Teacher Beliefs

I have been reading a lot about student engagement and motivation as I prepare for my master’s degree action research, and the school year generally. I keep re-sifting the  research, and many interesting ideas are getting stuck in the sieve. My attention is being drawn to the idea of teacher beliefs. Two big ideas: a teacher’s sense of efficacy–my confidence about how effective my teaching will be to bring about student achievement, and a teacher’s expectations–my beliefs about my students’ ability to learn.

Our Identity, Our Mission

Here’s inspiration for a good beginning:

Each student’s heart must be caught up in the passion and enjoyment of learning and reading. This attitude is a mindset that must be nurtured daily. Time for this cultivating of spirit is set into every day’s lesson plans. It is imperative that I teach each student that they can learn, regardless of whatever they believe hinders them…Teaching students to know they can learn requires that I couple an academic sense of identity with a sense of mission. This begins the first moment I meet my pupils. (A. Isennagle in At-Risk Students: Portraits, Policies, Programs, and Practices, 1993 pp. 373-74)

Intention

Bud Hunt wrote An Open Letter to Teachers reminding us of the essentials; it’s going up on the wall in my classroom this week. It’s rich and full of encouragement–please read it. Here’s the part that gets stuck in my throat:

I wish you well. I ask you to be brave and humble and kind and tenacious and wise and caring and gentle and fierce. We so need you to do well… Do good stuff.

That’s what I hope for my students too, because we so need them to do well. And I hope–I intend–that my expectations and efficacy will show that I believe to the core that they will.