Module 4 – Unit 2 – Activity 4
Reflections on High Expectations
As educators, it is essential that we share our high
expectations with our students. Besides giving them a goal to work towards, setting
high expectations for our students can help them believe in themselves. However,
since students come from different backgrounds and learn at different rates, we
should be setting two different types of standards/expectations for our
students. The first is the expectations for how our students will behave and
treat one another. Every student in the classroom is part of our classroom
culture, and they should all be held accountable the high standards that are
expected of them. Individually, though, teachers need to understand the prior
knowledge and learning behavior that each student exhibits, and then set
reasonable, high expectations for each child.
Spiegel discusses an experiment that was done in 1964, where
teachers were told that certain students were pre-destined to succeed based on
the results of an IQ test from Harvard. He was lying, of course. These students
were actually just chosen at random from several classes. However, what he found was that over the next
two years, the students who were expect to improve their IQ, actually improved
their IQ significantly more than other students (Spiegel, nd). He realized that
the teachers’ expectations for these students affected how well they did in
class. These students were given more time to answer questions, received more
praise and positive feedback from their teacher, and if they did poorly on
something ,their teacher would sit down with them and figure out how this
aberration occurred.
This is a huge deal because teachers are just human, and
unless we specifically train ourselves not to, it’s quite easy to make snap judgments
about our students from the very first day. But what we don’t realize it that,
more often than not, our students actually conform to our expectations of them.
And so, I think it’s really important for teachers to have high expectations
for all students, and from time to time should self-reflect and try to see if
each student in the class is being given the same opportunity and expectation
to succeed.
A study done by Public Agenda found that the majority of
students believe that schools could and should expect more of them (“The Power”,
nd). This is something that I have found as well. In my school, we have online
homework that the students have to do, but there’s really no punishment if they
don’t do it. What I’ve learned, though, is that if I put a huge emphasis on the
entire class completing it from the first week, and I make a big deal when the
students do complete it, that soon, the majority of the students are actively
checking to make sure everyone is doing it, and they’re even helping each other
if they’re confused or don’t understand something. It’s important for students
to have goals like this – class goals and individual goals. As I’ve said
before, whatever you do and say on the first day of class will set the tone…create
the rules of that specific classroom culture…that the students will live by until
the end of the year. We need to make our goals clear for them, we need to
praise them when they do well and help them when they falter along the way, and
we must make our students believe that they can achieve anything that we expect
of them.
And if we can do that, and still set high expectations for
them, then when people say, “You can do anything…”, well, for students in this
kind of environment, it’s most likely true.
For our group, I thought we did really well. Samiyyah,
Dorothy, and I all seem to have high expectations for our work in this course, and
all three of us organized and planned our Glog and worked well together. We each added certain parts and even changed
some things that others put up, but we trusted one another to do quality work
when we were each working on the Glog.
References:
Spiegel, A. (n.d.).
Teachers' Expectations Can Influence How Students Perform. Retrieved November
16, 2014, from
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/09/18/161159263/teachers-expectations-can-influence-how-students-perform
The Power of High
Expectations: Closing the Gap in Your Classroom. (n.d.). Retrieved November 16,
2014, from http://teachingasleadership.org/sites/default/files/Related-Readings/DCA_Ch2_2011.pdf
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