Express that you have high expectations and believe that if the student works hard, the student will be able to meet them.

Action:

  • When providing critiques orally or in writing, tell students that you have high expectations and believe that they can meet them.

Reason:

  • David Kirp in a New York Times article summarized an article by Cohen, Steele, & Ross (1999) “when an English teacher critiqued black male adolescents’ papers, she added a sentence stating that she had high expectations and believed that, if the student worked hard, he could meet her exacting standards. Eighty-eight percent of those students rewrote the assignment and put more effort into rewriting, while just a third of their peers, who were given comments that simply provided feedback, did the same.”