I think differentiating instruction is one of the more challenging tasks that a teacher in any year in there career faces.  I struggle with it and am constantly searching for a formula that will solve the topic; needless to say it doesn’t exist.  The reason why it doesn’t exist is because from year to year and class to class your students abilities will always differ: no one class will ever be the same.  I think this is why i finding it challenging.  I will always have those powerpoints and documents I’ve created, but there is no way to always prepare for the students entering into your class.  So the advice that I think I would like to give here would be to never give up, dig deep and persevere through the situation you face.  We always tell students to keep at it, I think this is one of those situations where we need to keep at it.  When I was doing my student teaching, my mentor gave me praise for an after school session that I had completed in which she said I differentiated very well.  That day, in a span of about an hour, I had 2 students complete 2 different labs, I helped 3 different students with 3 different topics within chemistry and administered 1 test.  Needless to say I was running around like a crazy person and was exhausted by the end of the day, it wasn’t even a Friday, but I saw 6 students leave pretty satisfied and that made me feel pretty good about doing my job.  No one ever said this profession was going to be easy.  I never thought it would be easy, but I didn’t think I would face the challenges I do on a daily basis.  Teaching is a demanding profession and not many others face this idea of differentiating instruction.  So, if you take something away from this blog, then it is to stick with it, work hard and the results will follow.

When I was completing my Masters program I read an interesting article that had a short story within it about a female teacher who always went to school all dressed up.  She was an elementary school teacher, and when asked by one of her students why she always was all dressed up when coming to school to teach them, she responded with “because everyday I come to work with the most important people everyday.”  This really got me thinking about how I present myself when I come to school.  Now, if you’ve ever met me, I wear some pretty outrageous outfits to school: bright pants, pastels and bow ties just to cover a couple things.  Needless to say my students love it.  Now, everyone loves attention, but that is far from why I do it.  I do it for the kids.  Everyday I get some comment from someone who isn’t my student.  Some of these kids come by my room just to see what I am wearing that day.  The way I feel about it is if I can get kids excited about what I am wearing, then getting excited about school can’t be far behind.  I see some faculty members that are dressed similarly to students, and how can you garner respect like that?  You are suppose to be setting an example and being a mentor to them.  If they see how professionally you take your job, then in my opinion, there is a better chance of respect from the student.

Are there any thoughts on dress attire?  I think it makes a difference, and when you teach chemistry, it doesn’t hurt to dress a little more on the wild side!

So, I was assigned a freshman homeroom this year and in my freshman home room were a couple of boys who should actually be sophomores.  They are very frustrating to everyone in the school, always in ISS and such.  After a couple months of school I decided to just start making contact with them.  Not going out of my way but as we pass in the hall just saying hi.  It progressed to how are you and such.  Now I don’t actually have the students in my classes but they are in classrooms in my hall way.  I see them actually making their way to class now which is an accomplishment in its self.  I try and check in occasionally and see how their doing.  The other day one of them was contemplating doing a project that would bump them from a D to a C in their class.  I had a short conversation with him about why wouldn’t you do it to improve your grade; after our conversation he quickly got to work.  I like to think I have had a tiny bit of influence in their lives thus far and have helped them just think about changing.  Its the little things you should be taking pride in, this is one of them for me.

It’s been about a month since I attended the NSTA Conference in Boston and I think some of it has finally started to sink in.  The whole reason I attended the conference was because a year ago, while I was finishing my Masters degree, my mentor, Barbara (https://websites.umass.edu/bschulze/   here is a link to her blog)  and I wrote up a proposal for the conference as part of our program.  I didn’t really think that our proposal would be accepted, but it was of course!  We both were a little unsure of what to expect going into it.  Our time slot, Sunday (the last day of the conference) at 8am, led us to believe that we wouldn’t have many people attending.  Well, we were wrong.  We had roughly 25-30 other educators attend our presentation which was much more than anticipated.  I get up and teach students every day, but this had a little bit of a different feel to it.  It was interesting fielding questions from other educators and helping guide them through our inquiry style lab.  I think that both of us received great feedback on our activity and also provided some good incite to other teachers about how they could apply the activity in their classroom.  If you would like to look at our activity as well as pictures, please head to Barb’s blog(above) and click on the NSTA tab.  Please provide feedback about what you think should you have any.