Creating Confidence and Setting Expectations

After I graduated college and had joined the work force for a bit, I realized something about myself as a worker and consequently as a student.  I always did what was expected.  As a youngster I got stellar grades and took pride in my report card.  As Beers (2003) puts it, “I love to visit first-grade classrooms. The energy there is contagious. In first grade, students don’t raise their hands to answer questions; instead, they shoot their hands into the air, wave them wildly back and forth, stand on one leg as they lean their bodies across their desks, and snap their fingers while blurting out either, “Miss! Miss! Miss!” or “I know! I know! I know!”” (p. 258-259)  That was me.  It was at some point in high school however, probably around the time when activities outside of school started to seem a lot more interesting than what was happening in the classroom, that I realized I could put a very minimal amount of effort into my school work and still pull at least a B in every class.  B’s were totally acceptable in my family, and in most circles a B student is a “good student”.  For the rest of high school and college, I was a B student (with a few exceptions in classes I absolutely loved, of course).  As an assistant at a small but extremely busy non-profit organization in DC, the expectations were high.  I was expected to do a great deal of juggling, and essentially teach myself anything I had not done before.  I was pushing myself, and I was excelling!  It made me think back on my college years and why I had not gotten more A’s.  In retrospect, it was clearly possible; the expectations, either internal or external, just weren’t there. 

            In Chapter 13 of When Kids Can’t Read, Kylene Beers discusses the importance of creating confidence and setting expectation for our students.  Just as I was in high school, adolescents are acutely aware of what is expected of them, and this directly affects their work ethic and behavior.  Beers (2003) says “You’re fooling yourself if you think middle and high school students don’t know when we’ve dumbed down the curriculum” (p. 261).  Low expectations hurt both confidence and motivation.  The question is, how do you maintain high expectations while creating accessible lesson plans that will boost confidence and participation?  It’s a tricky balance, but Beers clarifies that high expectations do not mean we should be giving students work that is far beyond their ability and expect that they figure it out.  Setting high expectations means finding ways to scaffold the work so that students have an opportunity to reach their own highest potential.  Beers gives the example of an eighth-grade class that asked why they couldn’t read the same books as the advanced language arts class.  Their teacher agreed to read Huckleberry Finn with them, warning that it would be difficult and that she expected them to work hard.  In turn, the teacher worked hard to make the text more accessible.  Beers (2003) said “Students read some aloud in paired reading; the teacher read aloud other chapters. Some students with word recognition problems listened to parts of it on tape” (p. 262).  After they finished the book, the students wanted to take the same test as the advanced class.  The only reasonable explanation I can think of for students wanting a more difficult test, is that they felt confidence and a sense of pride; confidence in their work and pride in their ability to meet such high expectations.  

 Reference List:

Beers, K. (2003). When Kids Can't Read: What Teachers Can Do. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.