Wormeli  28:55

it, right? I think it’s okay to require teachers. Look, you were hired to teach this period of history, are these math concepts? But let us empower you. And how do you meet the needs of a variety of students? What are some of those wonderful options? And let me give you license to do that. And then also, here’s a variety of pathways to pull that off, and here’s the different angles to do it. And by the way, if a student’s concerned about this challenge. Here’s some things you can do to respond. So we build that menu of tiering and scaffolding and all the supports, and then hold teachers accountable. Let’s make sure they learn it. Problem, though, a lot of curriculum is curriculum overload, and it can take 234, years to get one year’s worth of curriculum really rock solid. Yeah. And so it goes against again, everything we know in human psychology to say, first graders learn this, second graders learn this. And, you know, eighth graders learn this. No they can learn that earlier or later as a part of something when they finally received school because their mind was in a different place. And so the idea that we would bust beyond the top. Time frames like I know many schools and many teachers who are really into this lose portfolio assessment over time. So in the summer, if you get some learning, learning, tutoring, mentoring, and you learn something in the early fall, they test you again. You get full credit for last year or four years of high school. There’s a math portfolio that follows you all four years, and whatever year you finally learn the math or the science or the Spanish level, conjugations, whatever they are, do you get full credit? Because the only thing that really matters is the diploma at the end of the four years, not I have to teach all of this within one year. So many people might remember. You might know this to Christie the Bob Marzano study about 20 years ago, and I think it’s worse today, to be honest, but the study was it takes to grade 22 to teach everything. We tell the public, we teach that. We teach K 12. So we’re about 10 years shy. We should be graduating people when they’re 27 and 28 so every single year you’re gonna have to make that adult decision, look, I’ll fight for these standards and concepts and ideas and skills. These are just nice to know. These are somewhere in between, but we’re gonna spiral back every year, because it’s gonna take multiple years. It’s not all are done when it when a student takes a standardized test for a province or for a state or for a national test, that’s usually a statement of the students experience that year and the previous two. That’s true. So the teacher that currently has the kid and the testing is done in February or whatever it is, shouldn’t just fall apart in conscientious Whoa, oh, I’m terrible. I want to prepare. No, let’s look at what you did. Let’s look at the experience of last year, the year before, or the student does really well. That teacher shouldn’t say, well, it’s just because of me. No, you were part, a big part of it, but it was also last year’s experience, the year before, to be able to perform on any one given standardized test. So I wish, I hope, people would just look at, there’s a bigger picture, a bigger context, and you’re gonna have to be selective and gently insubordinate from time to time to pull this off.

Chrissy Beltran  32:10

Yeah, I do have, I have one more question, and it’s about you mentioned so much. No, no. That’s, well, that’s it is a podcast. So that’s perfect. If you weren’t talking, yeah, if you weren’t talking, we’d have a bigger problem next

32:25

time we’re gonna do flannel board presentation, perfect.

Chrissy Beltran  32:29

Oh, I love the flannel board. So my question is, can you share? You talked about a few different ways to differentiate. You talked a little bit about providing a background experience for kids who needed it, because you knew that without it, they would not have anything to glue the new learning to. You know, you talked a little bit about finding the right analogy for the right kid for things to make sense. Can you share some different ways? Because I think whenever people think about differentiation, we think about like text complexity. You know, as I as an elementary as you know, somebody who taught elementary and coached mostly in elementary, yeah, you know, we talked, we think about text complexity, we think about the length of assignments. We think about maybe the level of questioning, you know, application. Are we just looking at, like, can they perform an operation, or can they perform it in context? So we think about things like that. But, and those are probably kind of the basic ways that we can sort of differentiate the, you know, the product of what children produce. But what other ways can you share that people might not really be thinking about?

