“Teaching up” is a concept, a “big idea,” a state of mind, a way of thinking about or rethinking the role of schools and classrooms in the lives of those who attend them and those who guide them. Teaching up is not a recipe or a list of to-dos that a teacher or school leader can tick off as evidence of quality practice. It does not lend itself to scripted texts or pacing guides. Its impact is more effectively assessed not by a fill-in-the-bubble test but by the degree to which a young person can interact with, impact, and feel actualized by participating in the world in and beyond the classroom. Teaching up is a choice.
Teaching up asks teachers to push against labels and stereotypes that lead to categorizing students as “low,” “average,” or “high” and to instead assume every student has the capacity to become something much grander than a category. It asks us to think, plan, and teach as though every learner in our class is “smart.”
Choosing Where to Begin
Teachers who make the choice to teach up believe, or are at least willing to believe, that all students are capable of much more than they currently show the world. Teachers who make the choice to teach up know that brains are malleable and thrive in rich environments. They also know, perhaps from research, perhaps from their own experiences as learners or as classroom observers, that students who have teachers that set high expectations are more likely to flourish than students who have teachers that set lower expectations. Teachers who choose to teach up learn how to translate their beliefs that students are highly capable into classroom practice.
When teachers plan a unit or lesson, they typically take one of three approaches. In the first approach, they might begin by asking themselves, “What do I need to cover with the students tomorrow (or in this unit)?” While there are clear reasons this might be a common starting point, we can do better. We have abundant evidence in research and in our own classroom experience that a cover-the-content approach fails many, if not most, learners. This is because learning must happen in the learner, not to them. Coverage is concerned with making sure students are exposed to content—not that they process it, come to understand it, own it, and value it. Coverage also generally assumes that hearing the same information in the same mode and over the same timespan should work for “the students.” It does not, of course, because the learners in front of us don’t function on the same timetables. They are not a “matched set” of learners.
A second option teachers might consider as they plan instruction is to focus on who rather than what—in other words, planning with students and their needs in the foreground, rather than worrying about coverage. We might, then, plan first for students who are roughly working on grade level. That seems to make sense because standards, materials, and even placement in a certain class encourage that focus. Alternatively, we might plan first for students who are lagging behind with key content. We might worry that if the unit or lesson doesn’t help those students move forward, the learning challenges they face will only accelerate. While this approach reflects our empathy and desire to make a meaningful difference for students who find school discouraging, it often results in “teaching down,” because we believe those students must do work that is less robust than others in the class.
The most promising approach to lesson planning begins with designing instruction for the most advanced learners in the class.
A third possibility for lesson or unit planning—and the one I’d argue is most promising for student growth even as it is also the least common—begins with a teacher designing instruction for the most advanced learners in the class. Opting for this approach—to capture students’ imaginations, to stretch them academically and intellectually—is the first step in teaching up. It is the choice we make if we opt to teach as though all our students are capable of and would benefit from engaging, complex learning opportunities as standard fare. While these teachers plan to raise ceilings of expectation for every student, they simultaneously plan a variety of scaffolding to support a broad range of students in accessing rich, meaningful learning opportunities.
Choosing to Teach Like All Our Students Are “Smart”
Few teachers have had the opportunity to explore the best current professional knowledge about what constitutes effective teaching for students who are advanced beyond expectations for their age or grade level. They may default to common practices that are not very effective, such as assigning more work to students they deem to be “smart.” The “more-work/less-work” approach serves neither group well. Quantity of work rarely mirrors quality of work.
So, if teaching advanced learners effectively isn’t quantitatively different from teaching students who are less advanced, what does it mean to effectively teach students who are learning, or could be learning, significantly beyond grade-level expectations? While there is no universally agreed-upon set of descriptors for teaching advanced learners (who themselves are a heterogeneous group), there are some generally accepted characteristics. “Attributes of Successful Teaching and Learning for Advanced Learners” (see fig 1.) is a useful reference (not a checklist) for teachers who want to teach advanced learners successfully.
Advanced learners thrive in an environment that is welcoming, affirming, supportive, and challenging, where they feel connected to their teacher and to one another in positive and productive ways. They enjoy an atmosphere of shared high expectations and high support where learning is dynamic, purposeful, and authentic.
Advanced learners, then, can be described as reasoners, problem-solvers, collaborators, and idea-creators. They learn to use a variety of resources skillfully and to adjust their approaches to learning depending on the task at hand. Throughout that process, they increasingly understand themselves, others, what they learn, how to learn, and the world around them in multifaceted and empowering ways. Teaching up asks us to choose to translate those understandings into powerful classroom practices that benefit the widest possible range of learners.
Choosing to Begin the Journey to Teach Up
There is no single right way to begin a quest to teach up, but one logical next step in moving forward is reflecting deeply about the students you teach. Here are six possibilities for reflection.
1. Take stock of how connected each of your students feels to you, how connected you feel to them, and how well you know them as individual human beings and learners. Learn about their strengths and dreams. Watch them. Create opportunities to talk with them, to affirm their strengths, and to acknowledge when they take risks in learning.
Learn about students' strengths and dreams. Watch them. Listen to them. Acknowledge when they take risks.
2. Be sure students have ample opportunity to see you value each member of the class for who they are and what they bring to the group. Find ongoing ways to help students learn more about one another. Begin using short-term flexible groupings for a range of instructional purposes. Model close listening, respect, and empathy for each student and ask them to model those traits for one another as well.
