It’s All About Modulating Our Expectations

I confess to being a Type A personality. I drive myself pretty hard and have very high expectations of myself. Of course, it would be natural to assume that I would also demand perfection of my students. However, I learned early on that students become frustrated when expectations are too high. We know that every student has what is called a zone of proximal development, a place on a continuum of knowledge and skill development where students can successfully and comfortably work at tasks in the classroom. However, every student's zone of proximal development is different and so we have to adjust what we expect our students to do in any one period of time. We have to find that sweet spot between frustration, ease and challenge.