Response to Differentiation - Chapter One

To say that differentiation is a good thing is an understatement.  I'd be willing to go out on a limb and say that differentiated education is one of the most important things that we, as educators, need to not only understand, but also implement.  Clearly, by the book's title, the author(s) are going to be teaching us different strategies to use in terms of differentiated education, so that will certainly be nice. 

This chapter, obviously being the first one, gives a brief introduction into differentiated education.  It starts off by letting the reader know what differentiated education is, emphasizing the fact that one size does not fit all students.  The most important statement that this chapter makes is the fact that we need to know that each student has their own set of strengths.  This is something that I feel isn't recognized.  Far too often, teachers will claim to have bad students in their class, when in reality, they're just not being engaged, which reminds me of a tweet/quote from Neil deGrasse Tyson:

As a final note, I just want to add that pre-planning differentiated plans is an awful idea.  Until you've gotten to know where your students are, planning lessons around them won't work.