{"id":370,"date":"2012-10-12T09:12:25","date_gmt":"2012-10-12T09:12:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/testv69.demowebsitelinks.com\/LiminalConsultingWP\/?p=370"},"modified":"2025-03-17T09:13:00","modified_gmt":"2025-03-17T09:13:00","slug":"the-power-of-belief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/testv69.demowebsitelinks.com\/LiminalConsultingWP\/the-power-of-belief\/","title":{"rendered":"The Power of Belief"},"content":{"rendered":"
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As I drove into work this morning, I realized that in a foreseeable amount of time (one month from now), a long-term goal that has been one of the biggest challenges I ever set out to achieve will culminate: I will defend my dissertation and have earned my PhD.\u00a0 Though it\u2019s easy to pat myself on the back for realizing a long-held dream, I think it\u2019s important to acknowledge that I didn\u2019t get here alone.<\/p>\n

Last January, I met a gentleman who engaged me in a conversation about my dissertation.\u00a0 Though I often expressed uncertainty and doubt about what I was doing and the direction I was working, he said, \u201cI\u2019m sure you\u00a0do<\/em>\u00a0understand this better than you think.\u201d\u00a0 From that point forward, he became my unpaid and ever helpful, dissertation coach.\u00a0 In our short conversation, he expressed more belief in my ability to finish AND belief that I knew what I was doing than others who I consider responsible for guiding me through this process.\u00a0 In subsequent months, he continued to email and talk with me, always asking how the work was coming along, always expressing his certainty in my ability, intellect, and drive to finish. Alas, I will prove him right.\u00a0 And as I stand on the precipice of this achievement, I understand how important his belief, and others, has been in helping me to marshal my own strength and determination to move forward and finish.<\/p>\n

We often bemoan the achievement gap as if it were a formidable foe that we can\u2019t conquer.\u00a0\u00a0 As a former classroom teacher, I understand how daunting it is to have a student who doesn\u2019t attend class on a regular basis, or the student whose skills are so low that as the teacher you are pained by how difficult even a \u201csimple\u201d task can be.\u00a0\u00a0 Perhaps what is most needed in these moments of self-doubt is the belief that we as educators\u00a0can<\/em>\u00a0help even the seemingly least prepared students.\u00a0 As educators, we must\u00a0believe<\/em>\u00a0that all children\u00a0can<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0will<\/em>\u00a0learn.<\/p>\n

Recently, NPR\u2019s\u00a0Morning Edition<\/em>, featured a segment featuring Dean of Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia, Robert Pianta\u2019s work on teacher expectation.\u00a0 Pianta made the point that if teachers\u00a0believe<\/em>\u00a0their students will achieve, this belief permeates a multitude of small interactions that teacher has with those students.\u00a0 This includes such things as how the teacher handles potentially disruptive behaviors, and how he\/she responds to students\u2019 questions and classroom contributions. \u00a0His research reveals that you can\u2019t just talk about belief; rather teachers have to engage in concentrated training to change behaviors.\u00a0 Some of this involves videotaping themselves and viewing with other teachers in order to realize the often subtle ways teachers negatively reinforce behaviors from students they have lower expectations.\u00a0 \u00a0The result from this intensive training is that teachers realize that BELIEF MATTERS and shapes\u00a0their<\/em>\u00a0behaviors, rather than simply focusing on how students are deficit.<\/p>\n

At its foundation, teaching and learning is a shared social activity.\u00a0 It\u2019s important to consider how our own beliefs and ideas about what it means\u00a0to teach<\/em>\u00a0and what is involved in\u00a0learning<\/em>\u00a0to understand how that shapes our behaviors.\u00a0 More importantly, we must consider our beliefs about students in our classroom to order to become more effective at nurturing and sustaining the children within our care.<\/p>\n

NOTE: This blog was first posted on the West Wind Education Policy Inc., website on October 12, 2012.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I drove into work this morning, I realized that in a foreseeable amount of time (one month from now), a long-term goal that has been one of the biggest challenges I ever set out to achieve will culminate: I will defend my dissertation and have earned my PhD.\u00a0 Though it\u2019s easy to pat myself […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":371,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/testv69.demowebsitelinks.com\/LiminalConsultingWP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/testv69.demowebsitelinks.com\/LiminalConsultingWP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/testv69.demowebsitelinks.com\/LiminalConsultingWP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testv69.demowebsitelinks.com\/LiminalConsultingWP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testv69.demowebsitelinks.com\/LiminalConsultingWP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=370"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/testv69.demowebsitelinks.com\/LiminalConsultingWP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":372,"href":"https:\/\/testv69.demowebsitelinks.com\/LiminalConsultingWP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370\/revisions\/372"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testv69.demowebsitelinks.com\/LiminalConsultingWP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/testv69.demowebsitelinks.com\/LiminalConsultingWP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testv69.demowebsitelinks.com\/LiminalConsultingWP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testv69.demowebsitelinks.com\/LiminalConsultingWP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}