Mastery is a progressive process. You don’t get good at teaching or at anything else right away. Just try to get a little better every day and over time, you’ll be good. Very good.
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The fourth and final myth about high expectations is the High Standards Myth. This myth leads some to equate high standards with high expectations. They argue that if you raise the standards, you will raise teachers’ expectations. Thus, they judge whether a teacher has high expectations for her students by how high her standards are. But […]
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The third myth is the attribution myth. The attribution myth has to do with cause and effect and it happens when we attribute the effect of student behavior to the wrong cause. Sometimes, we wrongly explain a students’ motivation or behavior. Other times, we over simplify a cause by omitting steps or ignoring other factors […]
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The second myth about high expectations that plague many educators is the “Fake it before you make it” myth. Those who believe this myth argue that you can act your way into developing high expectations for students. They encourage teachers to pretend that they have high expectations for students by using high expectancy behaviors such […]
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The largest myth about expectations is the Pygmalion myth. It is based on the ancient Greek myth by Ovid about a sculptor named Pygmalion who fell in love with one of his statues. He treated the statue as if it were a real woman – buying it flowers, calling it any manner of endearments, and […]
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I mean, not many people will argue with the idea that “all children can learn.” And yet… Do you ever secretly worry sometimes that maybe there are some students who can’t learn or at least can’t succeed at high levels? Have you ever met a student in whom it was difficult to believe? I bet if we’re honest, we’ve […]
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I want to tell you a story about two teachers. Both were my professors my first semester in graduate school. Both teachers were brilliant researchers and writers, both were highly engaging teachers, and both were likable human beings. And, I was failing both of their classes. It wasn’t that I wasn’t trying. I worked really hard, attended class, […]
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I have sat through my share of really bad PD. In fact, I got really good at being able to tell whether a workshop was going to be useful within the first 5 minutes and if I determined that I wasn’t going to get anything out of the workshop, I would quickly tune out. I […]
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All of us can use a little advice. But there is a lot of bad advice out there. Below are the top 5 worst pieces of advice given to teachers we’ve heard. Bad Advice # 1: You Need a Teaching Make-Over. Whenever you struggle in one area of your teaching, it is tempting to attempt a […]
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