I have been thinking about writing this post for a while now because the purpose of this blog is to be more precessional rather than personal. After many months deliberating over it, I have decided to go ahead and share it because I’ve realised that the teaching profession is a personal one. Teachers seem to be born a teacher or have had an inspirational teacher that helped them see their potential. For me, UDL is my inspiration to keep going in this physically and emotionally demanding profession. And now it is so much more deeply personal.

Let me explain. Not long ago I became a mum. It has been the hardest and most rewarding thing I have done but during that first year of my daughter’s life I began to make links to how my child was developing and why UDL is so important in our education systems.

We would go to mum’s group and trade the war stories of no sleep and how our baby has done this milestone or hasn’t done that one- should I be worried? The nurse facilitating the session would calmly state every baby is different. Us first time mums would give a sigh of relief and say we’ve got this! It’s ok. You do you baby! However this made me reflect on our education system. The system that will teach our babies.

When children are young we embrace their individuality and celebrate it but then when they go to school something happens. We start to put our children in boxes of who’s achieving and who’s not or the behaviour kids and the pleasure to teach kids. If they don’t fit in any of those boxes we don’t know what to do with them. We lose sight of the fact that our students are children and they are all different.

That is why I believe that UDL is so important in education. Its philosophy is about embracing difference and leveraging that to engage learners in the learning.

When my daughter grows up and goes to school my hope is that difference and embracing individuality are a part of the conversation. That choice and learner agency is used to support the variability because all babies, children, humans are different. I hope that my daughter’s personality and strengths are reflected in her learning.

My hope is that UDL is a tool used to start the conversation now so that there is hope for a future where our children are celebrated for who they are and not what box they fit into.

Until next time,

Happy educating,

Sam

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