the other day, I was having a conversation with a fellow teacher about student expectations. We were discussing how there seem to be so many more students failing than when we were in school. We laughed and said we sound old, that our teachers probably said the same thing when we were in school. However, it really got us thinking... are we expecting too much from our students?
As we kept chatting, we remembered that when we were in middle school, neither of us studied much but still were able to get good grades (A's and B's). I honestly don't remember working that hard or stressing about school in general. This led to us discussing what we actually learned versus what we are teaching nowadays.
We slowly realized that the content students learn has trickled down grade levels over time. What we learned in high school, is now being taught in middle school and what we learned in middle school, is now being taught in elementary school. We could not seem to pinpoint when this happened, but figured it was in response to the United States losing ground against other countries.
So are we expecting too much from students? Are they not capable of what we think they should know? I guess only time will tell, but by student failure rates, something is not right.
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