Adaptive Teaching: What if the problem is not the student, but the way we respond to their silence or hesitation?

13–JUN–2025 | Speak Your Mind! 🎯 “Rethinking How We Support Multilingual Learners” by Maja Merdovic – Originally published by Verbalists Education & Language Network

The image you are looking at offers more than just a set of teaching tips – it is a quiet challenge to our assumptions.

When a multilingual student does not engage, writes little, or defaults to their first language, it is easy to misread that as resistance or lack of ability. But what if those are actually signs of untapped potential – waiting for the right kind of support?

Adaptive teaching is not about simplifying the curriculum or lowering expectations. It is about being precise in how we notice, interpret, and respond. This approach demands more awareness than effort. For instance, when a student seems confused, do we repeat ourselves louder – or do we pause, switch to visuals, or model the task? When a student writes nothing, do we see it as a lack of ideas – or a need for sentence frames or another mode of expression?

This framework invites a shift: from reacting to student behavior to reading it like a language of its own.

So here is the question – when you see hesitation in your classroom, do you treat it as a barrier, or a clue?

That is the power of adaptive teaching.

Maja Merdovic
PRODIREKT
Verbalists Education & Language Network