There's a great book called Teaching As Leadership which devotes a full chapter to the effect of expectations on a student's performance.
My Kindle reader for Mac won't let me copy and paste, but the following extract from the book is so good that I will type it out:
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While the self-fulfilling prophecy of high expectations is well established by research, in our experience, the most compelling evidence of this idea's power comes from the many testimonials we receive from strong teachers. Crystal Brakke, for example, is a teacher who in her first year teaching eighth grade in Henderson, North Carolina, took her students from almost 70% failing the state literacy assessment to over 80 percent passing it. Ms Brakke shares how her high expectations helped change the academic trajectory of one particularly challenging student.
"The Wilson," the self-appointed nickname of a young man named Scott, was a living legend at Henderson Middle School. He was nearly sixteen years old and had already spent three years at the middle school. The crowds would part in the hallways for him. He ruled the school, and he knew it. He also knew that, probably quite realistically, he would be promoted to high school no matter what he did this school year - we just couldn't keep him in middle school another year. So my second-period class quickly became his personal playground...and I realised that if I didn't do something soon, the year would be lost for both him and the other twenty students I needed to teach...Scott wasn't ready for high school - he was reading at a fifth-grade level.
So I got together with the other teachers on my team, who were facing their own struggles with Scott, and we came up with a plan that was supported by both Scott's grandmother (his guardian) and his older brother, Richard, whom he idolised. We called him into a team meeting, and he sauntered in, ready for whatever we could give him - in-school suspension, after-school detention. He'd seen it all before. Instead, I told him that is schedule had changed: he would now be coming to my class first period and working with the cluster of "gifted and talented" students in that class. Honestly, you could see the color draining from his face. I explained that I realised what the problem was - that it wasn't him; it was me. I wasn't teaching him what he needed; wasn't teaching to his level and expecting from him what I knew he was capable of doing. That's when he just flat out called me "crazy".
But the next day, Scott came to my first-period class. He sat down, and didn't say a word for the next ninety minutes. That's when I knew we were on to something. I can tell you for certain that progress came slowly, very slowly. Some days I had to fight just for him to keep his head up, but then one day, he brought a pen and pencil to class. I almost cried, I was so executed. Another day, he raised his hand to answer a question. He had started participating, and that was the end of behaviour problems with "The Wilson".
By January, he was just another kid in my class and was sharing insights into "Romeo and Juliet" that made my jaw drop. My favourite memory from that year came when one of the seventh-grade teachers approached me after a staff meeting, asking, "What are you doing up there with Scott Wilson?". It turns out "The Wilson" had made a visit to the seventh-grade hallway to chat with some of his old teachers and let them know that we had finally figured it out: he's gifted.
Crystal Brakke, for example, is a teacher who in her first year teaching eighth grade in Henderson, North Carolina, took her students from almost 70% failing the state literacy assessment to over 80 percent passing it.
A good teacher can certainly work wonders with students. But it's never as simple as making one change in a vacuum; when I read the anecdote that you've presented, it's pretty clear to me that we're dealing with a good teacher. Even if she's young, she's clearly attentive to the students, and she's smart enough to tailor her approach to best fit what she sees from them.
That's a pretty good sign that she's an exceptional teacher overall - it's a level of attention that you don't often see in schools (it's also one that fades with age, but that's another matter). I'm skeptical that the one technique she happens to credit this particular success to is a silver bullet that would help all students, especially those whose teachers are nowhere near as bright or caring.
Further, having spent some time in the trenches, I'd say a large part of this student's achievement gains are simply due to the fact that he was put in a room with better students, so he was uncomfortable and he fell in line with the way they behaved and acted in the class. That's easy to do for one student, but it's not a trick that scales.
Show me that a simple change in expectations can get an overpacked classroom of 35 disinterested, loud, and sometimes violent C-level students to step up their game and care about Romeo and Juliet (esp. when a sizable percentage of the class can't read at all), and I'll be impressed...
Change the environment, change the person. It can be done en masse, though it's not as east. The reason the KIPP schools work, even though they take children randomly from extremely substandard environments, is that they completely control most aspects of the students lives. The school itself enforces a discipline that spreads like a contagion through the children from the start. In addition, they keep the kids there from 7 AM till 5-6 PM, before they go home, and for the most part keeps them in summer as well. So you can recreate this effect, but you need complete control from the top down, at least at the start.
