Most foundational teaching classes stress the importance of establishing rules, routines, and expectations on the first day of school. You’ll often find a list, like the one below, posted in the front of the classroom.
- Raise your hand.
- Be respectful.
- Be prepared.
And while it is important to stress the importance of these norms in the gifted support classroom, I just felt like the students needed to hear more from me. The ability to learn, especially at a high level, is truly a gift. Learning is an active, not passive, process, and the ability to apply what you learn is critical.
Twitter is one of my favorite forms of professional development. I stumbled across these classroom expectations one weekend, and I could not stop thinking about them.
While the graphic was created by me, I cannot claim these incredibly powerful statements to by my own. Despite my best online search efforts, I was not able to uncover their origination. If you are reading this and know who created them, please let me know because I would love to give them full credit.