Rick Wormeli  33:30

Well, I think that actually is something that needs to be grown in an individual teacher and amongst a grade level. So the third grade team sitting together, or a middle school or high school, the department sitting together and saying, All right, here’s a typical lesson. We’re going to watch a video and the kids are going to do a summarization. Great. What are 20 different ways we could differentiate if we needed it? And we get into, well, we could have a more complex video for some kids and a less complex and there are different parts of the room watching that we could actually watch the video. And some kids could have been giving, been given some structured prompts right close method, or look for this to fill in the blank, whatever, where other kids don’t have that. Some kids are taking notes one way versus another at the end, we could have the same summarization technique, but different kids have different levels of support as they complete it, or we literally could have different summarization capturing just techniques and shameless plug, I wrote a whole book on that that came out in 2019 with along with My co author, Deidra Stafford, it’s summarization in any subject, Second Edition, again, it’s on the website. You have to go chasing it if you don’t want to. But the idea is that I could have a variety of summarization techniques. I could define terms, but a lot of teachers say, Well, I differentiated, I defined the difficult words. But that’s doesn’t mean the kids are literate because they have they know the. Words. There’s so much more to literacy than that. So I’m going to be mindful of the before and after, because differentiation doesn’t always come in the current but a lot of people think it has to come in the current lesson. No, it could be the way they process afterwards, or what they did before. And then I’m going to look at that whole continuum of independence. What level are they highly dependent, or they’re highly independent or somewhere in between. And how do I get them to go from one stage and progress towards another? Would be really good. Are these kids really ready to focus on one facet, one element versus multiple elements? So as a little bit of Carol Ann Tomlinson’s equalizer in this she’s got these nine continua, if that’s the plural of continuum, but these different elements for all your assignments and all your experiences that tell you know, where do you move that marker? Well, this kid needs more of this or more of this. Is it more open ended or not? These kids are totally ready to compare this and show how this content, concept, whatever it is, is demonstrated in two completely different domains. You know, for advanced application, these kids are ready to see it in the more immediately obvious domain. So, for example, I love raft. I think it’s very cool, although I use rafts, the s on there is strong adverb. So you have to do it romantically. You have to do it sleepless. You have to do it heroically, operetically Anyway. Here I come to save the day. I can say, well, here are four or five roles, here are four or five audiences. Here are four or five formats. Here are four or five topics or time periods, if you want to increase the complexity, but Yeah, everybody’s got the same topic, and you choose one from each column, and you really make a response to process it that way. Well, for advanced kids, I would choose things that, no matter what they choose, would be really weird. So you’re going to have two historical figures have a competing podcast about it. That’s really weird, but the other kids where it’s just much more natural and its connection, maybe it’s about something about the Civil War. You’re going to write a journal entry from an orphan living under a train depot. It’s actually one that I’ve used in one of the books I wrote, and I That’s great. That’s very natural. They know how to do that, but the weirdness factor, the less connected it is to the original, most obvious idea you raise complexity. So there are, there Susan weinbrenner and many others, you know, Richard cash, Diane Hecox, lots of people on, how do you take something and create a gifted, advanced, scholarly level, sophisticated application, and then how do I meet the needs of people who struggling in the classroom, but on the same thing, on the same topic, and same basic lesson? And I think that’s creativity like that, and divergent thinking like that, atrophies if you don’t practice it. If you teach the same thing year after year, you tend to go on intellectual muscle memory and automated processes. So the idea that we would literally sit down and before we start any meeting, we would say, Hey, we’re introducing pronouns today. Great. What are 10 ways to do that? Let’s talk about it. Well, what do we know about the kids that we could draw from in order to do that? Great. What are some of the hiccups? Well, we are going to teach first, second and third person. So I you it, he, she, oh, we’re going to do singular and plural. Oh, my goodness. Okay. What are you capitalization? Parts of a tree, types of clouds. Is Is there anything that I can draw from the cognitive psychology world. Oh, these kids are really very, very not that we want to. I understand the research, and I don’t actually subscribe to this, a research about all the kids are kinesthetic, visual, auditory. I know there’s Friday, but could I provide an experience that’s very physical. A lot of kids need to physically feel things to begin to understand it. Could I have a some kind of symbolic representation of that? Well, these kids need to actually be in a life size graphic organizer, moving through it as the information might change, as we change our rows and columns and a data retrieval chart, or whatever else it might be, and physically that. And then we go back to the their desks, and they have a diagram there where they can fill in the information that they were supposedly symbolizing in their physical body moments before. I think it’s okay when you sit in it like here’s a boring, non differentiate experience, that lack of engagement, not meeting all the needs. What do I? What can I, and what can I draw from the world of cognitive science on the mind learns to insert here to somehow make it more vivid, and thereby maybe move into long term memory in a way that wouldn’t have been achieved otherwise. Then the idea that, okay. I taught how to do this math thing, and I gave you five practice problems, but I might need to reteach that’s a go to obvious. Instead of five problems, they only have two, because it takes them longer to do it. Oh, they need manipulatives to do their problems. They don’t need manipulatives. They’re ready for the symbolic stuff. Oh, they could teach other kids if they wanted to, yes, but they can’t be my go to overtime because it doesn’t respect their needs, let’s do that. So the idea that you would practice, and you say, what are a dozen or two dozen ways to differentiate this thing that on paper doesn’t look differentiated based on what you know that, but the kids cool. The genesis of that comes from show me your learner profile. What do you know about the kids, and then tell me how you could use that somehow to strengthen their learning. Is that is that answer your