Very interesting! I had never read anything like that before. Truthfully though, it makes me like the KIPP program even more, as I am glad that tools of mass persuasion can finally be used for good.
I was just thinking "OCR" when writing that post, too. But yours is a straightforward solution, that I have not heard of before.
To make sure that YC doesn't get into stupid IP trouble, I took a random snapshot of a public book that I was reading on my PC kindle. Here is the result from google docs:
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[...] We neighbors are out of bed." This struck the eeuld net then empley him; but I foolishly
rest, and we s00n after had offers from one let him kngw as 3 Secret that I 50011
Of them t0 Suppl)’ U5 with 5tE1ti0I1e1"Y; but intended to begin a newspaper, and might as yet we did not chuse to engage in shop then have work him_ My hopes of bL1SiI16SS. success, as I told him, were founded on mention this industry the more this, that the then only newspaper, printed particularly and the more freely, tho’ it by Bradford, was a paltry seems to be talking in my own praise, that wretehedly manag'd, no way entertaining, those of my posterity, who shall read it, and yet was profitable to him;
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So obviously there are some bugs. The whole thing took me like 1-3 min for the first time. Google docs is kind of slow on my system. No I would still have to correct all the mistakes. No idea of the GP's approach is more work. Still a nice idea.
Not sure which text size you're using when you take your screenshot, but it works 100% for me using Jane Austin's Pride & Prejudice. The only errors are where I clip the descenders and is much faster than typing:
While there is no direct Copy/Paste on Kindle, if you just highlight the text and save it as a clipping, it will show up in a plaintext file called "My Clippings" (or similar, I don't have my Kindle there to check) in the filesystem root of your Kindle.
I would never have read about such a story if you haven't shared. Going to get the book. Also sent a teaching friend a link to this. So a big thank you for typing this out and sharing it.
My Kindle reader for Mac won't let me copy and paste, but the following extract from the book is so good that I will type it out:
---------------
While the self-fulfilling prophecy of high expectations is well established by research, in our experience, the most compelling evidence of this idea's power comes from the many testimonials we receive from strong teachers. Crystal Brakke, for example, is a teacher who in her first year teaching eighth grade in Henderson, North Carolina, took her students from almost 70% failing the state literacy assessment to over 80 percent passing it. Ms Brakke shares how her high expectations helped change the academic trajectory of one particularly challenging student.
"The Wilson," the self-appointed nickname of a young man named Scott, was a living legend at Henderson Middle School. He was nearly sixteen years old and had already spent three years at the middle school. The crowds would part in the hallways for him. He ruled the school, and he knew it. He also knew that, probably quite realistically, he would be promoted to high school no matter what he did this school year - we just couldn't keep him in middle school another year. So my second-period class quickly became his personal playground...and I realised that if I didn't do something soon, the year would be lost for both him and the other twenty students I needed to teach...Scott wasn't ready for high school - he was reading at a fifth-grade level.
So I got together with the other teachers on my team, who were facing their own struggles with Scott, and we came up with a plan that was supported by both Scott's grandmother (his guardian) and his older brother, Richard, whom he idolised. We called him into a team meeting, and he sauntered in, ready for whatever we could give him - in-school suspension, after-school detention. He'd seen it all before. Instead, I told him that is schedule had changed: he would now be coming to my class first period and working with the cluster of "gifted and talented" students in that class. Honestly, you could see the color draining from his face. I explained that I realised what the problem was - that it wasn't him; it was me. I wasn't teaching him what he needed; wasn't teaching to his level and expecting from him what I knew he was capable of doing. That's when he just flat out called me "crazy".
But the next day, Scott came to my first-period class. He sat down, and didn't say a word for the next ninety minutes. That's when I knew we were on to something. I can tell you for certain that progress came slowly, very slowly. Some days I had to fight just for him to keep his head up, but then one day, he brought a pen and pencil to class. I almost cried, I was so executed. Another day, he raised his hand to answer a question. He had started participating, and that was the end of behaviour problems with "The Wilson".
By January, he was just another kid in my class and was sharing insights into "Romeo and Juliet" that made my jaw drop. My favourite memory from that year came when one of the seventh-grade teachers approached me after a staff meeting, asking, "What are you doing up there with Scott Wilson?". It turns out "The Wilson" had made a visit to the seventh-grade hallway to chat with some of his old teachers and let them know that we had finally figured it out: he's gifted.