Guest post: Dana Steele - Here lies the truth

In response to my blog post, Curb cut theory applied to education, Dana Steele made this eloquent and powerful reply...

Here lies the truth. I am not meeting the needs of all of my students. It is something that plagues me everyday. As an elementary specialist, I see my students for 25-40 minutes per week. This does not allow for me to engage in the indepth instruction that I long to do. Eventhough I repeatedly chant the mantra - "Quality before quantity!", I still find myself in a race to get material covered. After two weeks, even I am bored over doing the same content. I want to do more. I have many proven strategies at my fingertips. However, I struggle to implement properly due to various constraints and limitations. Not an excuse. simply a fact.

This is how I believe instruction should be. I am a firm believer in Understanding by Design. Coupled with Danielsons' Instructional Framework, they provide an encompassing foundation for any pedagogical or methodology of instruction to be intensive, comprehensive, standard driven, structured, empirical, quantitative and qualitative. Together, UdL and Danielson leave little room for errors and lapses in accountability. Adding to this the application of the Curb cut theory, educators can not help but to provide more comprehensive instruction. The question is how can all of this delivered effectively within the restraints that many teachers face - time, resources, technology, training, institutional, district and administrative support? Whether we like it or not, "NCLB" should be the norm and not simply a goal. Every child should receive a quality, comprehensive, appropriate education that prepares them to be successful global citizens. Because when you really think about it, that's what every educator wants for ALL of their students.

So I don't quite understand how instructional practices are routinely reserved for a certain set of students. Why are intervention services and strategies provided as reactive necessities to individuals who have demonstrated a proven, documented need when it is the foundational philosophy of differentiated instruction? How much more successful our students would be if complete instructional resources were provided - not based upon budgets, debates of necessity and proven, documented need. But the sheer premise that all students are endowed with the inalienable right to an excellent, academically appropriate individualized learning career that indubitably prepares them to be successful, global citizens in any endeavor of his or her choosing.

Since when did meeting everyone's needs become a debate and when is it going to become a norm?

I love the last sentence. It speaks to the heart of personalization. Of humanity.