"The Flexible Teacher"

In "The Flexible Teacher" (pp. 46–50), Leila Christenbury tells how she changed her plans when her students did not meet her expectations.

Have you ever found yourself in a situation like Christenbury's?

At the beginning of this year I found myself doing a double-take with my students' academic levels. When I was last at school in May I was gearing up for third grade with my group from last year who did quite well academically. Now it was September and I was with recent first-graders who were considerably lower than last year's group across the board. 

How did you respond?

It was really hard for me to transition my frame of mind back to end-of-first-grade with these students. I don't remember as drastic of a transition in past years. I did a lot more informal "pre-assessments" to see what students learned and remembered from the year before. The most significant change was absolutely their writing (which is not so surprising). I left off in May having students writing several page stories with nice handwriting, complete sentences, and punctuation. I tried a writing assignment the first couple weeks of school... and about cried. Okay, not really, but I was totally taken aback! I have had to go at a much slower pace this year and come back to topics that I was able to fly through last year. It has been good for me to take a breath and slow down at times. I found myself with Fraulein Maria's song from The Sound of Music as my mantra at the start of the year, "Let

start at the very beginning. It's a very good place to start..."

How can educators adapt their plans to their students' needs and abilities without lowering standards?

Educators must adapt their plans to student needs if they want to get anything accomplished and for the students to make progress. Differentiation has been a buzzword for several years now and it continue to increase importance as the ability levels our student populations seem to continue to become more widespread. Teachers can still have high standards for students but they must realize that each student requires a different level of "high". Reading through a simple See Spot Run book maybe be a huge accomplishment for one student while a classmate is ready for a Magic Treehouse chapter book. Teachers need to be able to recognize the various needs of students can create learning goals that can be met with some opportunities to be challenged.