No Excuses

We must hold our students to high standards. Unfortunately in my experience this sometimes translates into a "no excuses" approach to education.  

It's not about giving Jimmy a pass because his home life is a wreck.  But we often contextualize situations through our own experiences, our own stories.  Most teachers at my school are middle-class Caucasians like myself.  And while I cannot speak for my colleagues, I know that my own childhood was idyllic when compared to those of some of my students.  I could never have imagined the kids of things my students have gone through--homelessness, abuse, foster care, rape, etc.  And this ignorance, this reliance on an incomplete story, has dangerous consequences in the classroom. 

When we hold kids to high standards without doing the hard work of building appropriate scaffolds to help them live up to those expectations, we send the message that our curriculum is more important than they are.  It's lazy teaching disguised as rigor.  We can be both mindful of our students stories AND support them in accessing the skills they need to be successful.  But to do so, we must first be willing to listen.