Primer, May 2010

May 2010 Volume 5, Number 5

Editor’s note: The importance of quality teachers has been front and center in debates about how to improve education of late. The Obama administration has made teacher quality a primary focus, and many states and districts are currently embroiled in debates over teacher issues such as tenure and merit pay – even as waves of budget-related teacher layoffs rock schools across the country. A recent flurry of media attention has included a story in the New York Times Magazine titled “Building a Better Teacher” and a Newsweek commentary arguing “Why We Must Fire Bad Teachers.” In the midst of this debate, we find it more relevant than ever during Teacher Appreciation Month to hear from one of Ohio’s best teachers on the difference a teacher can make in students’ lives.

Believing in Genius:
The Power of Teacher Expectations

By Natalie Wester

2010 Ohio Teacher of the Year

What would you do if your child came home and announced, “I’m the stupidest kid in class.”?

When my son, my only child, was in second grade he made such a pronouncement. That a 7-year-old could make this self-belittling statement with a tone of matter-of-fact acceptance and certainty in his voice was at once alarming and heartbreaking.

At the time, I was well established in what would end up being a 22-year career in public relations and marketing, the last 14 years of which I spent as president of an agency I had founded. I served corporate clients, where strategy, measurable results and absolute accountability were everything.

I asked myself, “How could this be happening with my child? Is this my fault as a busy, working, single mother? Is race playing a factor in his education? What do I do now?” 

Two years, thousands of dollars, countless consultations and one fiercely pursued Multi-factored Evaluation (MFE) for an Individualized Education Program (IEP) later, we knew my son was struggling due to dyslexia. Today, he is a 10th-grade student taking advanced math and science courses, with a history of honor roll grades. While he is above grade level in reading comprehension, he continues to struggle with reading fluency and spelling, and as the volume and difficulty of his workload increase so do his struggles. But he now believes in his genius and advocates for himself in school without reservation. He gets that from home, where it is modeled and reinforced every single day.

But what about all the children – lingering in the margins, struggling to achieve and succeed – with no one to believe in their genius?

That’s why I became a teacher. That’s why I changed careers and lifestyles, and went back to school at age 45 to get a second master’s degree and forever change my life. Because of my son’s experience. Because of my staunch conviction that believing in children’s genius will indeed change their lives.

As a teacher, I work to create an uncompromising, high-standards and high-expectations learning environment that fosters in each and every child an unwavering confidence and belief in their own absolute genius. A learning environment that incubates and empowers real-life problem-solvers and risk-takers by nurturing and encouraging their authentic imaginations.

In every classroom of every school in every community, we must engage our children as active participants in learning, not just passive students in education. We must excite them with relevant challenges that stimulate imaginative, creative, real-world problem-solving. We must go beyond high-stakes testing to higher-order thinking. We must cultivate exuberant risk-takers every day.

In Room 109 at Gearity Professional Development School – an urban classroom tucked within a district that is one of 15 designated high-poverty districts in Ohio – student reporters, photographers and designers help publish the Third Grade Genius Gazette. They create, solve and share real-life money problems in math while shopping and snacking at the Jazzy Genius Juice Bar. They problem-solve and learn real-life economics lessons while developing a successful fundraising plan to buy a computer for the classroom by selling baked goods at the Jazzy Genius Café. They work in small groups at a table beneath a dangling star attached to a sign that reads “Geniuses at Work.”  They unpack their thinking on paper from notebooks and folders labeled Reading Genius, Writing Genius, Math Genius, Science Genius and so on.

These children call themselves geniuses. They hear themselves referred to as geniuses. They believe they are geniuses, therefore they are geniuses. These are the children hungry for someone to believe in their genius so they can believe in themselves. The results? Higher than average gains in reading and math in each of the last three years, and class average scores on reading and math standardized tests that consistently are above state averages. 

No child of any age should ever believe he or she is “the stupidest kid” in class.

In graduate school we discussed and debated the function of education and teaching. One theory, called the symbolic-interactionist theory, focuses on how teacher expectations and perceptions impact student achievement. I was struck by several studies conducted by sociologists in the 1960s and ‘70s that proved the power of self-fulfilling prophecy. Teachers were told that low-achieving students were gifted and that gifted students were low achievers. At the end of the school year, based solely on how they were treated by their teachers, the low-achieving students had indeed advanced, while the gifted students had declined academically. By communicating daily to students that they are “geniuses,” teachers help students internalize this belief, and they do in fact achieve. Students rise to our expectations.

