One Maine Teacher, Every Kind of Classroom | Episode 19 with Carla Lobley

So that is the long and short of where we're at today.

And it's been great.

It's pretty incredible to hear how you brought together the different great pieces of all of the different modalities that you've been in to create this hybridized version.

But it really illustrates to me that one size fits all really generally doesn't fit.

Doesn't.

And that's always been for me.

I don't currently homeschool.

It was only a couple of years at the very beginning.

But that's always been the beauty to me of homeschooling.

But I think whether it's homeschooling, private school or public school or hybridized.

There's a good fit for every child out there.

The question is discovering what that is.

And I feel like so often in our state, it's made harder than it needs to be.

Oh, you've said it.

What are some of those challenges that you have seen

Okay, I can speak to that in public school.

What's really funny to me in public school is there's this desire to individualize education, but it is almost set up for failure because how can an education truly be individualized when public school gets, they'll get very gifted students and students that are on the brink or should be in a behavioral program in one classroom.

how does a person who is understaffed, maybe their heart's in the right place, but how does one really differentiate for that? Even gifted and talented, it's a pull-out program, 30 minutes a week.

So that student can be gifted and talented for 30 minutes.

And then they're back in their classroom where a teacher may be great, but it takes a long time to really learn how to differentiate well on the high end, but it also takes a long time to differentiate low on the on the low end.

And there's this push now for inclusion,

which

in theory is an absolutely amazing idea where students of all different backgrounds come in and are all in a class and just learn together.

But the reality is research shows that homogenous learning is really what's best for students, students who are learning at the same level and learn together.

And student and public schools are always understaffed.