Teaching with high expectations

Today we had a staff meeting run by Michelle about high expectations. 

Firstly we watched this video - 

then we had to sort pieces of paper into two groups - what we expect of (or do towards) low and high achieving students.

Left - low achieving. 

Right - high achieving. 

The middle pile - both.

These are the ones myself and my buddy didn't like/agree with/didn't want to put into the graph. I personally had an issue with "demand more or less work or effort of..." because the expectation of work for my very low and very high students are completely different. With students like that, you aren't comparing oranges and oranges, even oranges and apples. You are comparing oranges and bread. Completely incomparable. The work itself is a different task, different curriculum level, often requiring different skills and different amount of times to complete. In terms of effort, the high achieving student can do something well with a minimal amount of effort. In comparison, the low achieving student could do something that takes less time, but for them, 50% more effort. 

We talked a lot about how our own experiences, especially our home-life and schooling influence how we teach. For example, I had a high-trust model at home, and was given trust (instead of being doubted and questioned) and hence I rose to that trust and continued to earn it. Hence, I tend to give my students A LOT of choices and opportunities where they are trusted to do a job/make a choice, and I expect them to rise to the trust as I did. So far, it has worked really well and I have very independent, trustworthy students.