As the saying goes, none of our students is bad—they just might be having a bad day (or a series of them).
Today’s post is the second in a series examining success stories of teachers and students who have turned those days around.
You might also be interested in a very short video I recently made where I describe the strategies I use in this kind of situation.
‘Teachers’ Perceived Biases’
Sonya Murray-Darden is a leadership coach and former administrator. She is currently a leadership coach with the Missouri Leadership Development System and the CEO and founder of Equity Matters Consultants. Visit her website.
Gwen Turner is an emeritus professor of teacher education.
Their latest book is Serving Educational Equity: A Five-Course Framework for Accelerated Learning:
The Event
As executive leadership coaches, staff and students often ask us for support to provide students with behavioral interventions. There are no quick fixes; instead, relationships are key.
Building rapport with staff, students, and colleagues is crucial for a new administrator. My staff and I set the stage for student success by getting to know students beyond the school walls and labels that many people had ascribed to them. It was critical to get to know students holistically.
At my (Sonya’s) school, the mission was to focus on building positive developmental relationships, environments filled with safety and belonging and rich learning experiences, knowledge development, and the development of skills, habits, and mindsets as proposed in the Essential Guiding Principles for Equitable Whole Child Design (Learning Policy Institute, 2021).
One of the issues that we faced at our new school was behavior bias, in which teachers focused solely on students’ disciplinary incidents rather than academic potential. Our story is about Mark Doe (a pseudonym), a 7th grader. He was the subject of many staff comments because of his disciplinary record. All descriptions of him addressed his incomplete assignments and inappropriate behavior. Mark was accustomed to the negative interactions and experiences with the school team.
During our first encounter, Mark informed me that he was failing, had a discipline record, and hated school. His entire demeanor was one of defeat. Because I knew the importance of establishing trust and a positive working relationship with every child, I informed him that I was excited to meet him and looked forward to a great working relationship.
However, he was skeptical and disclosed tremendous personal and home struggles. He informed me that no one cared for him except an aunt, who he knew loved him, but she, too, had grown weary of his constant school issues. Mark’s behavior was part of a self-fulfilling prophecy: “Adults expect inappropriate behavior; therefore, the child misbehaves.” Children will become what you say they are. (Blease, 1983; Palardy, 1969).
The Solution
Our first effort was to engage Mark in meaningful and supportive experiences. As a staff, we had to establish a community of trust to work with our students and each other. His teachers were asked to examine how they provided guidance, communicated with him, and engaged him in learning activities. We helped him create a joint action plan and schedule to work on assignments.
Mark played an integral part in his education, but he also needed to improve his learning (metacognition). Breaking this cycle of failure was not always easy. Changes in mindset for teachers and students have to occur if students are to overcome challenges and improve academically and socially.
A significant turning point was Mark’s participation in an essay contest. When I first introduced the idea of writing an essay, Mark responded, “I cannot write, and besides, my discipline record is too bad. Nobody will read it.” I replied, “I will read it and believe in you.” He initially told me he was not interested and stated his inability, but later, he asked me about the essay and began crafting a draft. We established a plan, and working on the paper became his center of focus each day.
Mark did not struggle in isolation; he had mentors and tutors who helped him improve his writing. There were challenges and setbacks, but Mark had begun to trust the adults and himself. He became a better writer and student because of the positive relationships with the small cadre of adults who demonstrated commitment to his success. Mark completed his essay and was selected as one of the finalists. He was asked to wear a yellow scarf as a finalist, signifying his status as a winner. Yellow symbolizes optimism, confidence, creativity, and emotional strength (Wright, 1995).
Indeed, Mark shared a newfound sense of trust, commitment, and determination that had not previously existed. His teachers connected the essay celebration to his ability to make better choices, and he did. Teachers started seeing his potential, not his past failures. His aunt shared her gratitude and appreciation for changing his trajectory. Mark’s story and many others solidify how underlying messages relating to expectations, perceptions, and subsequent actions could allow or deny students access to future success.
Teachers’ perceived biases and low expectations can deny students the tools for academic success. One way to address this is to engage in honest self-reflection. We suggest starting with simple questions:
- How am I building solid and lasting relationships with the students I serve?
- Have I considered their trauma and the impact their experiences have on learning?
- Do my students have the capacity for academic excellence?
Answering these questions offers a starting place for educators to address equity and build relationships in the classroom.
