Coaching Track & Field as a Model of Differentiated Instruction

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For a number of years while I was teaching at ICS in Ethiopia, I was the high school track & field coach. I loved coaching; the new track & field season was something I looked forward to each year. My enthusiasm for track & field was infectious. The track & field team at ICS always had a certain energy about it; it was a team of which students wanted to be a part. Despite our limited size as a school and the fact that students often joined the team with little past track & field experience, our team accomplished a lot of success.

As a teacher, I knew that what I was doing as a track & field coach was a model of differentiation, but I struggled to then translate that into differentiated learning in my classroom. I remember expressing with frustration one time to a colleague, "This is literally what I do every practice for track & field; why is this so hard in the classroom?" This past semester I took a graduate course called "Differentiating Instruction." One of the core texts for the course was The Differentiated Classroom by Carol Ann Tomlinson (2014). I felt a little validated when on page 22 of that text Tomlinson also made the connection between good coaching and differentiated classroom teaching. She wrote:

"A great coach never achieves greatness for himself or his team by working to make all his players alike. To be great, and to make his players great, he must make each player the best that he or she possibly can be at a given time. No weakness in understanding or skill is overlooked, but all players work from their strengths and competencies, not from a sense of deficiency. There is no such thing as 'good enough' for any team member. There is always a next step to take. In an effectively differentiated classroom, assessment, instruction, feedback, and grading take into account both group and individual goals and norms, while coaching students to continue to develop their own particular capacities as learners and as human beings."

Through reading Tomlinson's work on differentiation, I think I've better sorted out what I always knew: differentiated teaching is just like good coaching. Yes, classroom teaching and learning can be more complex, with more moving pieces, and a broader purpose, but the principles are largely the same. I think I've also come to understand the key piece -- formative assessment -- that I was missing when it came to translating my coaching practices into differentiated teaching, but I'll get to that a little later. I think it's important to first explain an early epiphany I had about my context of coaching high school track & field. I think this will help set the tone at a more philosophical level when talking about differentiated teaching; it will help to get at the larger purpose of school learning in general.

The size of the school, the nature of the transient international student body, the limited opportunities for competition, and the general ethos of our athletics program, meant that at ICS I was never going to be coaching an elite level track & field team (which is good, because I was never qualified to be an elite level coach). During my time coaching at ICS, I think only two or three of my athletes ever went on to compete in track & field at the collegiate level, and very few of my athletes ever posted times, heights or distances that would catch the attention of college recruiters. I realized early on that the point of the ICS track & field team, and the point of my coaching, was not to train up future Division I All-American athletes, or future Olympic medalists. Rather, the purpose of the team, and my coaching, was to use the sport of track & field to coach young people towards more balanced, well-rounded lives of well-being. The track & field itself was a means to a greater end, never the end in itself. I think this also translates to the high school classroom. The point of my world history class is not to develop published PhD historians; the point of my business management class is not to discover the next Steve Jobs. Rather, the point of any of my high school classes, and the point of my teaching in those classes, is to help young people develop into balanced, well-rounded human beings able to pursue flourishing lives. Of course I want my students to engage in and get excited about the content and issues of my classes, and, of course, I love it when students decide to pursue further academic study or a career in one of my disciplines, but those are not the primary purposes for why I teach. I also closely follow the success of my former track athlete who is now tearing it up running for Harvard, but that wasn't the primary purpose for why I coached. I think this perspective is very important for a teacher interested in differentiated learning in their classroom. In another book (So Each May Soar, 2021), Carol Ann Tomlinson writes: "After much reflection, I'd like to offer this 'why' for learner-centered classrooms: Educators are obligated to ensure that each of the young people in their care is well-equipped for a meaningful, productive, and satisfying life, both during and after their 'formal' education'" (p. 23). She then points out that "this statement does not imply preference for certain post-graduation pursuits, occupations, or lifestyles (...) Instead, it asserts that educators bear a responsibility for preparing young people to pursue and maintain the positive life they choose."

