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Thriving in Academe
The Diverse Needs of Students
Teachers need a varied arsenal to reach today’s students.
By Kristin M. Smith and Marianne Williams, Durham Technical Community College

You can’t reach all the people all the time…
but it’s our job to try.

Every semester we study our new rosters with a critical eye. And as we begin to get to know our students, we are constantly evaluating their abilities and needs, both consciously and unconsciously.

In our own developmental studies classrooms, we often give a diagnostic of some sort within the first few class meetings designed to assess the strengths and weaknesses of each student. Most of the time, what we find is a room full of very different personalities, with very different needs and varying abilities.

As idealists, we believe that all students have the potential to successfully complete their college careers. As realists, we admit that many of our students arrive underprepared and encounter seemingly insurmountable challenges in our classrooms. As educators, our challenge and our charge is to help as many of them as possible reach their personal and academic goals.

With dwindling budgets and rising class sizes, the challenge of meeting the different needs of so many students with so much discrepancy in their skill levels is enough to overwhelm even the most committed professional educator.

Specific teaching strategies and tools, however, can help all students perform well. Carefully designed student-centered and self-reflective teaching ensures that we are serving students of diverse abilities.

Meet Kristin Smith and Marianne Williams
Kristin M. Smith is an instructor of reading at Durham Technical Community College in Durham, North Carolina. Her pedagogical interests include promoting the development of soft skills in the classroom, hybrid and online course development, and the use of personality type and learning style in teaching and learning. Marianne Williams is also a reading instructor at Durham Technical Community College. As a veteran adult educator, she has mentored many instructors, advocating a “learning to learn” approach and active learning. As a member of the Teaching and Learning Center Advisory Committee, she is involved in facilitating the development of the scholarship of teaching. Kristin and Marianne can be reached at smithk@durhamtech.edu and williamm@durhamtech.edu, respectively.

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