iris.broudy at SDH.state.ma.us wrote:


>I need to keep reminding

>myself about the realities of the student population and to lower my

>expectations. 

>


It isn't so much about lowering your expectations. Rather, enter into 
your relationship with a student with no expectations and appreciate 
whatever outcomes may rise out of that relationship. The student will 
begin to form his or her own expectations, which are OK.

In public K-12 education, it is a mantra taught to all beginning 
teachers: you must have high expectations for your students and they 
will rise to meet them. Research has been designed to show that this is 
indeed the case. It is the paradigm in public education, and it is a 
line of thinking that is fundamentally flawed, in my opinion. The 
problems with expectations are that students usually only work to meet 
the expectations and not go any further. They are the foundation for the 
measurement of success and failure in schools. They create a system in 
which students work (or not) to try to meet the expectations of their 
teachers and not for the intrinsic benefits of learning for its own 
sake. One very unfortunate outcome of this is the student's education 
becomes directed others and not the by the student. It is 
teacher-centered, not student-centered. When a student fails to meet the 
teacher's expectations, it is said the student did not learn, which is 
very clearly not the case. In extreme situations, failure to learn has a 
name: learning disability. As I'm sure you've noticed in corrections 
education, these are our guys. They come from a lifetime of failure to 
meet teachers' expectations.

In a no-expectations paradigm, the teacher would not attempt to define a 
set of learning objectives and decide whether they had been met. 
Instead, the teacher would try to identify what learning did occur and 
see how it fits with the school's overall curriculum. Immediately, there 
is no such thing as failure in this system. There is only learning. It 
progresses according to the student's expectations of him- or herself. 
If a teacher can work in this setting, all learning is valued. There 
would not be disappointment if it doesn't progress the way the teacher 
would like it to. Oops. That would mean there is a teacher-expectation.

What I've found K-12 teachers look at me like I come from another planet 
if I start talking to them about trying to not have expectations for 
their students. The mindset of having high expectations is so ingrained, 
so supported by research, and so much a part of our educational 
tradition that it is extremely difficult to break out. Still there are 
hints of it in the traditions of progressive education, of the 
Summerhill School in England, and of the Sudbury Valley School in MA. I 
also know from my own experience, it works. Kids who were completely 
turned off by their past experiences get so pumped they will move 
mountains to get their diplomas . It begins with doing away with teacher 
expectations and allowing the student to begin to form them for him- or 
herself.

I apologize for the long winded treatise, but expectations are a 
hot-button item for me, as I'm sure you have guessed.

Tom