When you have worked long enough in education, you are bound to come across a few recycled phrases. “We’ve always done it this way” is a personal favourite of mine. Nothing says I don’t want to think about my practice more than the expression that assumes mastery. “We did this before, but we called it something else” is another good one. Sometimes it’s even true, but sometimes it’s more of an excuse to not dig a little deeper and see if there’s anything of value. When we give up challenging our own practice, we fall into the education fallacy.
One, there is no one ‘right way’ to teach, but there is a right outcome. Every student in the class deserves a chance at the learning. Oddly enough, that doesn’t just mean the privilege to be in our presence. No, that doesn’t mean that we have to do the work for them, either, but it does mean that we should invest time into getting to know our students’ needs.
Especially with the onset of single stream classrooms and the tail end of the pandemic, we are so used to hearing about the varied learners in our classroom. A little secret for you: they were always there. Streams were an excellent tool of closest fit, but they were not necessarily the best fit.
The reality is that we all want to be able to hold our students to high academic standards. That’s our job, really. But what we have consistently failed to recognize in education in general is that they don’t have to be the same standards for every student.
If we were fitness training with the students, we would have them all max out on the same bench press weight, or sprint to the same time. In construction class, they wouldn’t all have to complete the same jobs.
The only authentic way to instruct students with high academic standards is to determine what, for that student, those standards are. That way we can slowly ‘increase the weight’ and challenge the student, step by step. Put the bar to high, and they won’t even bother reaching for it.
To that end, we need to ignore the education fallacy. I will try whatever tips, tricks, or pedagogies come my way because I need a thousand different tools to reach my students.