‘I Leaned Into Her Interests’
Renee Jones was the 2023 Nebraska Teacher of the Year. She teaches AVID and 9th grade English at Lincoln High School. Follow her on Twitter @ReneeJonesTeach:
Last year, I had a student who was struggling, not only in my class, but with the transition to high school in general. I respectfully double-downed on my expectations. I expected her to be in class on time, to turn in her assignments, and to handle her business in class. I spoke with her parents, and together we made a plan of how I would support in her class and how they would do the same at home.
Every day, I’d make a point to tell her I was happy to see her and then continue holding high expectations. I’d call home to check in about how she was doing in class. I was honest about what the student needed to work on and also intentional about letting her parents know something their child was doing well.
I leaned into her interests and made sure to talk to her about that—to play a song she might like—all while holding the line of tardy is tardy, etc. It took us nearly the entirety of two semesters; yet, when she left for summer at the end of the school year, she made sure to come and find me, to give me a hug and tell me to have a good summer.
Project-Based Learning
Jodi Asbell-Clarke is a senior leader at TERC, an innovative not-for-profit STEM education R&D organization where she focuses on game-based learning, computational thinking, and neurodiversity in K-12 education:
I met Joey and his educational assistant when I was recently co-teaching in a 7th grade class doing project-based learning. Joey immediately showed a passion for geography. In fact, that was all Joey wanted to talk about, so I brought him an atlas. He was very engaged, but even after a few weeks, he was only drawing the same maps—Canada, U.S., Mexico—and had no interest in moving on to other regions. He is very rigid and simply will not do what he doesn’t want to do.
So his teacher, assistant, and I let him continue with maps of North America. He was very particular about which countries were filled with which colors and where the state or province boundaries went.
A few weeks later, I had an idea. I told Joey that sometimes maps have capitals denoted with a black dot, and that he might consider adding this feature to his maps. He replied in complete clarity. He was NOT going to put black dots on his color-coded map.
So I left him to his maps and went to talk with other students. About 20 minutes later when I circled back around to Joey, he had created a list on a separate sheet of paper—still no black dots on his color-coded map—but on the paper, he was listing the U.S. states and their capitals—in alphabetical order and from memory.
His teacher and his assistant were astonished. They had no idea of his prowess in this area. I soon began a conversation with Joey that started with the capital of Illinois, led to a discussion about Abraham Lincoln, and ended up with his telling me how the Electoral College works and the current polling numbers for candidates running in upcoming elections in the U.S. and in Canada. When I asked Joey how he gets his information, he said he sees headlines on his phone, but he finds reading the full articles on The New York Times website much more informative. Again, his teachers were dumbfounded at Joey’s encyclopedic knowledge, which went masked until he started talking about what he personally cared about.
So, in the example above, a student who was given all kinds of remediation for academic and social skills was able to suddenly thrive in a project-based learning class. By giving him an atlas, a window into his universe, we empowered him to demonstrate his knowledge in his own way. Joey creates and understands sophisticated arguments using probabilities and math skills far beyond grade-level outcomes.
He excels at meeting many of the outcomes for social studies and civics and he’s becoming media literate in a way that analyzes information and data and then makes sense of it. These are precisely the problem-solving skills that kids need for the future, and Joey is a rock star in these areas when he cares. It is through the context of his passion that he learns everything else.
PBL is not new, and PBL is not a magic bullet, but it allows differentiation so that each student comes to the learning outcomes in their own way.
It’s a different philosophy. That doesn’t mean that the lesson or class is not structured or that the teacher needs to create new structures for every learner. The teacher should be equipped with a set of good executive-function supports and differentiation strategies so that no matter what lesson the teacher has, they have a perspective on how to help each child see their own path through the same lesson.
Thanks to Sony, Gwen, Renee, and Jodi for contributing their thoughts!
Today’s post answered this question:
What is a story about how you turned things around with a student or many students in a single class who faced a number of challenges and exhibited those challenges in the classroom (no real names, of course)?
In Part One, David Upegui, Vanessa Vakharia, and Dominique Smith shared their stories.
Consider contributing a question to be answered in a future post. You can send one to me at lferlazzo@epe.org. When you send it in, let me know if I can use your real name if it’s selected or if you’d prefer remaining anonymous and have a pseudonym in mind.
You can also contact me on Twitter at @Larryferlazzo.
Just a reminder; you can subscribe and receive updates from this blog via email. And if you missed any of the highlights from the first 12 years of this blog, you can see a categorized list here.
