Diversity in Education-July 23rd

Low Expectations

Part of my teaching philosophy that I pride myself on is my high expectations. I have had experiences in my student teaching this year with teachers that have low expectations for their students, either all of them or just a few. And it's really discouraging for the educator, as well as the students, because neither feels like a success. For my capstone we are studying what causes students to be apathetic or resistant to learning, and how we can combat that. One thing that has come up over and over is that when students are expected to fail, they do. And if you expect the child to be successful, then they are more likely to do so.

Unfortunately, the problem comes down to determining what those 'high expectations' are. Not each student has the ability/capability/opportunity to perform at the same level as every other student. Creating an individualized goal or expectation for each student seems really time consuming, but when we are lowering our expectations for some students, and not others, we are really doing that same thing. What we need to do is have high, tangible, achievable goals for each child based on their background, perceived ability and past, and then hold them to that constant improvement, and help them to devise goals for themselves that they can work towards. By creating a system of indvidualized goals, rather then relying on a graded point or average system, you can avoid the discouraging low expectations, and the lack of motivation that accompanies it.

Figting vainly the old ennui...

The end of the year is rough. I feel like I've reached a point with my students, especially in math, where they don't care about anything. Unlike a month or two ago, I can't draw them into a lesson by making it about something relevant, telling a clever story, or including a fun activity. They don't care about those things either. Especially not with this lat ditch effort to cover percents. There are a few kids, who if you challenge them, will get into something. I had three students working at the front of the board on solving problems involving percents that they actually had to reason to solve, not just plug things in, and they were into it, and they were working together. The rest of the class was really chaotic. I had to ask one student to sit back down in her seat three or four times. Part of the difficulty was that all of the students were in different places in their work. We were working through a packet on percents, and some students were done the first day, while others were struggling. So those that finished, I had to find more things for them to do. But those who were working, and did have things to focus on weren't. They were confused, and not necessarily paying attention, I was repeating myself over and over again.

This sort of end of the year ennui seems unavoidable. Unless you have something that students are intrinsically motivated in, which some classes, by their nature more frequently have those types of subjects (such as the Musical, which performs in two weeks). So what's a teacher to do. My cooperating teacher recommends sticking to work sheets. Keep them busy, with things that engaged the lower learning levels. Higher order thinking isn't accessible for them at this point.

Obviously it depends on the class. My 8th period didn't have nearly so much trouble focusing as my 4th period, but they are learning to add and subtract negative numbers, not exactly a task requiring analytical thinking.

So the question is, are students at a total loss for deep thought and analytical thinking this near the end of the school year?