Asking more of our students

(guest post by Kauai HS teacher and State Teacher Fellow Jonathan Medeiros)

“As a first year teacher, I taught remedial reading to 9th and 10th graders in a rural school on the island of Kauai in Hawaii. When I saw the materials for the class, I was concerned: Each student was given a leveled reader on a childish topic. Instead of inspiring the kids, the texts bored and discouraged them. I realized that by lowering our expectations and closing the door to high-quality materials, we were really closing the door to high-level thinking and growth for these students. And worse, we were leaving them with a lasting belief that they were not capable of the same learning as their peers.

A few years later, I started teaching AP English. The instructional materials were not perfect but they were an improvement from the remedial class in terms of complexity and demand for digging below the surface. Unfortunately, these materials were only available to the 20 or so kids in the course. That door was closed to everyone else. So I said, ‘If I’m going to teach this class, I have to open that door.’ I went to every 10th grade class and told every sophomore, ‘If you want to take this class, you are welcome. All of you are welcome.’

I had nearly 100 students that next year, including many from my original remedial classes. The more those kids delved into those high-quality texts, the more their competence rose – and the more their confidence grew. Two kids, a student who qualified for special education services and a Filipino ELL student, both told me I was the first teacher who made them feel like they could really learn, that they were welcome in those more rigorous courses – simply by giving them instructional materials that challenged them and setting the expectation that their potential was equal to those around them.

That remedial reading course doesn’t exist anymore, but I still recognize the kids who would have been condemned to below grade-level content and low expectations based on little else than the color of their skin, or how much money their families have, or another factor that’s outside of their control. I see them in my AP course, working right along with the other kids, and they’re all succeeding together. And I see that when we open the door to high-quality materials, strong instruction, and high expectations for every kid, we open the door to every student’s true potential.”