Teachers want to grow in their ability to reach all students. Unfortunately, other than the once a year formal evaluation, teachers do not have a mirror into their teaching. Without knowing their strengthens and weaknesses, teachers cannot grow. Teachers who want to grow in their teaching can pursue the TESA program.

Teacher Expectations Student Achievement (TESA), a popular professional development program, emphasizes that teachers treat high achievers drastically different than low achievers and therefore, the low achievers do, in fact, achieve less. TESA affirms that when low achievers are treated in the same way as high achievers, they achieve more. TESA helps to reduce bias in terms of gender and ethnicity in the classroom while, at the same time, increasing the positive learning climate.

TESA has several strands. The first strand, response opportunities, includes equitable distribution, individual help, latency, delving, and higher-level questions. The next strand, feedback, consists of affirm/correct, praise, reason for praise, listening, and accepting feelings. The last strand, personal regard, incorporates proximity, courtesy, personal interest and compliments, touching and desisting.

Another teacher in the TESA program watches the classroom teacher for one interaction in each strand during an observation. For example, the observer may analyze the presence of equitable distribution, affirm/correct, and proximity during one visit. Usually the classroom teacher selects five high achievers and five low achievers; the observer does not know the designation of any student. When the class is done, the observing teacher gives the objective score for the presence of these interactions for each student. Since this is a teacher to teacher peer evaluation, there is no threat to the teacher; on the contrary, the classroom teacher looks forward to having a mirror into his/her teaching.

The most common reaction to a TESA observation is “I didn't realize that I ....” Each person's revelations are different . Teacher A is shocked to find out that whenever he asks a question to high achievers, he consistently waits five seconds (latency) for them to answer the question; however, when he asks a question of low achievers, he only waits for five seconds ten percent of the time. Likewise, teacher B discovers that she almost always affirms or corrects the answers of high achievers while she usually (seventy five percent of the time) glosses over the answers of low achievers with neutral statements like “Let's hear some other answers.” Similarly, teacher C has the epiphany that when high achievers respond incorrectly to his questions, he delves with additional questions to help those students to be successful. Unfortunately, he rarely (less than ten percent of the time) delves when low achievers have an incorrect answer.

These observation results serve as an educational awakening to classroom teachers. Once they realize what really has been happening in their classroom, they can begin to make changes and implement strategies to help them provide equitable treatment to all students. A teacher who has a low distribution score for non-achievers decides to put each student's name on a three by five card to insure that he calls on each student equally. A teacher who does not allow latency for low achievers starts to count silently to herself after she asks any question to guarantee that all students will be given five seconds to think through an answer. A teacher who has rarely praised low achievers makes it a habit to praise every student each time they response; he even posts some praise comments on a wall to help him have different statements.

Teachers who have gone through the TESA program verify that the program can make a tremendous difference in their professional life. They begin to change some or all of the fifteen interactions in the classroom. All of the students notice the difference as the learning expectations and actual learning increase in the classroom.

Dr. Harry Grover Tuttle focuses on assessing and improving student learning through low- and high-tech tools.

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