With the above foundation for differentiated learning established, let me now describe my track & field team, my role as the coach, and the corollaries to differentiated classroom teaching practice. On the track team, each athlete is striving for their own personal record (we call them PRs), but we don’t compete as a bunch of unrelated individual athletes; instead, we work together as a team towards a common goal.  When the track team competes, it does so as a team; each individual athlete competes for their own PRs, but each individual athlete’s performance contributes to our team score.  We compete as a team to rack up the most points as compared to the other teams at the competition.  This is important because it means that each athlete depends on the rest of the team; it means that each athlete supports the development of their teammates, cheers on those teammates, and celebrates the performances of those teammates.  We do not compete against each other.  We train together, we push each other, we support each other, and when it comes time for competition, we perform together.  Of course, each athlete must line up at the start line, or step into the throwers circle, as an individual, but they do so as a representative of the team, and their achievement is also the team’s achievement.  The same is true in the differentiated classroom.  Students are not just a collection of individuals assigned to my class; instead, they should make up a team, they should push each other, support each other, cheer each other on and celebrate each other’s performances.  Each individual student in the class must be accountable to and responsible for each other student in this class, operating not as competitors, but as a team of learners. It's part of the teacher's job to create this kind of a learning environment.

But, despite the importance of the team, every member of the team cannot be treated as the same. A track team consists of a great amount of difference and this is valued on a track team.  If everyone on the team was a javelin thrower, we might dominate that one event, but we’d always lose overall.  What about the other throwing events, let alone the sprinting events, or the hurdles, or the jumps?  Each team member is unique and contributes differently to the team. Each has their own strengths and we play to those strengths, while working on the weaknesses.  Some sprint, some have endurance, some hurdle, some jump, some throw, some have been practicing and competing for a long time, while others are just starting out, but every athlete knows that the team performs better as each member improves.  One may not be the team’s fastest 400m runner, but if they start the season running it at 1:05.00 and, through hard work and team support, run a PR of 55.00 later in the season, they have contributed significantly to the team. Their individual growth is also a team accomplishment. Different team members also have other, equally important roles.  Some lead the best cheers, others provide the best post-race massages, others bring the best competition snacks, others know how to help their teammates focus before a race, others can be counted on for wake-up calls for the 6 AM practices, and still others always remember extra pins for everyone else's racing spikes.  The same needs to be true in the differentiated classroom.  Each student brings something different and will contribute in a unique way.  Each comes to the class with different skills, different types of knowledge, different past experiences, different interests, and different ways of learning.  The teacher must set a tone that values those differences by all. Put another way, the class is better as a team, when each classmate, from whatever their starting point, is able to individually grow, thrive and improve.

So what then is my role as the coach on the track & field team?  The coach's role is to provide leadership.  That leadership involves creating the environment where each athlete can improve so that the team can succeed.  This requires facilitating opportunities to foster team cohesion and looking out to ensure that each athlete feels a part of the team. This also requires that I make use of my expertise in health, fitness training, and sport psychology, as well as in the techniques and strategies of the sport itself.  I must draw on my expertise to provide instruction, demonstration, and effective practice opportunities so that each athlete can improve.  Sometimes I must pull in the expertise of others when mine isn’t sufficient. I have no idea how to high jump, or to coach high jump, for example, so I work with other speciality coaches.  Similarly, in the differentiated classroom, as the teacher, I must work to create opportunities for building class community.  I must draw on my expertise in the subject to provide instruction, lessons and assignments with the goal of helping each student learn. 

