[Day 2] After the Honeymoon Phase: Maintaining Your Student-Centered Practices ~ Reflecting on Expectations
Let's start day two by reflecting on the expectations we have for our students and ask ourselves the question: Are we truly listening to our students? P.S there is a surprise for you at the end!
Reflecting on Expectations: Are We Truly Listening to Our Students?
Tell me if I’m onto something here…
You are officially settled into the school year, you’ve carefully laid out plans and expectations for how your classrooms will run. You have a clear vision for how students will learn, engage, and respond to the materials you've curated. But we are now five or six weeks into the year, students are trying your patience and those expectations are failing to align with reality. Reflecting on our expectations—and more importantly, listening to our students—can be the key to creating a classroom environment where both you and your cam thrive.
We talk about setting clear expectations at the start of the school year—it's the cornerstone of classroom management. But as a student-centered practitioner, I want to explore not just setting expectations but ensuring they are age-appropriate for our students. Schools have conditioned us to believe that students should sit still, be quiet, and follow instructions for eight hours. But let's be real—that's not feasible.
In my first year teaching, I remember walking into the classroom with what I thought was the perfect lesson plan. I had high expectations for how my students would engage, but as the lesson unfolded, it became clear that something wasn’t clicking. I found myself growing frustrated—was it the students, or was it me? After taking a step back, I realized I hadn’t fully considered their needs and learning styles. My expectations were based on an ideal classroom scenario, not on the students sitting in front of me. The turning point came when I started listening more intently to what my students were communicating, both verbally and non-verbally. By adjusting my expectations and being responsive to their needs, I was able to create a more meaningful learning experience for them.
It’s easy to enter a new school year with fixed expectations for our students. We want them to meet certain benchmarks, engage in a specific way, and demonstrate clear growth. But the reality is, every student comes into the classroom with unique needs, perspectives, and experiences, and more than that many of our traditional beliefs about how students should behave are unrealistic because they aren’t aligned with the expectations we have for ourselves.
Any adult reading this knows there have been times in meetings when we're whispering to a friend or sneaking a peek at our phones. Yet, we expect young people to sit still and follow instructions without acknowledging their developmental needs. As a student-centered teacher, I believe students rise to the expectations we set when they are realistic and age-appropriate. We can't expect a 5-year-old to write an essay, so why do we expect them to behave like adults? It's challenging for me, as a grown-up, to sit quietly for 60 minutes, let alone expecting it from kids.
To ensure I am supporting the developmental needs of my students, I work to ensure my lessons are engaging and varied. For example, instead of long lectures, I incorporate gallery walks, where students move around the room to consume information, or use interactive platforms like Kahoot, Blooket, and Formative to assess learning. This keeps students active and engaged, allowing them to release pent-up energy in a productive way.
I also involve students in creating classroom norms, empowering them to live up to standards they help establish. We often downplay what students can do and focus too much on what they should do. I'm never going to be the person who sits through a meeting without texting a friend, so why expect students to conform to unrealistic standards?
Our students are growing up in a world filled with rapid information and constant stimuli. Yelling, periodtt across the room when a peer gets a question correct might be seen as disruptive traditionally, but if it shows they're engaged, I see it as a win. We need to adjust our expectations to align with their reality, not ours. Reflect on your expectations, and know that the I'm Just a Teacher Guided Journal can help, because remember, our students are navigating a very time than we did.
Regardless of when you went to school, your students are navigating a very different world, and our expectations need to reflect that. Instead of battling them, let's allow them to show up as their full selves.
Thank you for reading, and see you tomorrow for another blog and our weekly podcast, on Teacher-Centered Leadership!
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