Opportunity and expectation

I thought I might post a couple of videos that have recently been doing the rounds o the web. Working at an all-girls school, with a focus on empowering girls and women, plus having two daughters of my own, these really struck a chord with me.

I've been thinking a lot about women's empowerment over the past few weeks. Its one of our school-wide goals for next year and we'll be discussing it with the senior leadership team when I return to work in August. At this stage I'm working with two words: opportunity and expectation. 

It's part of our role as educators to ensure that our students are exposed to opportunities that they may not have discovered on their own. These opportunities could be in specific subject fields such as science, language or maths, or in other areas such as leadership. Opportunity is not enough, however. We need to hold high expectations of our students and they need to hold high expectations of themselves. Hattie reports that self-reported grades - the teacher finding out the student's expectations and pushing them to exceed these expectations - have the greatest influence on student achievement. Once a learner has performed at a level that is beyond their own expectations, she gains confidence in her learning ability.

I'd love to hear other people's thoughts on the empowerment of women - leave a comment if you want to be part of the conversation.