My student teaching took place in three classes of honors sophomores. As to be expected, not all of these students came from the same background, nor were they at the same ability level, even though it was a high level class. Where some teachers might expect a little less of the students who do not usually achieve as high as some of the other students, I set my expectations high for each and every student.
When grading papers, I did not think to myself, "Well is this good in terms of what this student is capable of?" I simply looked at them objectively and decided if a paper was good or not quite as good. When it comes down to it, rewarding a student for work that is not as great as it could be is not helping that student. It is rather creating the view in the student that he or she is doing a good enough job by doing less than he or she could do. What would help that student, on the other hand, would be a teacher who has high expectations of all of his or her students so that all students must work hard to reach those standards.
I think this applies to social justice because people who are not doing as well as others should not be pitied, nor should they be ignored. They should be inspired to do better. If I had a class of lower achieving students, I would set my expectations higher than what I think, or rather what they think, that they are capable of achieving under normal circumstances. A student who is attempting to reach high expectations will achieve higher than a student who is trying to reach low expectations always.
Author:
Jill Kingsland
Last modified:
6/19/2005 1:23 PM (EDT)
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