3. Consider how connected each of your students feels to other students in the classroom. Provide frequent opportunities for them to collaborate in a wide variety of flexibly constructed groups. Observe them carefully. Teach them skills needed for successful collaboration. Point out successes—and opportunities for growth.
4. Think about how your students respond to various aspects of the curriculum you teach and to instruction. When are they curious or jazzed about ideas, engaged in problem solving, generating ideas, or having meaningful conversations with peers? When are they “in neutral” or tuned out? Think about who is often tuned out, why, and what you might do in terms of curriculum design to make learning more inviting.
5. Begin using formative assessment regularly in your classroom and apply what you discover as you plan upcoming learning experiences.
6. Reflect on ways you already scaffold student progress as they encounter learning challenges. As students work, ask them what would help them feel more confident and be more successful. Begin to expand your repertoire of scaffolds.
Choosing Transformation
Teachers who make the choice to teach up do not abandon required learning standards but experiment with teaching them in authentic and meaningful ways. They do not ignore student differences in learning but rather build ladders of support that enable learners from a broad spectrum of strengths and needs to find success.
The primary benefit of teaching up is, of course, seeing the transformation that takes place in students when they begin to understand their own power as learners and as human beings. A fringe benefit for those who choose to teach up is a sense of renewal of their energy and enthusiasm for teaching—and for their own deeper learning.
Teaching Up in Action
Teaching up can happen in any classroom, across all disciplines. Here are a few examples from educators I’ve worked with or observed throughout the years.
An Elementary Challenge
Shyla, a 4th grade teacher, began teaching up by working with her students to understand why challenge was important and how they could work both together and independently to succeed with challenging work. She gave everyone an advanced task that she scaffolded in varied ways—providing directions for the assignment for some students in bulleted rather than paragraph form and providing an optional graphic organizer that outlined step-by-step guidance and structure for the work ahead. She asked her students to analyze a character in a story—to examine how the character’s traits change over time, determine the origins of these changes, and support their assertions in multiple ways.
Then, Shyla says, she held her breath. On the morning the assignment was due, she exhaled with relief. She saw a new level of effort and understanding from all her students. She guided them in looking at positives in their work as well as growth opportunities. “My students are super motivated to live up to the challenge,” she says. “I’m looking forward to the next ‘teaching up’ assignment.”
Making Math Exciting Again
Mark, a 9th grade math teacher, began teaching up by reflecting on his students who had given up on math success.
“Recently, I’ve been thinking about what we do in schools that causes so many students to see themselves as failures in math by the time they reach middle school and high school,” he says. “I want to change that in my classes. I absolutely believe it’s possible to teach learners with a great range of entry points into math.”
Right now, Mark involves all students in spirited discussions about varied ways to approach “mathematical dilemmas.” His excitement about math is contagious. He trusts in the students’ power to use reasoning as a tool for understanding. His teaching often involves conversations with the class about multiple ways to make sense of a problem. Classes also contain regular time for students to work independently to develop and share representations of their thinking. Mark moves continually among the learners, asking them questions about various aspects of their work, sometimes hinting at next steps, and pointing to progress he is seeing. His whole-class discussions push student thinking. Breakout sessions for independent work allow individuals to fill “potholes” in their understanding and consolidate their learning. Already, students tell him math is their favorite subject.
Sophisticated Science Thinking
Catherine, a 5th grade teacher, began teaching up by building science content around principles or big ideas of science rather than “what’ll be on the test.” She wanted her students to have a voice in discovering these principles and big ideas. She created a three-column table on a large whiteboard. The first column was called “Ideas That May Be Principles for This Topic.” The second was called “Ideas We Accept as Important Principles for This Topic.” The third was “Ideas We Don’t Yet Accept as Important Principles for This Topic.”
Catherine proposed two “ideas” in the first column and invited her students to generate other ideas, conference with peers about them, and ultimately decide as a class whether to assign them to the second or third column. Her students began to understand the value of “testing” principles over time rather than accepting or rejecting them after limited consideration. Class forums about these principles were spirited. Students began to understand scientific thinking in more authentic ways than ever before. That kind of careful thinking followed them into other content areas.
Bringing History to Life
Judy, a middle school history teacher, began teaching up by asking herself what she could do in a unit early in the year to make it come to life for her students. Students would often say that they “hated” (their word, not the teacher’s) the history textbook.
Judy used speakers, compelling videos, reenactments, music, fabrics, art, poetry, biographies, role-plays, primary documents, and a wealth of other resources to help her students think deeply about a time period, human motivations, and tragedies and triumphs that are always in the fabric of history. Students related what they were learning to their lives and the lives of their grandparents, and they had fascinating conversations with peers speculating what people’s lives were like in the time periods they were studying. Their studies, investigations, and projects centered on key concepts that had explanatory power across times and places in history. Judy often worked with her students to integrate their interests into the concepts and periods they were studying. In these ways, Judy made history “come alive” for all her students.
—Carol Ann Tomlinson
Reflect & Discuss
➛ What do you think about Tomlinson’s recommendation to begin lesson planning with your most advanced learners? What challenges would that bring? What benefits?
➛ What scaffolds do you use to help struggling learners access more challenging content? Is there a new one you can try?
"Teaching Up" to Reach Each Learner
Learn the basics of "teaching up”—an instructional approach built on the conviction that all students are smart and benefit from being taught as "smart kids” are taught.
