Carol Ann Tomlinson Quotes

In differentiated classrooms, teachers begin where students are, not the front of a curriculum guide.

Assessment is today's means of modifying tomorrow's instruction.

Teachers craft classrooms that are good matches for their teaching styles as well as for learner needs.

A gifted teacher has an unfailing eye for magical classrooms & loses sleep over anything less than the highest quality.

The central job of schools is to maximize the capacity of each students.

As educators we need to understand that there is no finish line in our work.

It is not so important to have all the answers as to be hungry for them.

Plan to be better today, but don't ever plan to be finished

Interest refers to student’s affinity, curiosity, or passion for a particular topic or skill.

The high stakes test culture runs almost totally counter to what we know about how people learn. It causes us to engage in professional malpractice on a regular basis.

Readiness is a student’s entry point relative to a particular understanding or skill.

We can always gain more depth and breadth in our work [as educators]. There are always new discoveries to be made.

Sometimes educators suffer from the "I already do that" syndrome. In those cases, we feel inadequate if we admit we have a distance to go as learners of our craft.

When challenge and skills are in balance the activity is its own reward

As a teacher, it is your job to make explicit whatever you though was implicit

We aren't quite sure what we're trying to differentiate, and therefore can't quite see how to do it other than giving some students more to cover and some less. That rarely works.

Accepting both the opportunity and the responsibility evokes a great deal of humility.

The best educators I have met never stop asking questions. Some of them have taught for forty years and continue to be energized by new possibilities.

We need teacher educators who regularly spend a great deal of time in classrooms so they have a deep understanding of where they students will teach.

Prospective teachers may read about the science of education, but they'll only grasp the art in their early years by seeing it practiced and having it commended to them.

[Students] often have a "We can figure this out - don't just tell us" attitude. In that way, they can be less patient with "traditional" approaches to teaching.

Until a teacher learns to use elements like time, space, materials, groupings, and so forth flexibly, it's incredibly difficult to teach students as they need to be taught.

We have students at the university say on a regular basis, "You're asking us to think and no one has ever done that in school."

Teaching is a very habit-bound endeavor. We're unsettled by the unfamiliar. We're creatures of habit too.

[Students] are exposed to many things the majority of their teachers didn't encounter until much later in their growing up years.