Teaching for Excellence in Academically Diverse Classrooms

The nature of life in the 21st century suggests that schools must prepare students to be thinkers, problemsolvers, collaborators, wise consumers of information, and confident producers of knowledge. The nature of 21st century student populations suggests that schools will have to become more responsive to the broadening array of cultures, languages, experiences, economics, and interests represented in most contemporary classrooms—and to do so in ways that provide equity of access to robust learning experiences for that broad spectrum of learners. Such classrooms will be heterogeneous in nature, and learner-centered, knowledge-centered, assessment-centered, instruction-centered, and community-centered. Teachers in those classrooms will need to be proficient in “teaching up,” or planning learning experiences at a high level of challenge while providing scaffolding to support many learners in succeeding with those experiences and extending the challenge in a meaningful way for advanced learners.