We just finished a fantastic #edchat on the topic of whether students in the "middle" get enough attention. Once again, this #edchat really started some thoughts for me, mainly, as asked by @web20classroom if there are even students in the middle?
We label students to make it easier for us to teach them. Administration likes the labels because they can show how we improve, newspapers like labels because it shows people what their tax dollar is spent on. Unfortunately, we assume a lot of the time that if a student is "low" in math then that carries over to other subjects as well. (See my previous post on how I feel about assumptions). So just as we place kids in the high group, we also place kids as average learners. Think about the implication of that though; by labeling someone average, which has practically become a swear word, we are closing off our view of them as a learner. No longer allowed to evolve, that child is just average. Imagine saying that in a parent-teacher conference.
And yet, our students amaze us. The biggest hallelujah moments I have had have been when those "low" or "average" learners all of a sudden understood complicated concepts or excelled at a task. I don't have those same hallelujah moments when my "high" learners figure something out, after all, they are supposed to figure it out. Have you ever seen gifted students struggle? It is the same struggle that all students go through and yet we tend to gloss over it because we have more confidence in them as learners because of their label. And yet, once we have labeled someone as gifted we don't reevaluate that label. Sure, Suzy may be gifted in math but does that mean she is gifted in everything else, not just subjects, but life? No, it means she is really good at math.
So if someone is "average" we assume they are always "average" except for those few moments where they shine. This is a debilitating view of your classroom and something I wish to combat next year. Truth is, all of our students are low, average, and high learners. The categories and labels change depending on the topic, the subject, the style of learning, the assignment, the day, the weather - so many factors change it. If we are too set in our ways as educators, we will fail to notice how these labels are suffocating our students, if we do not make the labels or groupings flexible.
So promise yourself to not label your students, or at least label them for that task at that moment and then go back and revisit that label for the next task. It may seem like a lot of work but your learning experience as a classroom will be much improved. And you may even raise the confidence level of a couple of students in the process.
