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Carol Ann Tomlinson is perhaps the most influential figure in the area of differentiated instruction. She is the author of over 200 articles, book chapters and books, including How to Differentiate Instruction in Mixedability Classrooms and The Differentiated Classroom: Responding to the Needs of all Learners. She is co-author of The Parallel Curriculum Model: A Design to Develop High Potential and Challenge High Ability Learners. Her books have been translated into 12 languages.
NAJP: How did you arrive at your philosophy and/or skills at teaching using a differentiated approach?
CT: In my first high school teaching experience, I was aware of student differences, I think all teachers are; it just never occurred to me that I needed to do anything about them. My second teaching experience was directing a child development center, and there too, because we had many pupils in second-language groups, with many different kinds of backgrounds, it was very clear to me that the kids had differences. It was my third teaching job, which is the one I stayed in for 20 years, which really made it necessary, even for a young teacher, who didn't have too much context yet, to figure out that I had to do something!
I was in a school and my 7th grade students were very bimodal-- 45% or 50% of them were 3 or more years below grade level in reading in the 7th grade, and probably 45% were 3 or more years above grade level in reading in grade 7, and almost nobody in that gap in the middle.
NAJP: As schools are becoming more inclusive for kids with disabilities, what are your recommendations for higher education in preservice education of future educators to develop teaching skills which meet the needs of all learners?
CT: One of the things that I have found is that we continue to try to "fix" the classroom by specialty. Higher education needs to help pre-service and in-service teachers learn how to think about teaching flexibly, so we understand how to teach kids with disabilities, kids who are advanced, with students who come from low-income backgrounds, kids who are English language learners, kids with reading problems, and how to do so in a single setting. Another of my beliefs is...