Creating a Culture of High Expectations

any who wish to teach in the cities don't expect all the battles, the refusal to learn, the relentless testing of teachers' wills. The temptation is to believe we can make things better with kind words and understanding. Trouble is, this often isn't what our students need, and we pay the price for being sympathetic when we should have been tough.

remember a child who stood in my room and laughed because his distraught father, at a loss over what to do about the boy's behavior, had broken into tears as we spoke. Where do you begin with a situation like this? Every day after that I prepared the child's work for him to complete in the office; he was not coming into my room. The other students watched, wide-eyed. After nearly three weeks, he showed up with a pencil and his books and never again acted out in my class. As I told him, "I don't care what goes on anywhere else, but in here, this is the way it works." Students in my class know that if they won't do the work or want to fool around, then there's the door - because I am going to take care of my agenda, no matter what they want to do.

ome might say this is too authoritarian, not sensitive enough to what's going on in students' lives. Living in the community and seeing where these students come from, I know that school is the most stable environment many of them have. A part of them is hungry for structure. They become as overwhelmed as we do when a class gets out of control. But they want us to be the ones to take that control. The simple fact is that they won't give it to us if they don't think they have to.

want and expect my students to learn all about math, the subject I teach. But what I also need to teach them is a sense of accountability. There will always be an excuse for why they didn't do their homework or bring their binder or why they need to go to the bathroom at the beginning of class. If I accept these, I need to ask myself: Will the rest of the world be just as eager to let them off the hook?

hen I talk about expectations with my students, they need to know it's not about a battle with me or a score on a math test; it's about the rest of their lives. Every little piece is a stepping stone to where they are going. Where will that turn out to be? The reality is that their options tomorrow will be determined by what they can take from school today.

ike it or not, they are taking everything I can give them.

Additional Resources

Meier, D. The Power of Their Ideas: Lessons for America from a Small School in Harlem. (1995). Boston: Beacon Press.

A former kindergarten teacher, the author is also founder of the highly successful Central Park East Schools in East Harlem. The CPE schools follow in the academically rigorous, content-rich tradition of private schools, which few believed to be appropriate for public education. Her approach is both realistic and hopeful.

Monroe, L. Nothing's Impossible: Leadership Lessons from Inside and Outside the Classroom. (1997). New York: Perseus Books.

Through the leadership method she outlines here, Monroe has helped many educators create high-achieving schools. Frederick Douglas Academy, the public, college-preparatory school she founded in Harlem, was designed to be a place of order and predictablility, a place where children, especially boys, could learn that it was OK to be smart.

Wilson, B., and Dickson Corbett, H. Listening to Urban Kids: School Reform and the Teachers They Want. (2001). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

According to the many student voices in this book, urban students want teachers who "stay on them" to complete their work, maintain orderly classrooms, give them extra help to succeed, and make their work relevant. Essentially, students liked teachers who adhered to a "no-excuses" policy--making it clear that there was no reason a child could not complete an assignment and no reason a teacher would give up on a student.

Bruns, Jerome H. They Can but They Don't: Helping Students Overcome Work Inhibition. (1992). New York: Viking Penguin.

This book helps teachers distinguish between work inhibition and intellectual impairment and to separate the children's failure to perform from the expectations of their parents and teachers. The author recognizes teachers' sense of defeat and frustration and outlines strategies to help children become self-motivated learners.

Hooks, Bell. Teaching to Transgress. (1994). New York: Routledge.

Writer and teacher Bell Hooks writes about education as a practice of freedom, teaching students to transgress against racial, sexual, and class boundaries. The book, which tells the story of one teacher's struggle to make a classroom work, also explores what to do about teachers who do not want to teach and students who do not want to learn.

Kidder, T. Among Schoolchildren. (1989). Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.

A realistic account of American education, this now classic book tells the story of one urban classroom and the teacher, Mrs. Zajac, famous for her discipline but critical in the growth of her students.

Kohl, Herbert. I Won't Learn from You! The Role of Assent in Learning. (1991). Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions.

The author looks at the refusal of many students to learn what we tell them to learn and argues that authentic learning must be voluntary.