Beyond that, one of my key jobs as the track coach is to get to know each athlete.  This is partly for the sake of building team cohesion, but it’s also so I can more precisely design training programs that benefit each athlete. I must get to know each in terms of their fitness, technique, times, and distances.  I must get to know the types of workouts they most enjoy, versus those that feel like drudgery.  I must get to know their personal aspirations as an athlete, how they best respond to feedback, and what motivates them to work hard.  All of this is to fashion work-outs and practice sessions effectively tailored to each athlete.  If I have an athlete who has never hurdled before, and I start them off with a string of ten hurdles at full height and just say, “go at it,” I risk seriously injuring that athlete. The body has a remarkable ability to improve in fitness, speed, agility and strength over time, but it can only make this improvement incrementally.  As a coach, I must measure each athlete’s starting point, and create workouts that push that athlete just beyond their current abilities.  I must then regularly measure again as they improve, so that I can continue to design workouts that push just beyond those current abilities.  If I push too hard, the athlete risks injury; if I don’t push hard enough, the athlete will stagnate and stop making progress.

There are some analogous points in what I’ve just described related to the differentiated classroom. Track practice often involves small groups of athletes, or individual athletes, doing different things.  Rarely will the whole team be doing exactly the same thing at the same time.  Even among a group that is working on the same skill or event, say a group of hurdlers, some may be working on timing of steps, some on technique drills, some may be practicing with high hurdles, others with medium-high hurdles and still others with low hurdles.  A group of middle distance runners may all be doing the same set of track intervals, but may each have different split time targets.  Similarly, there will be many times in a differentiated classroom when students are divided up and working on different things or in different ways.  If I, as the teacher, treated each student the same and designed lessons that are the same for each, many lessons would be a waste of time for many students; they’d be either too easy or too hard, or just not focused on what each needs. As Tomlinson said in her book, The Differentiated Classroom, regarding a one-size-fits-all approach to lessons, “[it] swallows some learners, pinches others, and fails to inspire most” (p. 39).

But in order to arrange students in appropriate groups, design the best learning experiences for each student, determine how each best processes information, and how each best expresses understanding, I, the teacher, must continually gather information and get to know each student. I must ascertain each student's starting points on the knowledge and skills of each unit, keep track of each student's progress, and provide each with feedback that will help them improve.  I must gather information about each student's interests, who they are as a learner, their prior knowledge and skills, and how they're progressing.  I can do this through observing students, asking questions, checking homework, communicating with parents or guardians, reading class exit tickets, and assigning quizzes. 

This was one of the key components that I was missing in my link between coaching and differentiated teaching. As a coach, I naturally gathered data on my athletes all the time, regularly jotted down qualitative notes during practice, and maintained a spreadsheet of times and distances. My goal in this had nothing to do with assigning a score or a grade to each athlete; rather, I was gathering information that would help me design future workouts, and provide specific feedback, that would help each athlete. I was looking to get to know each athlete so as to design workouts at exactly the right level of challenge, targeting exactly the right techniques, and tapping into that which motivated that athlete. This is why assessment is so important to the differentiated classroom, but not assessment in the way it's typically used in classrooms. The vast majority of assessment in a differentiated classroom is not gathered for the purpose of a score or a grade; rather, it's what is called pre-assessment or formative assessment. It's data that is gathered in order to inform teaching and learning; it's data gathered to design future lessons and learning experiences and provide specific feedback that will help each student. It's about getting to know each student so as to design curriculum and instruction at exactly the right level of challenge, targeting exactly the right skills, and tapping into engagement for each student.

In closing, I'd like to pivot away from specific teaching practice and back to philosophical foundations of differentiated teaching by drawing one final analogous point to something I stated above about coaching track & field. I made the point that each athlete has a remarkable physical ability to improve incrementally in fitness, speed, agility and strength. Some young athletes have more raw talent than others and some arrive at the start of the season with more experience or fitness than others, but each, with dedicated effort and appropriately designed training sessions, targeted at an appropriate level of challenge, possesses a human body that responds to the challenge and improves. The same is true of the plasticity of the human brain. We know that the human brain is not fixed, even as adults. Rather, the human brain can grow, develop, make new connections; it can learn. Psychologist Carol Dweck relates this to what she calls "growth mindset." Teachers must believe that every student in the classroom has the innate mental capacity to learn. This belief must permeate the culture and ethos of the differentiated classroom so that it's embraced not only by the teacher, but by each student in terms of their own capacity to learn, and in terms of their attitude towards their classmates.