Meeting and Exceeding Student Expectations of Teachers: A Way to Achieve “Good” Teaching

The following post is one of a small group I have written over the past 13 years that have attracted the most readers. It originally appeared in 2013. I have revised and updated it.

Over the next month or so, I will revise other posts that have drawn the most viewers.

Go into most public school classrooms and you will see a sign, usually in the front of the classroom, listing what the teacher expects of students in classroom behavior.

Experienced teachers advise new ones to make these rules explicit and enforce them from day one. Folk wisdom among veteran teachers is that expecting these behaviors and equitably acting on the rules will lead to an orderly classroom, the prerequisite for any intentional learning to occur. So most new and experienced teachers, believing this advice and wanting a well-managed classroom, list classroom rules early in the semester. A few adventurous (and experienced) teachers have students construct the rules since students are well aware of acceptable classroom behavior from previous teachers.

In addition to classroom behavior, what teachers expect of students academically influences achievement. Researchers have established that when teachers have high or low expectations of what their students can achieve–especially low-income and minority students–those expectations color what students do achieve (Journal of Teacher Education-1987-Good-32-47).

The point is that teacher expectations of student behavior and academic performance matter.

What is often missing from the advice given to teachers, however, is what goes on in students’ heads as they see a new teacher (novice or veteran) for the first time. Students also have an informal list of what behaviors, knowledge, and skills they expect of their teachers. And just like teacher expectations, student expectations matter.

Expectancy theory, as academics call it, involves motivation and choice–if I expect something I want to happen, I will choose that action that best achieves what I want. And that is true of students’ motivation and their choosing what to do (or not do) in a classroom or lesson.

Beginning in kindergarten (or preschool), over the years students develop views of what a “good” teacher (and teaching) are.  By the time, students are in high school, they have implicit models in  their heads of who “good” teachers are and what they do in organizing and teaching a class.

By “good”  high school teacher, for example, most students mean one who mostly leads a teacher-centered, subject-driven academic class. For students meeting teachers for the first time, “bad” means the teacher tries to be friends with students, uses techniques (e.g., abandoning the textbook, peer grading of quizzes) that are seldom used by other “good” teachers. They tolerate student misbehavior.  In short, “bad” teachers cannot maintain minimum order in the classroom.

None of this is means that students’ pictures of “good” teachers are correct. Only that students already have  images of what they believe is institutionally “good” for them.

So if a novice teacher  (or veteran who transfer to another school) believes that students have blank slates when they meet each other for the first time, they are whistling the wrong tune. Let me give examples of student expectations of teachers that I have encountered over the years as a teacher and, later, as district-based teacher educator and superintendent of schools.

*”Good” teachers know more facts and concepts of the subject they teach than students.

*”Good” teachers answer student questions clearly and correctly.

*”Good” teachers take time to explain complicated content.

*”Good” teachers do not publicly humiliate students.

*”Good” teachers assign homework.

*”Good” teachers clamp down on late-comers to class

*”Good” teachers break up fights between students and protect weak students from being bullied.

*”Good” teachers do not permit students to copy from one another when expecting each student to do his or her work.

*”Good” teachers do not let students sleep in class.

For novices and veterans new to a school to ignore what students have learned about teachers and teaching for many years sitting in classrooms is ultimately condescending since teachers are dismissing important student beliefs and knowledge. It also makes much harder the long-term task of developing strong relationships with the class as a whole and individual students–both essential for academic learning to occur.

There is a catch, however, when new and veteran teachers meet student expectations.

To do only what students expect is to be trapped by their traditional expectations of what a “good” teacher is. The tightrope act teachers have to negotiate is to initially meet what students expect–“good” teaching–then move beyond those beliefs to begin reshaping student expectations of “good” teaching. Getting students to appreciate and learn from a larger repertoire of classroom approaches while teachers develop personal relationships essential for learning to occur is no easy task. Many, but by no means all, experienced teachers reach that level. But it is tough to do.

So, the essence of what I suggest for new and veteran teachers meeting their students the first time is straight-forward: know what students expect of “good” teachers and teaching, meet those expectations,  and then, once strong relationships with the class have been formed, move beyond students’ beliefs so they can enlarge their picture of what “good” teachers and teaching are.