Expectations

One of the most frequent refrains we hear from school reformers, from school administrators, and from school teachers themselves is that educators need to have high expectations for their students. The logic goes that students will only achieve at a high level if they are held to the highest of expectations. Accordingly, any classroom you can find will have some measure of academic, behavioral, and emotional expectations embedded in day-today practice. While I do agree that educators must hold high expectations for their students, I am beginning to discover that this position might be incomplete.

It is incomplete because it assumes a teacher-centered philosophy instead of a student-centered one. In our educations programs, we newbie teachers are drilled and drilled to provide a classicly Dewey-inspried, "student-centered" classroom. However, in practice (and through our education instruction), this "student-centered" model is not actually student-centered. It is teacher-centered.

When we talk about true student-centric classrooms, we are implying that students have a certain level of autonomy and authority for their own learning. A teacher-centric classroom, then, is one in which the sole authority and autonomy rests with the teacher.

When it comes to expectations, the goal of holding students to higher expectations is entirely teacher-centered. It wrests any authority from the students and places it in the hands of the teacher. It is the teacher saying to the students what is expected. A student-centered classroom, on the other hand, would focus on the teacher working with the students to set classroom and individual expectations.

School culture is generally one of top-down authority, with students at the bottom. Learning is done to students as opposed to with students. No wonder so many students don't learn.

Perhaps the biggest mistake we can make as educators is to forget what it is like to be a student. We've all been students. We've all had certain classess we loved and certain classes we hated. The former were the ones where we felt empowered in our learning. The latter were those that left us powerless. So why do we follow these same authoritarian procedures when we take over a class?

We should always be striving to place ourselves in our students' shoes. So when it comes to expectations, we have not only ours for the class, but we also have our students' expectations. Working with students to compromise these expectations creates a true student-centered atmosphere.

Here, then, is a short clip I ran across on reddit that covers the expectations students have for their education: