From the Headmaster - Pursuing personal best by setting high expectations
There is no doubt that effective teachers promote excellence in student achievement by setting aspiring goals and enabling young people to achieve their personal best.
Effective teachers also understand the difference between high expectations and high pressure, and can encourage and support their students in achieving individual learning excellence without overloading them with pressure.
It is important to understand that there is a difference between high expectations and high pressure.
High expectations is helping a young person reach their potential……to be their best; high pressure is expecting a young person to be the best.
Undoubtedly, it is a fine line. It’s obviously important to have expectations, because if you have no expectations then people don’t strive for things. High expectations can have a significant impact on a young person’s attitude and self-worth, as well as a likely increase in their motivation levels and self-confidence.
So, if high expectations help young people to feel confident and capable, what are some key strategies that we as parents can adopt to reduce pressure on our children whist maintaining high expectations:
"A growth mindset is the key to success. It involves focussing on the value of the process that goes into things, rather than the outcome."
With a growth mindset, a young person will have high expectations of the effort that goes into study and learning, while a fixed mindset may put high pressure on getting consistently top marks.
We can support a growth mindset in young people by emphasising the importance of hard work — the key to better outcomes, and also as something of value in and of itself.
Many young people become overwhelmed by pressure because they don’t know exactly what is expected of them. As parents, we want our children to do well at school… but what does this mean?
To top the class? Or to acquire knowledge and skills?
It is important to set achievable expectations for children and make sure they know exactly what they are, and how you expect them to achieve them.
This again places the focus on the processes, rather than outcomes.
Not every child can get into the top sporting team. Nor can every student top the class.
But they can still play sport, improve and even excel.
It is reasonable and beneficial to expect fulfilled potential, but putting high pressure on numbers and ranks can be unproductive, and often detrimental.
Young people might seek out help with their assignments, and this is entirely acceptable, but it’s important to remember that young people are expected to be competent enough to independently fulfil all of their school-set obligations.
By helping them too much, we can send the message that our expectations are low, and that they can’t meet those set by their teacher. Even if they do struggle, ‘setbacks’, in its many forms, is an inevitable part of life.
We must remember that our children grow to be motivated by their mistakes, to discover where they went wrong, and to strive to fix them in the future – on their own.
Let children know we have faith in their ability, that we believe they are confident and capable, and that importantly, hard work is what’s needed to get good results.
Offer them whatever emotional and practical support you can in order to achieve their goals. This could mean offering them a sympathetic ear when they’re feeling stressed, or listening to them go over what they learnt in school over dinner.
However, it’s important to be restrained with both reassurance and praise in the face of disappointment. For example, praising a child to comfort them over a disappointing outcome may send the wrong message… not only can it suggest you have low expectations, it may negate the impact of genuine praise.
And reassurance in times of upset can be similarly problematic; it can suggest that you have a lack of confidence — and therefore low expectations — of your child’s ability, and it can be an ‘easy out’ from addressing setbacks head-on as learning experiences.
All in all, the best emotional and practical support we can offer children is during the process, not after the outcome.
And one of the best ways we can support children, boost their confidence, and increase their motivation, is to have high expectations.
10 April 2024
The Knox Grammar School Cadet Unit has well and truly settled in to life at AFX Camp, with all activities now underway.
25 March 2024
Year 12 student Tyler Jackson spent a fruitful few days in the nation’s capital last week at the 29th National Schools Constitutional Convention, held at Old Parliament House.
18 March 2024
The Leukaemia Foundation will receive more than $100,000 from the Knox team after students and staff matched their fundraising goal to the School’s centenary year.
