High Expectations

The fifth element of the Candidate Assessment of Performance is 2.D.2: High Expectations. The CAP says to meet high expectations as an educator, you “effectively model and reinforce ways that students can master challenging material through effective effort, rather than having to depend on innate ability” (Massachusetts DOE, 2016).

This CAP element, like the rest is very important. We discuss high expectations a lot in my school. The way the curriculum is planned out calls for more student exploration of the math rather than teachers giving the students information. Before discussing this in the program, the first place I had ever really delved deep into high expectations was in my Sheltered English Immersion (SEI) class. We had discussed the studies behind making sure with your English Language Learners (ELLs), that you do not water down any of their work. Your expectations of the level of math learning should be continuous for all language levels of students in your classroom, no matter if there is a language barrier or not. Because you are not testing their English skills, you are testing their math skills, and even though their first language may not be English, their math skills would not change from country to country, they will be at the same level of math competence here as they were in say Brazil. Math transcends all language barriers because math is universal between all countries. 2+2=4 in the United States and 2+2=4 in Turkey. The parent function for a quadratic is y=x^2 in the United States and the parent function for a quadratic is y=x^2 in China.

As I said previously, we discuss high expectations continuously at Shrewsbury High School. We follow Core Plus and the curriculum is much more focused on investigations. The investigations allow students to make connections to previous topics and explore what the unit is about before we (the teachers) give them traditional notes. By doing this and having the students understand from exploration, they usually come up with multiple different ways to explain a theory or topic in the class.

One of the ways I specifically held my students to high expectations, was Mad-Minutes and Homework Quizzes. Mad Minutes are 5 minute quick quizzes that I give to my HPC class. We do one about every other week in the beginning of class. They are there to help the kids keep up with different algebra skills that they must know to be successful within my class. The high expectation part is that one, they are unannounced so the students have to be ready for them at any time and the second is that they are timed. The students have 5 minutes to do these 6 question quizzes. In my HPC class we work on efficiency in anything we are learning. We talk all the time about how as an honors class they are held to a higher level of understanding. This class is preparing them for AP calculus so they need to be able to process information at a quicker pace so they do not fall behind if they do decide to take AP calculus.

Another way we practice efficiency in my HPC class, is through timed desmos assignments. The last unit I taught in pre-calculus, was transformations of equations. We explored different transformations (vertical stretch/compression, horizontal stretch/compression, vertical shift and horizontal shifts) and we also discuss how to graph them efficiently. You can make a table of values to graph them but that is not efficient, instead we explored ways in which you can easily manipulate the parent functions based on the shifts to see the transformation faster. In order to practice this, we would have timed graphing days in class where I have a desmos for them to practice and they would have a certain amount of allotted time to complete the task.

The mad minutes are for my HPC class, but homework quizzes (HWQ) are for my algebra geometry 2 (AG2) class. I do not usually check homework for my AG2 class, one of my teaching philosophies is that they should be held to the expectation that they do the homework for extra practice when they need it. I do not believe in giving superfluous homework assignments. I believe homework is there as extra practice and what is the point to just do busy work if you have the topics down pat? So instead of checking the homework the HWQ does it for me. If a student is not doing their homework or is confused in class they should be coming to see me and if they don’t they will fail the HWQ. Most of the time too, the quizzes come from the homework. I do however let the students retake the quiz up to 100% if they would like to. This develops a growth mindset within my students. I never gave the same quiz when they retook it and it was usually a little bit harder than the original. They all knew that this would happen and the point of it was to make sure the students were preparing for the quiz and learning the material before they retook it.

Another way that I hold my students to high expectations is when we are going over problems in class. When I would ask a question and they give me an answer and I can tell they are kind of guessing, I would ask them if they are sure after, this is one of my favorite things to do while I am teaching, because you can watch the gears turn in their brains while they try and prove why they are correct. This usually produced good conversations with my students too. Besides asking them if they are sure, I would ask them why they thought that was the answer (they usually do not like when I do this because it requires more thinking). By asking why, I would get immediate feedback about their understanding of the topic. If they could not explain how they go to answer most of the time they had just memorized something or are guessing. However, in my classroom I always tell them, I hate memorization. If you are just memorizing and equation you are not truly understanding the math around it and you will not retain the information.

Another way I hold high expectations in my classroom is through their work. At the beginning of my time with them I would preach that your work is more important than your final answer. On all of my quizzes and tests, the work to get to your final answer is always worth more points than the final answer.

Lastly, my favorite way to hold my kids to high expectations, is cold calling. It took me a while to be able to start cold calling on my class because I had to figure out which students I was one allowed to cold call, because sometimes it is written in an IEP that I can't do that, and two how each student would respond to it. I cold call students in class to make sure they are paying attention because I want them to be able to get all of the information I am giving in my class. If I could call a student it is not to embarrass them, it is simply to push them to stay on task in my classroom. If I could call a student and they really do not know the answer, I will help them to get there and if I can’t get them there, I allow them to “phone a friend”. When “phoning a friend”, you are allowed to basically cold call anyone else in the class if no one raises their hand to be called on.

Based on the feedback I received from Irene and my students, I have reached exemplary status in this CAP element.