Sometimes educators suffer from the "I already do that" syndrome. In those cases, we feel inadequate if we admit we have a distance to go as learners of our craft.

On some level students are essentially the same. They are people with fears and dreams. They laugh and cry over many of the same things. They share an essential humanity as young people always have.hey differ in some significant ways now, too, I believe. They are forced to grapple with complex issues at a much younger age.

Until a teacher learns to use elements like time, space, materials, groupings, and so forth flexibly, it's incredibly difficult to teach students as they need to be taught.

As a teacher, it is your job to make explicit whatever you though was implicit

[Students] often have a "We can figure this out - don't just tell us" attitude. In that way, they can be less patient with "traditional" approaches to teaching.

Differentiation is classroom practice that looks eyeball to eyeball with the reality that kids differ, and the most effective teachers do whatever it takes to hook the whole range of kids on learning.

We need to understand where are students are at any point during a unit - in other words, what each student actually knows, understands, and can do at a given time based on the content goals we've established.