Chrissy Beltran  40:43

Yes, yes, that was awesome. Thank you so much. You’ve shared so much good information. You shared a Gandalf impression, which was fantastic.

40:53

Shower pass.

Chrissy Beltran  41:00

Oh my gosh, I have such I’m a huge Lord of the Rings fan. So this

Rick Wormeli  41:05

is Jules Feiffer just died. He illustrated the Phantom Toll Booth. Oh, I didn’t know that’s also in my my background is a loved book.

Chrissy Beltran  41:15

Yeah, we all have our special stuff that we love to follow up on. So I want to be able to share with people you mentioned your website already. You’ve mentioned some of your books. How can people keep learning from you if they want to

Rick Wormeli  41:28

follow up? Oh, yeah, that’s easy to do. Well, one is the Rick warmly com, the website on blue sky, you know, it’s Rick warmly. And then dot B sky, dot social like it is for all the Blue Sky Ones on Twitter, it’s at Rick warmly. Two. There is that Rick warmly, but it was hacked, and we get back, it was like eight years ago, yeah. So just have to add a two to the end of it, sorry. And then the email is, is long, but it’s pretty obvious. It’s Rick at and then my full name, Rick warmly, like it’s one word. And then.on Microsoft, like that’s one word on microsoft.com so you can always email me from the website if you forget everything else. Www.rickwormly.com now there, there are videos and podcasts and articles I’ve written, and there’s way to email me as well, so you really get a hold of any of that. And then, of course, Barnes and Noble and Amazon, you can look for books, and there’s articles coming up probably four or five times a year. There are no articles

Chrissy Beltran  42:26

coming out. Awesome. All right. Thank you so much. This is great.

42:29

It’s been an honor. This is wonderful.

Chrissy Beltran  42:35

That was possibly one of my favorite podcast guests of all time. I just loved speaking with Rick about this. I know that he is a font of information, and I’m sure that if we had had three hours to talk about this topic, he probably wouldn’t exhaust a quarter of what he can tell me about it. But I’m so glad that that he shared that with us today. It was really good stuff. So if you are trying to pitch this to your teachers, I think the beginning part of this episode is so valuable, where we talk about that. I mean, I am absolutely going to look up that article the grief of accepting new ideas. That sounds fantastic, and I can personally relate. I think we all have been there when we’ve learned something new, and we do have to go through a process to accept something that it changes, kind of the way that we see our teaching and our work. Next week, we are continuing our mini series on instruction and lesson plans, and we are going to look at questioning routines for inquiry with Trevor McKenzie. So I’m excited about that one. I’ve done a couple of episodes about inquiry in the past, and I think that this is one way to integrate inquiry into your work that doesn’t maybe seem so daunting is by utilizing some questioning routines. So I can’t wait to share that with you next week, and until then, happy coaching.

Chrissy Beltran  43:53

Now that you’ve got so much to think about, head over to buzzing with Miss b.com to grab some free downloads, become a VIBee and check out the podcast show notes. Happy coaching!