The Third National Convening of Woodrow Wilson Teaching Fellows

The expectations that teachers set are a critical part of closing the opportunity gap in education. Low expectations fail to give students a chance to succeed; high expectations without individualized support set students up for failure; and both perpetuate inequalities by influencing teachers’, administrators’, and policymakers’ sense of student incompetence. This session has two objectives: first, to help teachers imagine ways to more deeply know their students’ interests, skills, cultural resources and past educational experiences; and second, to effectively translate these relationships into rigorous expectations and meaningful learning experiences. Together, participants and facilitators in this session will form a “community of practice,” discussing together research-based strategies and examples from our classroom experiences around expectations, relationships, and instruction. As a group, we will workshop how these thought processes apply to participants’ particular schools and classrooms. Participants will walk away with resources and strategies for connecting expectations built for specific students to rigorous, culturally responsive lessons and units.