UNSCRIPTED

I reckon I could create a full alphabet of educational expletives. Let’s begin.

A-word? Assessments.
B-word? Benchmarks.
C-word? Conferences.

And D? Differentiation.

Differentiation, the idea is simple enough—every Braxxton, Meighson, and Todd gets their own custom education plan, tailored to their unique abilities and interests. Sounds dreamy. In a homeschool with just a couple kids, it might lend itself to the land of possibility.

But in a typical classroom of 30?

You’re Alice and differentiation is Wonderland. 

I recently finished reading Little Soldiers, it’s a look inside the Chinese school system, where class sizes run from 50 to 100 kids. Individuality is a liability. Compliance is the goal, and they’ll use bribery, shame, even fear to get it. At first, I was appalled. Threatening children that their parents may never return to get them, if they don’t sit down and be quiet. But then I thought—if I had 70 kindergartners? I don’t know, but I might do the same.

I had a parent who once told me I was “basically a glorified babysitter.” What she meant was: “Keep my angel safe, seated, and mostly silent.” My apologies to Mrs. Right, but turns out I couldn’t even manage to do that most days.

But she wasn’t wrong about one thing—our schools are built for control. That’s why we have seating charts, sticker systems, red-green behavior cards. It’s all for the silence and smooth transitions.

There’s a structural flaw in the system if individualized instruction is the goal. In a mass model, compliance always wins. You can have creativity or control—but rarely both. Try giving movement breaks to Jaiden, extra math to Haiden, and a hands on science kit to Kayden (spelled with a Y). Now multiply that by 24.

Every adjustment is risk. It’s noise, it’s distraction, it’s chaos, and ultimately it’s burnout for teachers. Eventually, the whole ship capsizes—right around the time the copier jams for the third time that morning, and you’re scheduled to have an observation with the superintendent in fifteen minutes.

I used to think relationships were the key. I’ve been called the poster child for Fay’s Love and Logic teaching. But forming meaningful connections with all your students comes at a cost—your time, your energy, your empathy, your marriage. And when you’re human, most of those are limited resources. 

Can you imagine a class of 70 students like China? That’s game over. You’re forced to teacher triage. You identify the 10% trendsetters and the 10% with special needs. You build rapport with the bellwether, as I just learned they were called, and they will lead the rest of the sheep hopefully in the general direction you want them to go. Then you scaffold for the 10%, the ADHD, autistic, and ELL students; and the rest of the bell curve? You say a prayer to God almighty that they don’t wander off a cliff.

This Is the Part Where You Should Lie

So there you sit, across from the Chair of Personnel and the interview rep in the fresh Express blazer.

She asks, “How do you manage your classroom and meet their diverse needs?

You think about the seating charts, your stoplight cards, your color coded folders, and the individual plans you stayed up until midnight making, with half a brain and a bottle of wine.

And after a long awkward pause, you smile and say:

 “Same way I manage my life: badly, and mostly through the slow erosion of my mental health.”