Chapter two, in essence, describes some of the different learners that one may encounter during their time as a teacher.
This chapter indirectly touches upon one of the biggest dissonances that I have when it comes to education classes -- setting up lesson/unit plans for a hypothetical classroom. This is not a knock against the process of lesson planning, and it's a fantastic thing to learn, but when we gear our plans towards a non-existent group of students, we won't assume that we will have an EAL student, a student who excels at a certain subject, and one who is at a shockingly low reading level. We will gear our plans as if our classroom is full of miniature versions of ourselves.
As educators, we need to understand that we aren't going to have a classroom of clones. Students come for different places, so we need to expect this. Until we get to know our students -- their learning styles, their likes and dislikes, and how they generally function -- we won't know how to teach them.
I found it very interesting that the chapter also touches upon gender. It's fantastic that it's showing a focus on gender differences, but they don't, in my opinion, go in-depth enough. More than two genders exist. It's hard to accommodate everyone, but we really should open the doors to get away from the gender binary.
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