This blog is Part 3 of 3.
Having looked at building positive relationships and seeing learners as individuals in Part 2, I now want to turn attention to expectations.
Those we have. Those we share. And those we should avoid.
Expectations
The expectations you communicate to learners have a profound effect on how they see you, themselves and their learning.
High expectations should always be maintained – regarding what you think learners capable of achieving and how you expect them to interact with you and with each other.
Outstanding trainee teachers bring a sense of urgency into the classroom with them.
This breaks down into a clear indication, through the lessons they create and the way they conduct themselves, that challenge is for everyone and that everyone, through the application of effort and persistence, can achieve well.
To illustrate how vital high expectations are, consider what a classroom is like in which expectations are low.
In such a place, the teacher is easily satisfied, the learners do not have much to live up to and the whole enterprise of learning is conducted without pace or any sense of purpose.
Being in such a classroom on a regular basis is soporific at best, dispiriting at worst.
You should think about the expectations you have for your learners before starting to teach them.
This way, you can refine and clarify what you want, before communicating this to them from the off.
A good tip is to think about processes, rather than products.
Starting from the premise that you expect all learners to achieve an ‘A’ is generally foolish.
In the vast majority of cases this, or something similar, will not be feasible. Your intentions, while good, may even be counterproductive.
If we look at processes instead, we find ourselves in a more tenable position.
Our premise might be that we expect all learners to work hard from the beginning of the lesson through to the end.
It does not matter what prior achievement learners possess – this is an expectation they will all be able to meet.
The process, in this case, is the application of effort.
Another example is an expectation that no learner gives up when they encounter a problem.
First, they should try to solve it, perhaps by implementing two or three strategies they have previously learned.
Again, this is about a process rather than a product.
Our expectation is not that all learners will solve all problems they encounter.
Rather, it is that they will endeavour to try, by applying their knowledge and understanding to whatever is at issue.
You can communicate your expectations to learners in several ways.
First, you can do so explicitly by telling them what you want, why it matters and how they can achieve it.
Second, you can do so by praising behaviour that meets or exceeds your expectations.
This reinforces the behaviour in question and, if done publicly, serves as a model for other learners to copy.
Third, you can do so implicitly through your body language, the lessons you plan, the questions you ask and the type of learning you facilitate within your classroom.
In addition, you should be aware that, at times, you may need to challenge the expectations learners bring to your lessons, regarding themselves, their learning and their relationship to you.
For example, a learner may consistently denigrate their own abilities through the language they use to talk about themselves and their work.
Picking up on this, rephrasing the learner’s speech, and giving them a new vocabulary with which to speak will help to alter the way in which they think.
Your expectations are conveyed through everything you do in the classroom, as well as through the lessons you plan and, to a slightly lesser extent, the marking you do.
Attending to them and being alive to the importance of continually reinforcing them will bring you success.
In the process, it will help you to lift up your learners, taking them further than might otherwise be the case and giving them the tools to make great progress and to believe in themselves and their own potential.
Labelling and Blank Slates
Our final thoughts prior to concluding deal with a point somewhat smaller than those previously enumerated but nonetheless important.
Labelling is the process through which we attach labels to individuals or groups.
We see it in the media on a regular basis and most of us do it to some degree in our daily lives.
Walking through town we might see a group of young men wearing hoodies and, almost involuntarily, find ourselves labelling them as potentially menacing.
The newspapers may repeatedly preface a politician’s name with an adjective, in the process labelling them and characterising them according to that one epithet.
The danger of labelling is that it attaches a certain status (usually negative) to the group or individual in question.
This, in turn, leads us to see them primarily through that label.
Thus, we fail to see them as individuals.
And, more importantly, we start treating them in accordance with the connotations of the label, rather than in accordance with the reality of our interactions with them.
Imagine a learner who a teacher labels as a bad influence.
This labelling may stem from true experiences.
But those experiences would have been of the learner’s behaviour, not of the learner’s essential self.
In this case, the labelling of the learner makes it much harder for them to alter their behaviour.
The teacher who attributes the label has, in so doing, written off the possibility of change.
What is more, that teacher will then view the learner in question through the prism of the label, reinforcing the power of the attribution and encouraging the learner to live up to it.
For these reasons, it is important to avoid labelling learners.
Instead, focus on the behaviour and what the learner needs to do, if necessary, to alter that behaviour.
A corollary of this approach is that you should try to treat every lesson as a blank slate.
When learners arrive, give them the opportunity to start again.
Avoid labelling them with their prior behaviour as soon as they enter the classroom.
Two caveats attach themselves to this point.
First, a blank slate is not possible if prior behaviour was unacceptable and has not yet been dealt with. In this situation, the primary aim is to deal with the behaviour first to demonstrate that actions have consequences.
Second, I am not arguing here that you should forget what has happened in previous lessons.
Rather, that unless you give learners a chance to behave better than they did previously, making any kind of change will be hard for them to achieve.
And that draws things to a close.
Let me end by giving you some questions and activities to consider, all of which will help you to reflect further on the nature of learners, and to think critically about the children you will be working with during your career.
Questions
- What does it feel like to be a learner? What memories do you have from your own experience of being a learner? How might your experiences differ from those of other people?
- Do we have a moral duty to see each other as individuals? Why?
- To what extent do the expectations you have about yourself limit what you are capable of achieving? Do you accept that expectations play such a significant part in learning?
- What motives underpin your behaviour? Do you accept that motivation is directly connected to the motives or desires people possess? Can a motive or a desire be possessed? Or would another word be more appropriate?
- What were your relationships with teachers like at school? How did these affect you? Why?
Activities
- When observing colleagues during your training, examine how they build and sustain rapport. Make a note of the different techniques you see them using and reflect on whether you would feel comfortable using these yourself.
- Walk around your training school. Focus on observing what expectations are conveyed to learners. Look at displays, look into classrooms, survey the building itself. Having done this, consider what impact spending 30+ hours a week in such an environment might have.
- Read through a daily newspaper and see what labels you can spot. Look for labels attached to individuals and groups. Ask yourself how these labels shape your perception of the people being written about. From here, go on to think about how the process of labelling could affect learners with whom you are familiar – either from having taught them or from having observed them in a lesson.
