League Differentiation

Move Over, Mom’s Apple Pie: Making Room for Differentiation

Of course this is said partly in jest, but differentiation is very much in line with American ideals of justice, equality, and life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as construed in the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. I find a useful metaphor that surprisingly comes from the world of sports. I know there are a variety of good metaphors for the teaching-learning process that stay away from sports precisely because sports almost always presuppose a competitive basis from which to judge winning/losing or success/failure. Close your eyes for a second and reflect on what comes to mind when you hear these three words:  “Little League Baseball.”

Hopefully you have only positive memories associated with Little League Baseball. In my own experience over 30 years ago, when hitters graduated from T-ball, but were still around the tender age of 7 or 8, we were able to be in a league with “real” pitching. Before your mind jumps to images of hardballs and 90-mile-an-hour fastballs, know that it was much closer to T-ball than major league baseball. In some little leagues, like the one I played in, they have an arrangement where the pitcher who throws your ball to hit is actually your own coach. This is the metaphor I’d like to explore in relation to how differentiated instruction operates in terms of creating success for both teachers (pitcher/coaches) and learners (hitters/players).

Isn’t the Pitcher Supposed to Strike the Batter Out?
I can still recall the sense of relief in knowing that my own coach would be carefully tossing me looping, very hittable balls for me to hit.  I suppose any caring adult would have fit the bill, but the coach made great sense to me on at least two levels: (1) he knew the game of baseball, and (2) he knew what pitches I would most likely want to swing at and eventually hit. Remember, at that age, you’re still wondering why they took the friendly T-ball stand away that kept everything….so, well, “one size fits all.”

An interesting thing about baseball, besides the art of hitting, is the very fact that the “strike zone,” while defined roughly as just below your knee caps to just above your waist line, changes from hitter to hitter. While the definition of a strike zone remains constant, the stature of a batter means that the strike zone can literally grow or shrink. It is a construct that has flexibility built right into it. The shorter the baseball player, the more compact his or her strike zone is. This means it changes, or is different, for every player a pitcher faces. In recent years it has been amusing to watch professional baseball pitchers who are taller than 6’5’’ from the National League, where pitchers still hit, taking their required at-bats. Their strike zones are very large and the opposing pitcher usually makes short work of these situations.

Consider applying the idea of a strike zone to an instructional situation. The following picture will give you a sense of the parameters of a student and the factors the “classroom coach” may need to consider before thinking a pitch is hittable. Welcome to a league I have created for this course: the League of Differentiation.

Congratulations on Your New Job in the League of Differentiation
Consider that if you are a player’s “hitting coach,” your main objective is to make a fair pitch that will work for your players. Pitches that work only for you will look silly at best, or perhaps even selfish or mean-spirited. It will help if you view the players you pitch to as your own scoreboard; you can only be successful as the coach/pitcher as the player experiences success through your pitches.  It will help if you and your players co-own the results you help to create.

You need to consider these elements before putting on a jersey in the League of Differentiation:

1. The ball: content that can change sizes and batter perception of what to swing at as you modify the content.
2. The hitter:  a person who is learning when to swing, what to swing at, what skills are involved, and what his own strengths and weaknesses are. Hitters desire to succeed in partnership with the pitcher, not just to carry a bat around and play the part.
3. The plate: the objective standard that both you and the hitter need to know in advance because it is part of the “rules of the game” that is unalterable.
4. The ballpark: the general environment, context, game situation, etc. that can determine a lot about your decisions as to what is a fair pitch and how your players are feeling about the need to swing the bat to make contact.
5. The pitch: the rate at which the process moves, and the majority of a pitch occurs in front of the plate and the actual time frame needed for a “swing.” Watch out—don’t throw curve balls that catch your hitters by surprise. Fast balls can be a problem too!
6. The hit = success! When a player makes contact with the pitch you throw and arrives safely on a base, or even hits a home run, this is a hit.
7. The strike: missing your pitch once. A strike can also happen even if the batter doesn’t swing, but just watches because the pitch looks too hard, too easy, or uninteresting.
8. The strikeout:  missing a combination of your pitches three times – 3 unsuccessful tries, or no tries, or a couple of foul balls followed by a strike – there are a variety of combinations that result in striking out, but whichever way it happens, it’s an out.
9. The conference: when the hitting coach/pitcher huddles with players on the pitcher’s mound, and in this league the huddle includes the batter instead of competing against the batter.
10. The pitcher: The hitting coach/pitcher’s job is to know all about #1-9 so that he or she works in unison with the player, the elements, the process, to help create “hits.” While every play may start as the ball heads toward the batter, no play ends just as the ball is released.

 

Some Things to Consider in the League of Differentiation
Now consider from the coach’s perspective the variance between just two hitters where everything but their stature is the same. One batter’s strike zone is much larger; the other’s is much more compact.  If this were an actual baseball situation and you were an opposing pitcher, you’d probably feel better with the odds of facing the hitter with the larger strike zone. You’d have more options to strike a player out. But that would be in a competitive example, and as a coach who pitches for the League of Differentiation, you and your players have a common opponent: the things that stand between you and mutual success.  That should change everything.

This illustrates what remains a teacher’s greatest challenge: locating the “perfect pitch” for the many “hitters” they work with—what’s the same and what differs.  At the elementary level there are typically  25 (+/- 5) “hitters,” but that number can grow well over 100 in secondary settings (6th- 12th grades) as teachers see large numbers of students move through their classes each day. The typical classroom would have a variety of “strike zones” and on any given topic, assignment, concept, etc., there are a myriad of combinations that a teacher might have to consider before tossing the first instructional “pitch.” It would not surprise us if some “pitchers” wanted to have all “hitters” possess phenomenal skills, judgment as to what pitches to swing at, and when to “go for the fence” (attempt to hit a home run).  It also is not surprising that many coaches who pitch in an increasingly diverse player population find it very taxing on them as professionals.

 

The Dark Side of the League of Differentiation
There are times when, even in the League of Differentiation, all is not well. Even with a coach who pitches with care, the result can still be strikes, foul balls, pop-fly outs, and yes, even strike outs. For some this occurs on a regular basis. In a “real world” competitive situation, the strikeout is a pitcher’s greatest glory–the kind of thing statisticians keep track of and that, for a select few, can determine whether they get into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame. In a game for the League of Differentiation, however, when a player strikes out the pitcher feels no joy, because she recognizes the role she plays in producing that result. She also recognizes it as a signal that more pitches such as the type that led to a strikeout will likely result in the same disappointing outcome for her in the future, but more importantly for the “hitter.” We can learn from the strikeouts though, and make adjustments next time. If we know our players well, we may even sense their discouragement and work to make sure they stay interested in the next day’s pitches, or continue trying to swing at pitches, or just trust us enough to get back into the batter’s box. We are all too aware of what can become of players who “leave” the ballpark and never come back. 

Keeping with our metaphor of the League of Differentiation, we are also aware that sometimes batters are extremely fearful when up to bat. Perhaps it is because they have not had a hit in a long time and want to avoid embarrassment. Perhaps it is because they feel enormous pressure from the crowd gathered in the stands, which may include peers, siblings, or parents. Perhaps it is because they’ve just seen three straight homers from the peers who batted before them and since they’ve never hit one, they fear this too will be a rough day at the plate. Perhaps they’re fearful because the coach/pitcher they had last year really knew their strike zone and you are throwing curve balls–even though you might dispute that.

All of these can really affect a player’s confidence in approaching the plate. It takes great courage to risk failure where you’ve failed before. While this is just a metaphor, perhaps the greatest thing we can do as instructional coaches who pitch is to empathize with the person who must hit what we throw. Even though we are well-intentioned, we must recognize that we will have limitations even if operating from a constructivist approach that seemingly honors all players equally (Delpit, 1996). We must guard against the attitudes of some pitchers who take no responsibility for the outcomes, see no role to play in orchestrating the success of hitters, or worse, ridicule players for their failures. Though it’s unthinkable, the reality is that there are coaches who pitch in the League of Differentiation who view the struggles of some of their players as somehow interfering with their own goals, their own successes as a coach. In some cases these coaches are known to minimize the needs of their players in subtle and not-so-subtle ways.

The Point of the League of Differentiation Metaphor
Perhaps various points of the metaphor resonated with you more than others.  Hopefully the comparisons are not too obscure or far-fetched as to render them invalid. The point of using a metaphor is that sometimes we have a very difficult time pinpointing what is so difficult for us as professionals that we need something else to liken it to in order to get some objectivity about it. Depending on the role we have in education, the metaphor takes off in some different directions.

If we are a teacher in a mixed ability elementary classroom, say first grade, we might easily image ourselves out there tossing pitches ever so gingerly to make sure our little batters are successful. For middle/junior high teachers teaching a content domain, say math, the scenarios change as teachers throw very crucial pitches at students who may have concluded after years of academic struggle in the area of math that they just “aren’t any good at math.” Perhaps for advanced learners teachers may need to offer a bit more of a challenging or interesting pitch. For high school teachers seeing a high volume and variety of students, say in Science, as the pitcher they may see some students only on alternating days (e.g., block schedule) and for only one semester or one year of their entire high school experience. It can be hard to know how to pitch under those circumstances.

Regardless of the different “ball parks” we work in, the different “players” we create “hits” with, or how incredibly challenging it can be to find the right “pitch” to throw sometimes, the most important thing to take away from the League of Differentiation metaphor is that it is supposed to be the way we view our task as educators in the real world. Our job is not to label and sort players into categories as “hitters” and “non-hitters,” but to pitch to students right where they are so they can all be “hitters.” Similarly, we cannot fabricate “hits” or convince our players that even though they know they’ve just struck out they should just get used to that feeling–because it will happen a bunch more in their “ballpark.”