Nicely put Katrina!! I couldn't agree more.   Robin S.

-----Original Message-----
From: Katrina Hinson <khinson at future-gate.com>
To: woodsnh at isp.com; focusonbasics at nifl.gov; b.garner4 at verizon.net
Sent: Fri, 10 Mar 2006 20:25:17 +0100
Subject: Re: [FocusOnBasics] high expectations, with radar out...

I  think one of the things to consider is that often adult students 
have had
very little success in school before coming to us and that one of the 
first
things they need to know is that someone believes in them - believes 
he/she can
be successful etc.  I agree that our students expectations of 
themselves is very
important - at the same time, some of them don't even know where to 
begin to
create that expectation and they can learn to have their own personal
expectations from having teachers that believe in them and help them 
make
connections for themselves to find their own success. For some adult 
students,
their self esteem has been so badly damaged by encountering people who 
expect
nothing or who assume that they are incapable of learning that the 
student has
learned to internalize that as "I'm stupid" or "I can't learn" when in
actuality, all they really needed was a teacher that knew how to put a 
student
on the right path.

Expectations need to work both ways. The student needs to have 
expectations for
him or herself; the teacher also needs to expect the student to be able 
to
achieve and to find ways to encourage and nurture that success.

Regards
Katrina Hinson


>>> woodsnh at isp.com  >>>

Barbara Garner wrote:
 > The point I'm trying to make is that while having high expectations,
 > we need to be aware of the possible "blind spots" we may have to
 > certain students' learning needs.

I believe that having high expectations does, in fact, result in high
performance for many students because many students will work extremely
hard to please the people around them.  It's the students for whom it
does not work well that concern me and there are many of them.

I get concerned about who forms the expectations. When we say teachers
should have high expectations for their students, I take that to mean I
should expect my student to perform well at the challenges I provide. 
He
or she performs at the level I expect. Personally I see that as me 
being
rather arrogant because I presume to know more about what my student
needs to know than my student does.

A traditional American Indian view is that we should not have
expectations for others, that "expect" and "respect" are diametrically
opposed. Perhaps this helps explain why so many American Indian 
children
do poorly in our modern school systems and they drop out at extremely
high rates.

A different twist to this topic is students' high expectations of
themselves. This is far more important and more healthy in my view. I
feel I can encourage students to develop their own high expectations 
and
experience very positive results, but it shifts the emphasis from
teacher to student.

So often in the field of education we hear about the need to make
learning student-centered instead of teacher-centered. I believe deeply
that this begins with the question, who holds the expectations?

 Tom Woods

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