Supporting High Expectations

As educators, we’ve known since the 1960s about the Pygmalion effect: that when teachers have high expectations of students they perform better. “High expectations" has become a cornerstone of contemporary inclusive education. It requires schools and teachers to explicitly communicate rigorous standards and believe that every student is capable of meeting them. But, having high expectations in the classroom is one thing. Truly believing that all students can achieve them is another. And, ensuring our practice gives all students what they need to rise to the challenge is something else. When we have such incredible diversity in our classrooms, how do we ensure that all students are really able to meet high expectations? 

To realize it requires intentional actions. It requires that, alongside high expectations, high levels of support are firmly in place. High levels of support is rooted in a culture that prioritizes relationships and inclusion, where students feel they truly belong within a caring community, and where educators have both the will and the skill to support students in meeting high expectations. At the International School of Uganda, we have embraced opportunities to learn alongside numerous experts over the past few years and we are realizing the “how” of supporting high expectations. 

Inclusion experts helped us to re-think systems – how we work together as educators, how we group students, and how we design learning spaces. This structural re-design increased our access to one another’s strengths and expertise and collective efficacy, increased learner agency, and enabled us to design for learning with more flexibility and fluidity. As well, we strengthened our assessments and systems for identification and access to supplementary support, interventions, and more individualized and personalized practice. Strong relationships and assessment practices allowed us to get to know our learners better and stay responsive in our design of learning. 

Recently, we have been reminded of the importance of having a strong Tier One curriculum for both academics and social-emotional learning, and ensuring that expectations are well understood and communicated across the community: teachers, parents, and students. This includes a focus on Universal Design for Learning—enabling all students to work toward the same expectations with a “buffet” of different choices in how they engage, represent, and express learning—which is key to equitable practices that empower and motivate learners.

We sought help in understanding how to support readers in accessing grade-level texts, using high leverage practices that can be used depending on the learning goals and readiness of students. They have guided us in selecting and planning with complex texts alongside scaffolding tools for supporting children’s linguistic, social-cultural, and cognitive needs. We have learned that “scaffolding” is a temporary resource or structure that enables learners to scale heights beyond their reach, until a time when it can be lessened or removed successfully. It requires being data-informed and adopting stronger assessment practices. It also requires teachers' knowledge and awareness of the possible barriers to learning, and their ability to offer the “just right” scaffolds which are gradually removed to build skills for independence.

We explored how to sit alongside children and engage in conferencing conversations to provide timely, specific, actionable feedback. The aim is to build all students up as confident and independent writers by: prioritizing relationships, being comfortable with children’s approximations, affirming student identity as writers, and personalizing praise and next steps. We also adopted open-genre and open-topic units to increase our focus on writing craftsmanship (such as word choice and style) and writing processes (such as thinking, drafting, and revising), and to increase student motivation and engagement as writers.

We looked at how all students can access grade-level mathematics, challenging ourselves to think about how all students can reach high standards in mixed-ability classrooms through the use of: peer collaboration and a socially supportive climate, manipulatives and visual representation, mathematical discourse and reasoning, and through building conceptual understanding. Additionally, we secured our understanding of growth mindset (the belief in one’s ability to grow through effort and grit) and environments that support it (increased emphasis on process and effort rather than speed and results, embracing mistakes as learning moments, and the teacher's modelling of growth mindset). 

More recently, we were reminded that high expectations of behavior, coupled with high levels of proactive practices, are fundamental parts of supporting wellbeing, belonging, and pro-social behaviors. Adopting daily restorative practices help prevent many social problems occurring in the first place, such as: using playtime to connect with students; daily circles as a way to build a culture of community; explicit modelling of affective sentences; opportunities for movement and brain breaks; and co-creating and reflecting upon norms for learning together. And, when harm does occur, restorative practices provide students the support they need to repair relationships through listening to other’s perspectives and problem solving. 

Over a number of years, we have engaged in ongoing professional learning through classroom labsites, workshops, and collaborative planning. This work has reinforced the power of listening, observing, and asking questions, as well as the importance of teachers partnering with students to think deeply and to inquire into their needs, interests, and ideas. We have also focused on the co-creation of success criteria, supporting students to understand what “success” looks like and to take ownership of assessing and reflecting on their growth. This communicates high expectations and trust in students’ capabilities, while providing support in the form of tools for self-monitoring, which in turn fosters independence, engagement, and a growth mindset. Overall, this learning has strengthened our belief in every child as a competent, capable, and active citizen. Knowing that our beliefs drive our actions, this remains central to our work in supporting high expectations. These strategies enable us to hold students to high expectations whilst nurturing confidence, competence, agency and motivation. What’s powerful is the utility of all of these strategies across ages and subject disciplines. 

Our Head of School, Daniel Todd, has helped us to think about high expectations and high levels of support in our role as leaders. In a book study of 10 to 25: The science of motivating young people (Yeager, 2024) we explored how our beliefs, perceptions, and actions align with one of three mindsets: enforcer, protector, and mentor. Enforcers have high expectations but provide little support. They desire standards, accountability and discipline, but leave the most vulnerable behind. Protectors lower their expectations of what students can achieve and, unsurprisingly, there tends to be little growth. The mentor mindset requires both high expectations and high support. Mentors bring clarity, order, respect, and a level of rigor to their work, as well as different levels and types of support. There’s both accountability and care. Zaretta Hammond names it aptly as being a “warm demander” (2014). 

We’re thinking deeper about what supporting high expectations for adults in our community, faculty members and parents, looks like (perhaps I’ll save this for a later article)! For now, suffice to say that, as leaders, we need to ensure that we have a mentor mindset–that we are warm demanders–and that school systems and structures provide both high expectations and high levels of support for the whole community. As Adam Grant writes, “Good systems provide the opportunity for people to travel great distances” (2023, p.153).

This work at the International School of Uganda has been an exciting and rewarding journey, and we thank all the amazing experts who have inspired and so generously shared their knowledge with us. This is a journey that continues to evolve and requires us to embrace new learning moving forwards. 

Here are some reflective questions to ponder in any school context:

• What next step might I take for my own professional growth in supporting high expectations?
• In what ways do we share standards and expectations with our community?
• In what ways are we supporting all students to reach high standards?
• How do we prioritize relationships and learning opportunities between colleagues? 
• Are all faculty clear on what is expected of them, as professionals and practitioners?
• What does constructive feedback and accountability look like?
• What different types and levels of professional learning and support is available for faculty?
• How do we give faculty members autonomy and agency in their professional learning?
• Do parents and guardians know what is expected of them? 
• What do we have in place to support families? 

References

Grant, A. (2023). Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things. Viking. 

Hammond, Z. (2014). Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain. Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students. Corwin.