High Expectations Professional Learning 

The High Expectations Teaching workshop series focuses on techniques to give ALL students the confidence, desire, and strategies to outperform their own expectations. This is accomplished through three necessary, ongoing commitments:

1. to build relationships with students
2. to deliver culturally relevant instruction
3. to believe in ourselves that we can really do this!

Participants will:

• Understand the history of intelligence and examine their own beliefs
• Learn how their use of language in various arenas of classroom life can powerfully communicate embedded belief messages
• Practice specific verbal behaviours for calling on students, responding to student answers, giving help, changing attitudes toward errors, giving tasks and assignments, giving feedback, reframing re-teaching, and pushing back on fixed mindset language
• Gain strategies for creating classroom routines and structures that help students see their progress and take responsibility (agency) for their learning
• Understand the six attributes of effective effort and how they can be built into daily classroom instruction

Learn more about the recommended workshop sequence below.

Laying the Groundwork for Transfer (1Day)

Workshops and training may have no transfer into teacher practice without coaching or other forms of substantive follow up by administrators and district personnel. Half of this day will be planning the most effective ways to ensure transfer that are appropriate for district resources and structures. The other half of this day will provide an energizing half-day session for top district leaders on the actual content on the High Expectations Teaching module.

High Expectations Teaching: Core Concepts (3 Days)

This workshop is devoted to the core concepts of High Expectations Teaching, including the history of “intelligence” and the evidence behind the theory of malleable intelligence. Participants practice new verbal behaviours, develop classroom structures that generate student agency and do a case study of “Attribution Retraining,” with a particular low-confidence, low-performing student.

Implementation Services for Transfer

This day is custom designed for district needs in order to ensure transfer into teacher practice. It could include a session for instructional coaches on how to give feedback to teachers on High Expectations Teaching. It could include a workshop for administrators on observation for High Expectations Teaching skills—their presence, absence, or missed opportunities. It could include a presentation to the school board co-presented with district personnel on the significance and substance of High Expectations Teaching.

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