By Yin Nwe Ko
EVERY fortnight, I have to correct the essays of my intermediate-level students, which are submitted as a project. They have to do their projects in spite of having less time in their studies in various subjects. I have also to concentrate on their submitted work. First, I have to take great care sentence by sentence. Then, I contemplate whether their essays are going well with their titles and how many grades I will have to give them. Among many essays, some were very interesting and fantastic but realistic. However, most of them seemed to be common and general. One day, an essay made my interest rise and I read it three times from the beginning to the end. It was entitled “The Pressure of High Expectations”. I guessed it seemed her personal experiences in her surroundings of education. The following is her original writing…
Just a week ago, I had what I considered bad grades. I had “B”s in English and math, and that made me feel like I was not meeting my parents’ high expectations, as well as those of my siblings. In my family, the only acceptable grades are “A”s – anything lower, and my parents will be disappointed. It bothered me, but I still did not feel overwhelmed by it. I knew that they were just quarter grades and if I brought them up by the end of the semester, everything would be fine. However, many students struggle with high expectations, whether it’s academic or in sports because these expectations come with the pressure that some students cannot handle. The biggest problem with high expectations is that once students feel they can’t handle the pressure, their schools are unable to provide resources to help.
High expectations can put students under intense pressure. In an article, once I read about how students in high-achieving schools have been designated as an “at-risk” group, the author wrote, “The unrelenting pressure on students in high-achieving schools comes from every direction, from overly invested parents who want. As coaches who want wins for their own personal reputations and school administrators who feel pressured to get high standardized scores in their school.” It is hard to get things right when you have expectations dragging you down, especially when it’s coming from the people you know or love. Sometimes these expectations can push students to their limits. I fear disappointing my parents and grandparents; the moment that I fear most is my parents realizing I did not meet their expectations. They expect good grades and good behaviour, which for me means straight “A”s and having good classroom behaviour. If I cannot meet these expectations, not only will I be met with disappointment from my parents, but also consequences – less internet access, taking away my devices, and even more tutoring.
One of the problems with the pressure of expectations is that many teachers and schools don’t have effective mental health strategies. A teacher wrote on a website, “In my day-to-day work life, I see two common – and mostly inadequate – mental health strategies deployed to help high schoolers who look like they might be struggling: First, take some time, and second, get caught up. Even if the advice is phrased differently, it’s usually a variation on the same theme. Students are advised to take the adolescent equivalent of a personal day, and then complete their work accordingly.”
This approach does not address the root of the problems that the students have, only the symptoms. It just tells the students to take a break, but that will not help them. Even after the “personal day”, the student will still have to meet the same expectations they were trying to take a break from, and they will feel pressured all over again. The article I mentioned above reported that “adolescents in high-achieving schools can suffer significantly higher rates of anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and delinquent behaviours, at least two to three times the national average”. The better the school, the higher the expectations for the students, and when schools do not have adequate mental health strategies, these students can suffer serious consequences. Schools should care more about how their students are doing emotionally, rather than how they’re doing academically.
When I saw that I had a couple of “B”s, I was not overwhelmed. I knew I had plenty of time to fix those grades. However, some people can feel overwhelmed by pressure coming from the high expectations created by the people in their lives. These students can’t turn to their schools for help if the schools are not equipped with adequate mental health resources. Without help from schools, the students facing the pressure can suffer from consequences that can impact them physically and mentally. Schools need to focus more of their resources on their students’ mental health, as well as put their students in a position where they can do well academically without the negative effects of stress and pressure. In order to do these things, the district and community need to make sure the schools have what they need.
That is the end of her essay. Moreover, we need to consider more about the pressures as an important requirement of OFSTED (The office for the standard of education) inspections – teacher expectations, particularly of disadvantaged students, must be high. However, a new study asks whether this policy has any unintended consequences for our students. A good school must have high expectations for all students and urge them to achieve the most they can, whatever their starting point. No one would argue with this statement.
However, at the same time, there has been little research into the impact, or not, that high expectations might have. With increasing concern about mental health in our classrooms, could the climate of high expectations be partly to blame? Conclusions from a new study suggest that perhaps we should look more closely at the effect that applying “pressure of expectations” has on children’s learning experiences. The research finds that teachers’ pressure expectations might lead to pupils working harder but that there are other implications too.
The researchers, Lars-Erik Malmberg from the Univerisity of Oxford and Andrew J Martin from the University of New South Wales found that students reported enjoying lessons with higher pressure expectations less and that they also felt less confident in these subjects. This is not a criticism of the expectations agenda. The authors acknowledge the importance of pushing students and encouraging them to do well. But they do issue a word of warning that pushing too much may leave students feeling demotivated, exhausted, and with less confidence. Reference: Teen Ink
