Classroom Changes: How to Raise Expectations in Your Classroom


“You can’t implement Ruby Payne’s and Jawanza Kunjufu’s theories on culture Monday through Friday from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm and be a racist in the evenings, weekends, and summers. At best, you may be able to pretend that color doesn’t matter” (Kunjufu, 2006, pg. 5).


            While the government and other agencies have attempted to make laws to help maintain high expectations, the kind of widespread change which is needed may take many trial and errors and decades to achieve. This means teachers need to find a way to reflect on their own practices to create immediate changes in their own classrooms. Teachers must start by raising expectations in their own classrooms and advocating for change in the educational practices which prevent many students from having ample opportunities to succeed. This blog will focus on the ways teachers can change their practices and teaching methods to raise expectation for all students in the classroom.

To create change in their classrooms, teachers must start by reflecting own their identity, beliefs, and practices to determine if they are teaching effectively and how their identity and implicit biases may be shaping their expectations for certain students.

By consciously examining and assessing our present situation from the perspective of our past experiences, we can take an active role in shaping our professional growth. Being reflective enables us to become empowered and informed decision-makers as well as independent learners (Binks, Smith, Smith, & Joshi, 2009, pg. 142)

Teachers can use written narratives and storytelling as a way to reflect by creating and sharing stories about their experiences. By sharing these stories, teachers then have an opportunity to think critically about their practices and identity and see if they are effective. Once teachers become aware of their biases or ineffective teaching practices, they can then make the conscious effort to counteract them by replacing their false biases with correct information or choosing to change their practices.

            Lisa Delpit offers some suggestions on how to most effectively teach in urban schools were the student demographics are mostly composed of minority and low-income students.  I would like to highlight a few which I believe could really help teachers raise the expectations for their students. Teachers must start with rule 1 and 2. They have to recognize what they do matters for the students and these students are capable of learning difficult material. They must value themselves and their students. Teachers can also use rule 3 to raise expectations by creating activities which do more than ask student to regurgitate or simply recall information. Students need experience with critical thinking and problem-solving skills for the real world, but sadly, many students in minority and low-income schools often are excepted to sit and complete worksheets all day. Teachers believe this is a way to maintain control of their classroom, but they are simply depriving students of the opportunity to engage in authentic learning experiences and build the skills they need to be successful.

Rule 6, “use familiar metaphors and experiences from the children’s world to connect what students already know to school-taught knowledge,” can be achieved using culturally relevant teaching (Delpit, 2012, pg. xix).  Cultural relevant teaching operates off of the belief that teachers must build relationships with their students to tailor their teaching practices and activities to be relevant to the lives of the students they are teaching. These teaching methods function off of the belief that the race, culture, and background of students do matter. They should not be ignored in favor of treating students all “the same.” Instead, teachers need to capitalize off of the backgrounds and experiences of their students to make sure they are teaching in a way which is meaningful and important to those specific children. When teachers make content meaningful, students are more motivated and more engaged in lessons. This will allow teachers to teach more difficult and higher-level material. In her Ted talk, Jessica Lander, discusses how she was able to teach Shakespeare and Old English to her sixth graders at a Boston public school. These students did not have experience with this difficult of material, because the expectations set were them were very low. Many of the students spoke English as a second language, read at low levels, and had behavioral and learning disabilities. Lander was able to teach them Macbeth by having the students adapt the play from the original setting to the Boston housing projects. She was able to teach them Old English by having them translate it into modern text messages (Lander, 2015). Lander set very high expectations for these students, but she was able to support their efforts and give them experience with authentic success by making the projects fun, interesting, and relatable. Many people believe culturally relevant teaching means teachers are lowering standards for students, but “culturally relevant teaching isn’t about lowering those ‘high expectations.’ It’s about providing strong supports by approaching effective instruction through a cultural lens” (Irvine, 2009). Culturally-relevant teaching is a way for students to feel supported and appreciated in their classrooms. This allows for teachers to raise expectations because students who are previous ignored or asked to conform to the “norm,” feel their culture, views, and ideas are valued.

            When teacher make the conscious effort to change teaching practices in a way which will raise expectations for every student, they are setting their students for a higher possibility of success. Students are able to learn more material and may tailor their actions to meet the expectations set for them. By capitalizing on the research about phenomenons like the self-fulfilling prophecy and using reflection to improve teaching practices in a way which makes them more relevant for students, teachers can raise expectations to hopefully create more equitable learning opportunities for all students.

References

Binks, E., Smith, D. L., Smith, L. J., & Joshi, R. M. (2009). Tell me your story: A reflection strategy for preservice teachers. Teacher Education Quarterly, 36(4), 141–156. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.ucs.louisiana.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,cookie,uid,url&db=eric&AN=EJ870219&site=eds-live


Delpit, L. (2012). Multiplication is for White people: Raising expectations for other peoples’ children. New York: The New Press.


Irvine, J. J. (2009). Relevant: Beyond the basics. Teaching Tolerance, (36). Retrieved from
https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/fall-2009/relevant-beyond-the-basics

Landers, J. [TEDx Talks]. (2015, February 10). Rising to high expectations [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Elav44kQYUo&app=desktop
Kunjufu, J. (2006). An African Centered Response to Ruby Payne’s Poverty Theory (Vol. 1st ed). Chicago, Ill: Independent Publishers Group. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.ucs.louisiana.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,cookie,uid,url&db=nlebk&AN=291196&site=eds-live


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