The Teacher Concerning a teacher’s influence, I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It’s my personal approach that creates the climate. It’s my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated, and a child humanized or dehumanized. - Haim Ginott

There is nothing so unjust as treating unequals as though they were equal.

Most of my teachers let only the early finishers attempt [those] the enrichment and going further activities at the end of the chapter. Looking back, I realize that …

The Inclusive TeacherThe Exclusive Teacher I help them learn how they are smart.I test how slow they are. I like it if their ways depart.I just want what is par. I try to differentiate.I give them all one task. My role is to accommodateThey ought to do what’s asked. Effective teaching is my creed.We get through every text. I give them all the time they need.Slow learners have me vexed. I must address each learning style.I show them one right way. Exciting methods get a trial.I don’t have time to play! Alternative assessment’s great.I only need one test. With students I collaborate.Goal setting I detest! Assignments are not uniform.We’re all on the same page. My teaching methods show reform.I don’t “improve with age!” I want to get them in “the flow.”I wish they understood… So they’ll have fun with what they know.I’d teach them if I could. A Debate: The Inclusive Teacher vs. The Exclusive Teacher

One of the most exciting developments in modern education goes by the name of cooperative (or collaborative) learning and has children working in pairs or small groups. An impressive collection of studies has shown that participation in well-functioning cooperative groups leads students to feel more positive about themselves, about each other, and about the subject they’re studying. Students also learn more effectively on a variety of measures when they can learn with each other instead of against each other or apart from each other. Cooperative learning works with kindergartners and graduate students, with students who struggle to understand and students who pick things up instantly; it works for math and science, language skills and social studies, fine arts and foreign languages. - Alfie Kohn

If you want to be incrementally better: Be competitive. If you want to be exponentially better: Be cooperative.

A Learning Space needs to be hospitable not to make learning painless, but to make the painful things possible…things like exposing ignorance, testing tentative hypotheses, challenging false or partial information, and mutual criticism of thought. [None of these] can happen in an atmosphere where people feel threatened or judged. - Parker J. Palmer