I see this as a teacher. I’ve lived it as a mother of a dyslexic child who did not always have a teacher who believed in his genius. The proven fact that an educator’s expectations can impact student achievement is why I became a teacher.

Empowering children as navigators of their own learning and growth is a key component of high expectations that nurture genius. Our students, and their families, need to be empowered with a sense of ownership in their progress. Daily conversations and two-way sharing of information empowers learners with an understanding of their own next steps and helps create buy-in to a common goal: achievement.

When we facilitate a sense of ownership in the learning process and outcomes, students understand and can communicate what they are learning and why, how learning is being assessed, and the criteria for assessing their own work. As owners of their learning, students keep track of their own progress with standards-based learning objectives by using self-created graphs that include their notes on what they think their next steps should be based on their data. They use self-assessment rubrics to prepare for parent-teacher conferences. Taking a cue from the business world, they participate as “customers” – as do their parents and guardians – in “360-degree evaluations” of their teacher using a student-friendly rubric.

By raising the bar and expecting to see genius in every child, we have the power to create an environment of achievement in every classroom. Believing in children, empowering them, and exciting and engaging them by stimulating their imaginations are central ideas of the self-fulfilling prophecy philosophy. When students are encouraged to think creatively and imagine all possibilities – for solving classroom problems and for their own lives – their excitement builds and interest grows. They become engaged as exuberant participants for whom learning is irresistible.

Most of us can recall the power of a good teacher from our own personal experience at some point in our school careers – a teacher who believed in and inspired us. In fact, the day-to-day classroom teaching by an excellent educator is the single most determining factor of student and school success. According to numerous experts, it is not class size, class gender, number of classroom computers, or special academic programs. It is, quite simply and obviously, the teacher. Excellent, talented teachers are the key to turning around students, classrooms and schools.

With this tremendous responsibility, opportunity and influence, there must be the critical first step of rigorous preparation of top-notch future teachers. Yet all undergraduate and graduate teacher training programs are not created equal. We need to ensure that all postsecondary teaching degree and licensure programs are meeting not minimum standards, but the highest standards that reflect best practice:

• Immersion in the classroom as full-year apprentices, not just half-year student teachers.
• In addition to the heavy focus on literacy, more STEM-related methods courses, even for future elementary and middle school teachers (not just high school – a stem won’t blossom without strong roots).
• More training in differentiation and assessment for learning.
• Training in how to best gather, interpret and use student data to inform instructional strategies.
• A stronger focus on cultural competence in the classroom, as our classrooms and our world continue to reflect growing diversity.

Because no other single factor is as impactful on success as an excellent teacher, we need to attract more of the best. We must recruit results-driven, highly motivated, high-performance, extraordinary talent to the profession of teaching, because in our ideal future, all of our children will enter excellent schools.

In our ideal future, all learners will graduate as high-achieving, rigorously educated problem-solvers ready to excel in a global marketplace. The road to that utopian tomorrow can start today, classroom by classroom, day by day, without expensive bells and whistles. It can start with engagement, empowerment and high expectations – for students and teachers.

Yes, our expectations must be higher not only for students, but for ourselves as teachers as well. As a cooperating teacher working with college education programs to mentor education majors and student teachers, I apply the same believing-in-genius, self-fulfilling prophecy approach to future teachers as I do to my younger learners. We cannot settle for less than excellence, beginning with our college teacher-training programs, because no “innovative” program or new “initiative” is going to produce results without excellent teachers at the front lines – engaging, empowering, expecting achievement and believing in genius day in and day out in every classroom.

About the Author

Natalie Wester, a third-grade teacher at Gearity Professional Development School in the Cleveland Heights-University Heights City School District, was named the 2010 Ohio Teacher of the Year. In addition to her classroom duties, she has served as a data liaison and been active in the professional learning community. Wester’s belief that the teacher is the most important component for student learning led her to develop the concept for The New Teachers College’s Center for Cultural Competence and Teaching, an innovative, graduate-level teacher preparation program that has provided summer professional development workshops to private and public school educators.

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