Deconstructing the Norm

On the first day of school, Ramy Mahmoud's ninth-grade students heard this from their teacher:

"I want to talk to you a bit about your seats. I want to make it very clear that I have purposely avoided learning anything about you except your names, and I promise not to look up anything about you for the first two weeks of school. This way, any ideas or thoughts I have about you will be based on our face-to face interactions every day. Today, in my class, all of you start with a clean slate. I don't care how successful or unsuccessful you've been in the past, because in this class, it doesn't matter. How you perform this year is based entirely on how much effort, excitement and motivation you show in this class every single day. I'm so excited to start this journey with you, and I can't wait to see how far we'll move together."

Using this approach, Mahmoud “completely changed the atmosphere of [the] classroom."

Mahmoud, a secondary science teacher and university lecturer, explains, "My kids honestly felt as if they were equals, both with each other and with me. We continued our journey together for the rest of the year, and my "low performer" group was nonexistent. My kids always knew I saw them for exactly who they were and not what their stats said about them. They knew I had no preconceived ideas about them, no stereotypes. They knew I cared about them because I took the time to truly get to know them.”

Read more in "A Tale of Two Perspectives: My Experience Starting with a Clean Slate."

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