“Everyone’s path is different.” That exact phrase was recently said to me in two very different settings.
As the Lead Mentor at my school, I was at a training involving our New Teacher Induction Program and the issue of State Certification for Teaching came up. While the path used to be that you must graduate with a degree in teaching, with the teacher shortage, our state has gotten creative and there are now a variety of ways to become certified to teach. “Everyone’s path is different,” our trainer cautioned, “So do not assume anything.”
The second time I heard that phrase was during a recent webinar I attended for writers and it was focused on attaining an agent and ultimately, a publishing contract. “Everyone’s path is different,” our presenter said, as he explained that there were no step-by-step-directions to follow.
For those that crave clear-cut pathways, and concrete action plans to achieving their goals, this phrase can be unsettling. However, accepting that everyone’s path is different, is comforting in that it celebrates the variety of ways that goals can be achieved, and success is not prescribed in only one way.
Successful teachers embrace this belief as a cornerstone to their teaching and instruction. Everyone’s path is different. Children are not all identical, and do not come with a set of cookie-cutter skills that can then be built on.
There is no time this is clearer then at the beginning of a new school year. Teachers start the year knowing exactly what benchmarks and skills our students must master, in each content area, by the end of the school year. We know what they must know, what they must be able to perform and do, and how they will be assessed. Yet those twenty students sitting in our classrooms on the first day of school, all come to us in different places, with different skills, different needs, different challenges, different gaps, and different talents.
This is where the art and science of teaching blend together. This is where strategies, materials, and approaches may differ. They may differ from teacher to teacher, or they may differ within the same class, from student to student. All based on individual student needs.
Because while they all have the same learning goals, everyone’s path there is different!
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