The more I interact with the best teachers and leaders in our profession, the more they make this complex thing we call “educating all children” much simpler for the rest of us. If we have learned nothing else after years of research in education, we know that we must listen to, study and repeat the actions of our most effective teachers and leaders in compiling a list of what we call “best practices.” The most overlooked of all such conclusions is this one: All student success begins with setting high expectations.
Success begins with high expectations. Period. No further debate necessary.
There is simply no research anywhere, nor any practical reality, that would suggest that some kids can learn while others cannot. It is absurd to suggest that race, gender or socio-economic status would provide any prerequisite for academic underachievement.
As for those who would point to the generations of poor children in this country who have underperformed their more affluent peers in school, I would agree. I too have read the research. But, you see, it is not poverty that makes children underachieve. It is our low expectations of them in light of their impoverished conditions that undermines their performance, among many other prejudices at play in our society.
In visiting many, many schools that excel in spite of the challenges of serving students from low-SES populations, one thing has become abundantly clear. The teachers and leaders in those schools believe that all children can succeed, and they don’t let race or poverty get in the way. They view their students through an asset lens, and they eschew what has come to be known as “the soft bigotry of low expectations.”
The most poignant example of this was a comment I heard recently from a fellow educator. “Yes, I understand that your socks are dirty. But just because you have dirty socks doesn’t mean you can’t learn.” She went on to say other things like: You can read well. You can do math. You are going to succeed in spite of the obstacles in your life. You absolutely can get to school on time, even if you are required to get you and your siblings dressed in the morning. We will work with you. We believe in you. You are smart. You have a future.
Don’t judge students based upon their appearance. Period. No further debate necessary.
As I reflect on my own school experience, I can assure you that the only reason that I didn’t make better grades in school was because I didn’t work hard at it, because no one pushed me to be great. I own that. I certainly had many obstacles to overcome, but I did not have any intellectual deficits simply because I lived in a single-parent household or because my dad (though doing his best to raise my brother and me) never pushed me to do my homework.
The day I graduated from high school, I had never read a book. I had never been to a museum. I had never been to a college campus, nor even considered such a thing.
In the world I grew up in, I knew how to work, how to buy my own car and how to fix it myself, how to clean my room, with the bedspread tucked neatly beneath the pillows and the corners of the sheets folded and creased with such precision as to meet my dad’s inspection. I knew how to dust and vacuum on Saturday mornings, how to eat vegetables from a can, and heat up a frozen pizza in the microwave. I knew how to bait a hook, how to survive a fist-fight, and how to change up my school clothes so that others would not notice how few I had. I also knew how to speak to adults, quite probably in the same manner that I learned to say “thank you” on Christmas morning when I got a new pair of socks or pajamas in a way that sounded like I was genuinely grateful to have them.
No, we were not poor or even under-privileged. We had much more than many, many others that I knew. We were not poor. We were just typical.
In light of full disclosure, let me be clear that this is not a blog site where I write about myself very often. I only do so now because my upbringing and my work in the education industry sometimes collide in poetic ways that are so poignant for me that they are hard to articulate.
I know now that many of my teachers did not hold me to the same high standards they did for the other kids, the ones who were going to college. I know that now. I am not at all bitter about it, just reflective.
I have spent most of my adult life as an English teacher, school leader, researcher and writer. When I graduated from high school, I had never read a book. Now, it just might be that I have read them all. I had never been on a college campus, and now I have degrees from several of them.
So let us give our best teachers and leaders some credit because they just might be onto something.
Maybe the kid with the dirty socks really can learn. Maybe that student isn’t even behind his peers. Maybe his expectations of himself are not so low, in so much that our expectations of him very much are.
It is not really something that I am bitter about. I’m just being reflective.
By the way, the year I graduated from high school, I had never been to a museum.
Now, I have been to the Louvre.
