Yesterday on Twitter, I read this tweet by a first year teacher, Ms. Beatty:

Recently got the advice of, “Start off hard, you can always get softer,” in terms of student relationships at the beginning of the year. What do you make of that? Is it good advice? Or misguided?

This was my response:

Start with (your personal) high expectations. This can be hard to start, but it’s not starting off intentionally hard… If you don’t share your high expectations early, it gets harder later.

I think these two things get confused and purpose gets lost in the message.

I understand why advice like ‘Start off hard’ would persist in education. A lot of new teachers come in wanting the students to like them, and wanting students to have a wonderful time in their class. So, these new teachers might go overboard being accommodating in ways that potentially, in the long run, hinder their ability to push students to be their best. You might say that they ‘start off being too soft’, and so the ‘go in hard’ advice becomes the counterpoint.

But what’s the purpose or intention of ‘going in hard’? What is it that is being achieved? Is it a need to manage behaviour? Is it control of the class? Is it that you need to assert dominance?

If that’s not it, then what is it you are trying to achieve… And how else can you achieve that? If you are going into a new class to be especially ‘hard’, what does that look like?

Turn that around now and think of ways that students can buy into your (high) expectations, rather than complying to your hard rules and heavy hand. Can they help create class rules and expectations? Can you share your expectations in a positive way?

Once these class rules or expectations are created, then sticking to them isn’t being hard. What’s hard is doing this fairly.

Students will make mistakes… how is this handled? Has this been determined?

Teachers will make mistakes… such as not being fair – giving one student a break, but not another, or breaking the rules ‘because I’m the teacher and I can’.

I think the hard part of the new school year is:

1. Clearly establishing expectations (hopefully with student input).

2. Being consistent with those expectations.

I also think these can be done without being intentionally hard on kids.