What should we expect from our students

I love watching these videos on how classrooms should change and what we can do to make our classrooms better as teachers. I must admit however, the more I watch of them the more cynical and defensive I've become. If I can look past this cynicism and let my guard down a little bit something positive can be taken from all of these statements and testimonies. I found the following video to be especially valuable. It is called Students on: What should be expected of them. I think the speaker in this video is dead on. We need to push our kids to higher order questioning and thought. Before kids can do this they need to have a connection. As teachers our challenge is to hook these kids and attempt to establish a connection with the material. We need to find a way to make them seekers of information and creators of ideas. Too often we are standing at the front of the room pushing material they are uninterested in accepting. They have no connection. Their classmates that do excel in a traditional classroom accept the information because they are committed to do well. Not all kids see doing well as a priority so they don't apply themselves to the material. Seeing this is the easy part, restructuring lessons and material is the incredibly difficult part.