Old Court Middle Increasing Student Expectations Gerald Oehler

Old Court Middle Increasing Student Expectations Gerald Oehler One Team. One Goal. Unlimited Success

Old Court Middle Outcomes • By the end of the session participants will learn strategies to increase student expectations in the classroom One Team. One Goal. Unlimited Success

Old Court Middle “Students achieve more when they believe their teachers expect that they will achieve at a high level. ” And Still they Rise: Practical Advice for Increasing African American Enrollments in Higher Education, Texeria and Merchant, 2002 We as teachers need to think about what we believe our students can achieve. When we as teachers believe in our students and can show them that we have high expectations of them, students will start to achieve more, then we can start moving our students and the school in the right direction One Team. One Goal. Unlimited Success

Power of Belief [Because of] race, location, we should lower our expectations… Power of Expectations: Closing the Gap in your classroom When people label students or a school, and then they lower the expectations of the students and school. Then people start to believe that students are going to perform a certain way, teachers then teach less challenging lessons because of a label. We need to look at ourselves as teachers and make sure that we are not labeling our students, or the school. Do not let the labels others have placed on us or our students, define who we are.

Old Court Middle High Expectations for Whom? • High Expectations for whom? – Its not what we say, but what we do Even the worst teachers have high expectations for students. They expect students to be engaged no matter what. The key variable is what teachers expect of themselves. Great teachers have high expectations of students, but even higher expectations of themselves. What Great Teachers do Differently , Todd Whitaker, pg 34 One Team. One Goal. Unlimited Success

Old Court Middle High Expectations for Whom? • High Expectations for whom? – Its not what we say, but what we do As Whitaker has pointed out, high expectations start with teachers. If teachers are not doing everything that they can do to help the students succeed, are we really showing that we have high expectations, or just saying they have high expectations? One Team. One Goal. Unlimited Success

Which statement reflects high expectations? A. Student does not turn in homework, teacher gives the student a zero on the assignment. B. Teacher reads a primary source to the students and tells them what it means C. Students are told to read a section in a book, define the terms, and answer the questions at the end of the section D. Students read a primary source and determine the relationship among Native Americans and European colonists

Which statement reflects high expectations? D. Students read a primary source and determine the relationship among Native Americans and European colonists This shows the teacher believes the students can do this work, they are not telling the students what the primary source states, having the students work through the activity. More importantly, the students are “doing the work. ”

Old Court Middle Creating a Culture of High Expectations Ø No opt out Ø Get the students to provide an answer, even if it is just repeating what another student said Ø 100% Correct Ø Do not accept partially correct answers, or fill in the gaps Ø Give me more Ø Ø Another example or add on Justify One Team. One Goal. Unlimited Success

Old Court Middle Creating a Culture of High Expectations Ø Challenge Ø A problem or solution Ø Opinion Ø Allow the students to share opinions Ø Challenge others opinions (attack ideas, not people) Ø Competition Ø Competing against each other Ø Find the answer the fastest Ø highest score on the test Ø board game reviews Ø Jeopardy One Team. One Goal. Unlimited Success

Old Court Middle Creating a Culture of High Expectations Ø Motivation Ø Connect it to the students life Ø Student interest Ø something happening in the community, in the world Ø Purposeful movement One Team. One Goal. Unlimited Success

Old Court Middle Creating a Culture of High Expectations Ø Choices Ø Participation/Everyone involved • White boards • Pinch cards Ø Core Essential Questions One Team. One Goal. Unlimited Success

Creating a Culture of High Expectations What are three things you can do to increase student expectations?