Every education class advocates having high expectations for all students. Unfortunately, in the trenches of teaching, sometimes it's all too easy to expect great things from stellar students and less than spectacular things from students who underperform. During my teaching career, I learned the value of expectations in an unusual way.

One year the staff at my school decided that early parent-teacher conferences would be more beneficial to our students. Instead of waiting until the semester was half over, we held conferences only three or four weeks into the school year. This, we thought, would give all of us time to correct any educational or behavioral problem areas that the teachers noticed.

Now, some teachers have a knack for memorizing names of students. While I tried every year to get the names of my 120-plus students straight, I always struggled with a few, and this particular year, I taught two Dustins. The first was an energetic, motivated student who had not earned anything less than an "A" on assignments. The second Dustin was not a bad kid, but he was average in every way I could see.

On the evening of conferences, I was prepared, as usual, with my summaries of each student's grade. When average Dustin's dad came in, I beamed at him. I showed him the correct scores but had the image of the smiling, energetic Dustin who was always raising his hand and was polite and respectful to other students. I gave the behavior report of spectacular Dustin to the parent of average Dustin and was alarmed to realize my error as soon as the parent walked out the door. "No one will be the wiser," I reasoned.

The next day, average Dustin did not shuffle into the classroom. He did not drop into his seat as though he'd been on a hundred-mile walk. He did not rest his head on his desk. Average Dustin made eye contact, smiled, and participated. Average Dustin, in fact, gave spectacular Dustin a run for his money.

I was ashamed.

In my mind, I realized I had compartmentalized students into neat little categories (you've heard of them, perhaps): the lazy kids, the class clowns, the discipline problems, the overachievers, the not-so-smart students, the popular kids, and the average Joes. Unfortunately, my esteem went to the overachievers, the bulk of my attention went to the discipline problems, and average Joes had no place in my classroom. I realized then that my attitude about kids had to change.

Even though I struggled with this throughout my teaching career, I figured out that I needed to find something I liked or had in common with every student. For some of the students with significant behavioral issues that I didn't appreciate, it took nearly a semester before I could find something I could like. I do know, however, that once I found one thing to appreciate about every student, I returned to school like average Dustin did, with a hope that things would be better.