Unpacking the Word All

ALL: is it just the latest slogan or term that we throw around loosely in education? It sounds good: ALL students college and career ready, what is our school doing to prepare ALL students, ALL students prepared for a bright and successful future. But do we really mean ALL? Why should we unpack the word ALL?

Many times in education we create programs and strategies with the idea and hope that we are serving all students only to find that we fall short even with the best intentions in serving the all. We struggle to serve a variety of students either because we don’t know how or what approaches to use and sometimes we simply aren’t explicit enough about the ALL and what that really means. Therefore, we need to be very intentional. I’ve attached an activity that you can use with your staff, students and parents. Use this activity to begin unpacking the word “all” in order to examine who and what we mean and how to design educational approaches that can get us closer to “all” students.