Our Students and the Self Fulfilling Prophecy: Avoiding Gloom and Doom!
I remember when I was in college a LONG time ago, we learned about the self-fulfilling prophecy. I don't recall the professor who taught it, but somehow it has managed to stay in my head after all these years. If you believe it, it could happen, good or bad, positive or negative, our expectations influence those around us. When the professor introduced this concept, he wanted to emphasize the damage we could do to our students if we had preconceived notions about them and what they were capable of.
In the education field this is particularly true. We have a huge impact on what happens to the hundreds of lives who sit in our classrooms, year after year. How many times have we heard successful people credit a teacher who believed in