Are you a new teacher? If so, those theoretical characters in books are about to be replaced with living human beings, teachers, students and administrators who are living in a time when “the terrible tyranny of the majority,” to quote Ray Bradbury in Fahrenheit 451, is creating and fostering a mounting onslaught of standardized testing and government intervention with the best of intentions, but little understanding of the myriad unintended consequences I have seen unfolding as a result.

If you are lucky, you left school and landed in a district that has been mostly passing or even walloping state tests. In those districts, the landscape has not shifted under teachers with the same titanic force that is being felt in urban and academically-struggling districts. Where the students are not defined as broken, the administration does not have to doggedly attempt to fix everything and everyone. They can still teach drama for the sake of drama and orchestra for the love of music. They can hold spirit assemblies that sacrifice academic minutes, and sign off on field trips that add breadth and breath to education.

But maybe you got the first job that many teachers find, that position in an urban school with a high turnover rate. Where are the jobs? What districts have high vacancy rates? Those districts where resources are scarce and/or working conditions are challenging. Maybe you are stacking up falling tiles from your ceiling in a corner somewhere, while you buy supplies for all your students and borrow an overhead projector from your stepmother-in-law. Poor districts often lack flashy technology and supplies, unless they have lucked into grant money.

Wherever you are, you likely are about to run the gauntlet of our time, as you attempt to please students, parents, colleagues, administrators, Charlotte Danielson or whoever designed your system of evaluation, the greater public and even state and federal governments. You will succeed and you will fail. Nobody can keep the whole crowd happy. You will have to be resilient.

Eduhonesty: Well, I guess this is what happens when the Blog of Occasional Gloom and Doom attempts to write tips for new teachers. I ought to add, “And then the Zombie Apocalypse will wreck your field trip to the forest preserve!”

Sorry if this post lacks cheer. Honestly, my students and classes have mostly been joys for me, and in some districts, you won’t even catch a whiff of those zombies. You might walk in the door and discover supplies, a budget for more supplies and all the help you could ever need. I hope so.

But if you just started in Detroit or Flint, if you just started in that rural county where the mining industry has been collapsing, or if you are in a school that has been losing the No Child Left Behind Game for a decade and more, then I have a tip for today for you:

Tip #4: You MUST differentiate.

If this tip seems silly to you, I understand. But districts threatened by lower test scores sometimes script out the curriculum in fine detail. I lived through a year in which all students in my school were required to receive exactly the same math tests and quizzes, whether they were in special education, bilingual programs or regular classes. More and more often, you will be given a script to follow, a script that may not match your students.

A few years ago, I discussed this with a colleague who said, “I just make my own plans and ignore that stuff.” She was getting great results and administrators left her alone. You might luck into similar, smart administrators who will let you deviate from the script as long as you can prove your choices are working.

But if you are told to stay on the group track and the group track does not seem to benefit some, most or even all of your students, then you will have to rescue your kids. Be prepared to do morning, lunch and afternoon tutoring. I added week-end tutoring and I will strongly recommend readers try this. Meet students in a local McDonalds or Taco Bell or anyplace with a cheap breakfast and acceptable coffee/tea/caffeine. My usual time was 10:00 AM on Saturdays.

Buy the kids breakfast if you can. You can feed your students for a couple of dollars apiece at Taco Bell. O.K., I admit that nutritionists reading this post are cringing right now, but kids on the fence may get up to go to tutoring if you toss breakfast into the deal, and most teachers can’t afford to buy restaurant fruit plates for everyone. The majority of your kids would rather have that breakfast burrito anyway.

Then prepare to differentiate. Teach adding to Sadie, multiplication to Drew, and the order of operations to Katrina. Teach your kids the NEXT thing they need to know. You are the only one who can do this. You are the one grading the homework and listening to individual students.

Administration may try to get you to prepare everyone for identical tests all year. If you do that, you cheat your students. Some students will be far from academically ready for that test’s content, while others will have understood the same content years ago,

Your job as a teacher is to meet your students academically where they live. “You got what you got,” as a presenter said to me long ago in a professional development seminar. In these times of all-inclusive classes, that may mean you have six or more years difference in understanding of subject matter within a single class.

Forget the theory where the theory does not seem to be working for you. Try to at least sideswipe all the administrative demands, but don’t get trapped by those demands. Teach your kids in a rational order. Don’t throw algebra at them until they understand their exponents. Don’t bypass the elements of a plot if students’ quizzes show they are fuzzy on plot elements just because plot “ended” and metaphors “start” this week.

Teach smart. Teach kids what they need to know. That requires differentiating. whether you receive support for your efforts or not.