An individual student’s success is highly dependent on teacher expectations for that student.

In my ‘Classroom Learning Environment’ class, we learned that teachers should do everything possible to ignore preconceptions about their students and give them each a “clean slate” when they enter the classroom. Before school had even started, my mentor teacher and I were given information from the students’ previous teacher about their behaviors and what we should expect. I admit that it was difficult to refrain from making prior judgments about the students as I read through these, and I quickly realized how easy it is to hold expectations for students. As I spent more time in the classroom, however, I began to notice that challenging students to work a little bit above their comfort level usually motivates them to try harder. That is, holding higher expectations for students will help them to have a higher level of achievement.

My most interesting experience with this tactic was when I began to work one-on-one with a student who is considered low ability in both math and language arts and who has had some major behavior problems in the classroom. The student had struggled in the past to complete the weekly journal assignment because he claimed he “couldn’t do it.” For a while, all of the teachers in the classroom excused his work and allowed him to write only one sentence while everyone else in the class was expected to write three. I gave the student a little extra attention and told him that he had to write three sentences to his best possible ability. Not only did he successfully complete the task, he also proclaimed, “I’m learning!” after I gave him praise for his accomplishment. Holding him accountable for his work demonstrated that I had higher expectations for him and that he needed to work harder to achieve the goals that I set. In summary, he was successful because I expected him to be.