Sitting in a session on Differentiated Learning I find myself wondering if this is endgame. It isn’t for me. It is for some. Let me be clear in what I am trying to explain: For some people, their job is their purpose and what measuring stick they define themselves by. For me this is not the case. The writing for me is likely endgame. That and family seem to be in equal balance. The work–the teaching–is something I love, but I don’t define myself by teaching or being a teacher. I think this lives at the core of why some find me abhorrent at the teaching level. I am about these relationships and introducing students to cool shit and to writing as a process. The fundamental structural approach to treating the institution and the goal of building something of the institution as key is not me.
To be clear again: I’m in it for the students in my classroom that day and for what interesting things we can learn and discover together. I couldn’t care less about the organizational politics and power struggle and what people think about me and my role and even my college’s status outside of how that impacts my ability to reach that kid sitting across from me on that given day.
To some I’m small-minded and don’t care about the institution. I’m not mad at that label or assessment. It is short-sighted in of itself. I would not be sitting at a lecture on differentiated instruction trying to strengthen what I do as an instructor if I was just checked out.
I think the larger idea of differentiation is not respected by faculty in general. If, at the classroom level we can expect different things for different students then why can’t different instructors take on different roles and be assessed and viewed based upon what role they fill. We don’t all have to feel one way or be about the same thing. I’m about that classroom interaction, so that is my thing. It doesn’t matter any less than assessment, though it is less visible and far less measurable in dollars and cents.
I guess that is where the rubber hits the road. I guess that is what we are trying to do as an institution. But that is not where I live in my heart.