Celebrating Progress

            One of the most important ways you can demonstrate high expectations as well as help your students raise their expectations of themselves is to celebrate progress as well as achievement. 

            In today’s schools, we tend to focus on whether students have achieved a certain standard or goal.  That’s great, but there are some students for whom that is an impossible benchmark.  I used to joke with my students that they couldn’t see past the end of their noses to look at our long-term goals (especially the year-end standardized test).  If you plan to help your students achieve, you’ll need to celebrate each step they make toward the goal. 

            One way to do this is to have a “Progress is Power” bulletin board.  You can track students’ improvements, and showcase the progress they are making.  In the classrooms I’ve visited, teachers use anything from train tracks to balloons to graphs to visually represent the progress of their students.  I’d offer one caution, though. Another way is to use tiger or lion paws to take time to "Paws for Progress". Stop, reflect on progress, and celebrate with those paws.