As I walked the exhibit floor and attended sessions at this year’s IRA conference in Chicago, it became pretty obvious that differentiated instruction is one of the hottest buzzwords in education these days. There is no doubt that classroom diversity has increased significantly since my teaching days. I remember having one or two second-language learners in my classes. But today, in the typical classroom, these numbers are significantly higher. Someone recently told me about a district outside Washington, D.C., that has students from 149 language backgrounds! That is a staggering number. Without question, this places a much greater burden on the classroom teacher. To address the diverse needs of their students, teachers need a much wider array of resources than ever before, yet I constantly hear of cuts in spending for instructional materials.
Making a comprehensive collection of developmentally appropriate resources available to teachers at a low cost was the motivating force behind our creation of Reading A-Z and the other websites that we have created. I am often amazed at the rate at which we have added resources since launching the Reading A-Z website in 2002. We started with slightly over 200 English language books. Now we have more than 2,000 books in English, Spanish, and French along with thousands of other reading resources. We keep adding new resources each month, and you can get access to all this stuff for less than $50 a year.
Bob, I, too, taught children, beginning a career in 1965 and ending by teaching college in 1998. Things really changed during those times, with dozens of what I call "social welfare" programs eating up time in the curriculum (DARE, reproductive ed, and so on.)