The Teacher is the Heart
There is a guy from North Carolina who once said, “You must expect great things of yourself before you can do them.” Besides playing basketball, creating iconic shoes, and being in the movie Space Jam, he basically exemplifies the growth mindset that we want to establish in our classrooms and our schools.
Let’s take this quote and zoom into our schools…
In classrooms, I see kids doing kid things. These can include (but are not limited to) talking while teachers talk, throwing things at classmates, getting off task, losing their stuff, getting distracted, being in the wrong place, forgetting to line up, dilly-dallying in the cafeteria, or leaving a trail of papers and pencils everywhere they go. If you have kids in your school, you will have these behaviors.
I also hear you – the teacher. I hear teachers talking about these behaviors as if they are new:
“Can you believe they were talking while I was talking?”
“And she wasn’t even listening.”
“He was completely in the wrong seat.”
“She struggles with reading.”
“Everyone lined up but her!”
“I found his papers in front of his locker.”
“He doesn’t know basic math.”
“And to top it off, they didn’t have anything to write with.”
Yep. This all sounds about right. It’s school. Even the best schools have issues that creep in and cause interruptions and challenges to instruction.
The encouraging news here is that YOU matter more to student achievement than any other aspect of schooling.
Yes. YOU.
Cue Michael Jordan’s quote again:
You must expect great things of yourself before you can do them.
I used to think this was just another random office quote, but after years of watching teachers teach, it is undoubtedly true.
While the kids do kid things, you need to do your effective teacher things. You see, you are the very heart of your classroom. If you expect yourself to be ineffective, that will happen.
If you expect yourself to be effective, that will also happen.
You must expect great things of yourself before you can do them.
In a recent conversation with a new teacher, I realized she was discounting her ability to get students to listen to the instructions. She kept telling me the kids were talking over her. They won’t listen, they won’t sit down, they won’t follow instructions. She was a mix of emotions and unable to problem solve.
We worked together to think about some options for explicitly teaching the students how to listen in her context, ways she could comfortably give feedback, and things to look for so she would know if her new approach was working.
She wasn’t trying to throw in the towel; she just didn’t realize the power she was holding just by being in the role of teacher.
You must expect great things of yourself before you can do them.
I notice this in schools a lot. We get overwhelmed and instead of realizing we are able to actually make the change, we just duck and run. Or whine and complain.
And in our whining and complaining, we don’t expect ourselves to be able to make impact, so we don’t.
But if we reverse that, we can raise expectations of our own worth in each classroom. We can envision what we want from students, even when they are doing the “kid things.”
So not only does that guy from NC know about basketball, shoes, movies, (and a little baseball), he actually provides some good advice in our classrooms.
Expecting great things from our students involves expecting great things from ourselves, first.
–Alice
P.S. If you want to learn more about the effects of teacher efficacy, go here and here to learn about the research. If you want help applying these ideas click here.