high expectations and safety

Teachers should come into the the classroom with high expectations for their students. If the teacher believes that the student can do it, then this will encourage the child. It helps create the tone of the classroom. A teacher should not have to worry if those expectations are met on the first day or any day soon.

I believe that teachers should always have high expectations of their students that way, students will not wonder how they should act, that is why we have rules. Rules give our students a foundation for how they are meant to behave. If there are no expectations and a students gets into trouble, how will they know why they are in trouble, with expectations I can say, "Well, you are in trouble because you did .... when you know that we do not do that in here." Also, with expectations, our students will be safer. We expect our students not to hit others, we explain this to them at the beginning of class, they understand and our students are safer!
Jamie

It is hard to think of something that would be negative about high expectations and safety in the classroom during a writing workshop. The only problem with a teacher having high expectations for his/her students would be if the students did not meet the expectations, and the teacher did not allow for error. This would make a teacher seem very unapproachable and intimidating. A teacher needs to have high expectations for his/her students, because students tend to live up to these expectations if they are allowed to. However, if a student is slower than the rest of the class or if a student doesn't "get it," the teacher needs to come down to this student's level and help him/her to reach the higher expectations with some extra assistance. All students are capable of learning and reaching great heights through education, but the teacher needs to be able to see when students are reaching these expectations, and when a student needs some extra help to reach the same level as his/her peers. -Heather


At the end of the day the student still needs to be congratulated on the work that he or she did. Even if they did not reach the expectations, they did learn and they had many accomplishments. High expectations are used to set a positive and productive tone for the students. It should not cause them to feel pressured. If the assignment starts to become to much for the students to handle, the teacher should switch to something easier for a while to help boost the students' confidence.