Success in School Starts with High Expectations

 If you're a teacher, you've heard it. "When am I ever going to use this?" Or, "I am never going to use this!" The older the kids you teach, the more I think you hear it. I teach mostly 11th and 12th graders and I know I hear it plenty. 

The truth is very few kids think they're ever going to need to know that Washington crossed the Delaware, the difference between an indirect and a direct object, the acceleration constant due to gravity, or the Pythagorean Theorem. Not all complain, but many do. Every time you try to teach them something!

I'm sure I was probably just like them at their age, convinced that nothing I was learning in school would be useful after graduation. Boy was I wrong!

When we built our chicken house, I staked out the 650 foot long pad on my own. When the dozer guy came out he couldn't believe how accurate it was. That was the geometry I learned in high school, because I hadn't been to college at the time. Figuring material for fencing, plumbing, electrical work, and building projects made extensive use of the algebra I learned in school. I'm a pretty political guy and constantly use the history I learned in debates with others who disagree with me. I'm using the English to write this, but it's come in handy plenty of other times. Breeding cattle utilized the Biology from my sophomore year. 

So many things I thought I'd never use came in handy plenty of times in the nearly four decades since I graduated high school. But they only came in handy because I learned them. What if I hadn't learned them in high school? Would I be where I'm at now? Would I have achieved what I've achieved? I think the answer is likely not. 

How is it that I came to learn these things, even though I didn't want to and didn't think I needed to? I'll tell you how!

Expectations!

Thank God my parents EXPECTED me to learn! They didn't tell me there was no point in learning it. They never told me, "I never did this in school and I turned out fine." They never gave me a choice not to learn it. They just EXPECTED me to do my best to learn what my teachers taught me. That was it. There was no alternative. 

And what about those teachers? 

I'm thankful too that my teachers didn't just write me off because I didn't think what they were teaching was important. I'm thankful those teachers EXPECTED me to learn! They didn't give me an option either. There was no, "this is hard and maybe you just weren't cut out for it." My teachers had high expectations of kids in their class. If we didn't meet them, our grades reflected it. If we wanted high grades, we had to roll up our sleeves, do the work, and learn the material. 

High expectations don't automatically translate to learning. The kids have to do their part too, and it really helps if parents are onboard. But it starts there. 

Because, if educators set the bar low, most kids are going to reach just high enough to get over it. Even those capable of reaching higher. We educators must have high expectations and stick to them. 

Our students deserve that.