Belief Must Match Behavior



Belief Must Match Behavior 
“I have high expectations for all of my students and I believe in them.” This is a statement that I sometimes hear from different educators, but when I visit their schools or classrooms, it looks different.
The reality is that some students take longer to reach, some students need more help than others and this is okay,  it is what we call equity in education. Providing what students need, when they need it, no matter what they look like or what our prejudice may be. 
It is a hard conversation to talk about unconscious bias with others, but without addressing it, the prejudice will continue and the actions that should come with belief, will not be happening. Reflecting on my own education experience, I witnessed firsthand my own teachers lowering expectations for kids that did not look like me.  
When you looked out the front door of my childhood home, you would see orange groves and when you looked out the back of the house, you would see avocado groves. The town was surrounded by three different Indian reservations and it was definitely country living. It would shock many of you to hear the town that I am referring to is located in North San Diego County. I have lived a very privileged life, where my parents provided for me and have given me the opportunity to do what I wanted. We didn’t have tons of money, but we had what we needed. 
My high school was made up of about 35% Latinos, 35% Native America, and 30% others. Our classrooms were filled with a mixture of different ethnicities and genders. I can remember sly comments from teachers about different students and where they come from. I can remember myself feeling that expectations were different for different kids, based off of what they looked like. These feelings that I was having about racial prejudices spilled out into the quad area as well. Fights would break out between different racial groups and a lot of yelling about how “their people” were not smart and educated would happen. 
It got to a point where the Latinos and Native Americans hated each other so much that you could feel the hatred in the air. One Thursday at the end of the first semester everything came to a head. I vividly remember standing in the quad when I could see hundreds of students walking towards each other. The Latino students fought the native Americans and it got crazy. For weeks, we were searched as we entered school to make sure that nothing worse would happen. 
The expectations that people had for one another came true. I look back at this experience as one that we must all learn from. We must set our expectations high for Latinos, Blacks, Native Americans, Whites, and all students. Once we set those high expectations for ALL students, we then build the supports to get everyone the same opportunity. Not all kids will achieve the same, but we want all students to have the same opportunity because that is what kids deserve. 
Be The One who believes in every child. Be The One who ensures that their actions match those beliefs. The students will do the rest.

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