There’s a thought a lot of teachers have and never say in a staff meeting. You’re thinking about one student, the one in the back, and a quiet voice says, “Maybe I’m not the right person for this kid. Somebody who grew up the way he grew up could reach him better.”
Edward DeShazer was that student. He started receiving special education services in third grade and was expelled in sixth grade, in eighth grade, and again a month into his freshman year. Teachers had heard about him before he walked in the door. Today he sits on an education board with the principal and superintendent who expelled him.
Somewhere in that freshman year was Mrs. Davis, his Brit Lit teacher. She was a white teacher from the Milwaukee suburbs. She didn’t pretend to share his life, didn’t borrow his slang, and didn’t send him down to the special education wing when he tested her. She told him there was something special in him and held him to the standard in her room.
Edward walks through research from economists Seth Gershenson and Nicholas Papageorge. When two teachers rated the same Black tenth grader, the non-Black teacher was about 30 percent less likely to expect that student to finish a four-year degree. The researchers point out that this kind of bias is part of human nature and isn’t a verdict on whether you’re a good person. Their follow-up work found that teacher expectations affect whether students actually finish college. That’s the Believe’ment Gap: the distance between what we assume from a kid’s file and what that kid can do once someone in the building believes in them.
You’ll leave with two moves. Write one honest sentence about where you think a student will be in 10 years, then ask where that belief came from. And find two minutes to ask that student something their file can’t answer, then remember what they told you. There’s also a practice for grade level team meetings and a word from Edward’s faith about why that student landed in your room on purpose.
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