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Over the past 20 years of supporting teachers, I've learned that having high expectations is very important—for the effect on the student and on the teacher. You can see it in the preceding examples where teachers were making connections while also maintaining high standards. When teachers believe that their students can achieve at high levels and tell them so, they tend to teach in ways that are more engaging, and their students are likely to work harder to meet those expectations.

Several years ago, I observed a middle school science class. The teacher projected a picture of a flower on the SmartBoard and then went on to discuss the different parts of the flower. While discussing one part of the flower, he mentioned the feel. “It's extremely soft and feels almost like suede,” he said. He then discussed its smell by describing it as “sweet smelling” and “like perfume.” As I watched the students, I noticed that they were having a hard time focusing on the lesson.

A solution was directly across the street: a park with flowers in full bloom. Yet, rather than have the students touch and feel actual flowers, he designed an abstract lesson about flowers that the students had a hard time understanding. Frustrated by what I observed, I asked him why he didn't simply take his class across the street to the park. “My students can't handle that. It'll be a huge behavioral issue if I take them.”

“Oh, so they had a hard time the last time you tried to take them?” I asked.

“No, I mean, I've never taken them over there, but based on their behavior in here, I know what to expect.”

“So do they get to go outside in their other classes?” I asked.

“I really don't know. I never asked them before.”

Having low expectations about his students’ abilities to behave led the teacher to limit how he taught and limit his students’ opportunities to explore actual flowers. Of course, the teacher could have been right. They could have gone outside and behaved exactly as he had predicted. Or, he could have discovered that by making connections to things outside of his classroom and giving his students the opportunity to explore and be immersed in nature, they might have demonstrated a higher level of interest and engagement. The point is that by having low expectations of them, he ensured those were the only ones they had a chance to meet.

Sylinda Sinkfield, 17, struggled in a traditional high school and eventually transferred to an alternative school. She was the kind of student for whom many people would have had low expectations, especially in a semi-structured learning environment. Here she writes about how the high expectations in her new school's internship program—and the opportunity to meet them—increased her motivation and enhanced her learning in science:

Last fall, I was looking for an internship that would give me some science credits, but I wanted something in the Bronx, which is where I live. The only internship was at the Botanical Garden, which is a place in the Bronx that has plants and flowers from all over the world that people can come look at.

Now, you know if they tell you that you are going to work with plants, you probably think it's going to be boring. Well, this internship became one of the best experiences of my life.

The Botanical Garden has “discover carts.” These carts tell you about a certain type of plant in a particular area of the garden. For example, in the desert there is a desert cart that has cacti. (That's plural for cactus.)

One day during training, Karl, my program director, told me I would be working at the orchid cart in the tropical rainforest and giving talks to visitors on orchids. My talks would involve telling visitors about the parts of an orchid, showing them the inside of the flower, and explaining how it is pollinated. (I learned all of this during training.)

At first I thought to myself, I am not going to be able to handle this.

My first day at the orchid cart was scary. My hands were wet from the fear of messing up. A man named Norman came over to my cart. He worked in the Botanical Garden and knew a lot more than I did. I gave my first talk to him. But he was a pain because he kept correcting me.

After that experience with Norman, I decided I needed to do a lot of research on orchids so I wouldn't make those mistakes again. I went to the library in the Botanical Garden and looked up orchids. I found out that I had much to learn. As I began to learn more and more about orchids, I started to love them, and my program director couldn't get me away from them.

Before I started working at the Botanical Garden, I couldn't understand why people would want to look at trees and plants. Now I realize that trees are not just trees. What I mean is that trees don't look the same to me anymore. I can walk up to a turkey oak tree and know what it is because of the nuts. I didn't even know there was such a tree called turkey oak before.

One of the core beliefs of DCRT is that schools shape how students feel about themselves and what's possible for their lives. In Sylinda's case, her internship provided her with the opportunity to see her Bronx neighborhood as a place where science actually happens and a place where people from around the world come to learn about plants. Her internship also provided her with the opportunity to help others learn as she taught them about orchids. Ultimately, these connections between the science she learned in her classroom and her application of her scientific knowledge in the real world increased her interest in science and helped her to see trees in new ways—as a scientist would.