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“High achievement always takes place in the framework of high expectation.” ― Charles Kettering

A couple of days ago I received a review on my comparative analysis lesson for Lois Lowry’s The Giver and the 1998 film The Truman Show: This was difficult for grade 7/8, but, with guidance, it really was a meaningful assignment. They were able to draw parallels and fully engage with the assignment. Thank you! We all really enjoyed this.

I’m really appreciative of this buyer taking her time not only to leave a review, but to specify that, despite its difficulty, her students were able to draw the parallels with her proper scaffolding.

I do not make easy lessons, and this has definitely been a process of growth for me over the years as I refined my just-trying-to-survive memorization type of lessons, into lessons and activities that force the students to look back into the texts and actually think critically and analytically. It doesn’t matter that the students can read Shakespeare (though truly, Chaucer is my personal favorite British writer of old), it matters that they can make the connections between characters and motivations and just flat out persevere through challenging material.

It’s easy to throw together something along the lines of “Which character helped Alice?” This has zero impact for any actual thought-building processes. The better prompt is: Identify how the Cheshire Cat helped Alice, and explain why his assistance was significant. (I haven’t taught Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in ages, but I sure would like to teach it again! It’s one of those novels that are on my to-do-wish list).

Students can get to almost any ending analytical point—they may need guiding questions to get there, but they can get there. And this definitely takes more effort from everyone. Some students will need no scaffolding. Some may need one or two questions to get them to the right thought process…and then you’ll have some who will need five…or more. X) It’s time consuming for everyone, but definitely worth it because that is where they really grow and make gains.

It has been my, rather unfortunate, experience that sometimes the classroom, and this certainly varies from classroom to classroom, is the only place where there are actual expectations for students to meet.

The first time a parent told me she just wanted her child “…to get Ds” I about fell out of my chair. That’s the household expectation? Ds. To which, I do not hate to break it to them, but Ds do not, in fact, cut it. A D may earn credit for the class and placate home, but it does not earn enough to meet the Florida minimum GPA requirement for graduation. Thankfully. When I need a public service, I want to be able to rely on the person in front of me to at least be thorough enough to do their job properly instead of just skating by.

And this is hard. It’s hard because there is a lot of pressure from administrations to allow students to skate by. It’s very frustrating…though that is a whole post in itself for another day.

Three years ago, one our dogs had to have a tumor removed from her leg. When I scheduled the surgery, I recognized the girl as a student from my eighth-grade classroom several years before. A very nice girl, however, she was a very nice girl who did not pass my class because I did not, and do not, permit skating by. She was absent a lot, she did not turn in her work—no matter the time extensions or promptings. I appreciated her pleasantness, but I couldn’t count on her to be a modicum of responsible. She had a very nice mother, too, which also didn’t matter. Anyway, when I said something to the former student about middle school, she gave me a blank stare. No surprise there.

Well, I completely became paranoid that she still had that lackadaisical student in her and that something was potentially wonky with my dog’s scheduled surgery. When I got home, I called the vet and said I made the mistake of not writing the time down and could they please pull it up in the system to verify it for me?

They did. And she had indeed scheduled it properly. I wanted to feel bad for doubting her, she’d had years to mature at that point, but she never came close to meeting any expectations and it was obvious, at least at the time of her middle school years, there were no expectations for her at home either. I had to satiate myself and double check her. Double checking is a good habit anyway because oversights can always happen, but I was stuck thinking about how utterly ambivalent she was and didn’t want to risk my dog not getting the tumor out ASAP. Perhaps that’s terrible to admit, but I had to make sure I knew exactly when to expect my dog’s procedure. Expectations truly matter.

Ultimately, this was a long post about how it’s very important to maintain expectations for students. It can get hard at this time of year as Spring Breaks approach and come to an end and the light at the end of the year is starting to be seen, but students are capable and it’s vital to keep pushing them onward with their learning and growing.

So, if you need some resources to build critical and high-order thinking skills, these are some popular and fun options.

Even the dogs get high expectations with their training! No GPA minimums here though. X)

Nike and Novah went through training more than a decade after Brannagh, but they carry their training forth! We had to give Brannagh back to Jesus four months after her tumor was removed in 2021; it had already gone into the bone. But she was practically perfect in every way and set the expectation bar high for Nike and Novah!