One of the things my years of living in Sri Lanka, being a Buddhist country, has taught me is the value of having fewer expectations. There is something liberating about not attaching yourself too tightly to how things should turn out. I think that lesson has quietly followed me into my classroom.
When I introduce something new to my students, say a new activity, a new topic, a new way of thinking, I don’t expect everyone to immediately embrace it.
I know better than that.
Some students will be excited. Some will participate because they have to. Some will be indifferent. Some may not like the activity at all. And some may surprise me.
So I’ve developed a little principle of my own and that is if just 1% of my students find value in what I introduce, I’m happy.
It may sound like a very small expectation, but for me, it has become a powerful one.
And last August, I saw this principle come alive in an unexpected way when I introduced my students to something I called a Goal Board.
Before the start of the new term, I was asked by my JTE if I had an idea for a starting activity. She wanted something different aside from simply having me introduce myself.
So I looked at my context. It was still summer. It was hot. It was humid. We’re ushering into the last few months of the year. I started thinking. What could I introduce that wasn’t just another English activity? What could give them a reason to think about themselves?
I initially thought of a Vision Board, but I wondered if vision might be a little abstract for some students.
So I called it a Goal Board instead. I suggested it to my JTE and she said that they have not done this before and she does not know how the students might react to it. But she gave me the go signal to try.
The idea was simple: What do you want to achieve in the last 4 months of the year?
They can just be 1 goal or 2 goals. It could be something related to school, or something they want to try. Something they want to improve. Something they simply want to experience.
I wasn’t expecting every student to suddenly become excited about goal-setting.
That would have gone against everything I’ve learned about teaching.
Instead, I went back to my 1%.
If one student looked at the activity and thought,
“Oh. I actually want to do that.” then the activity had already served a purpose.
As expected, when we were doing the activity, not everyone looked particularly enthusiastic about their goals.
Some seemed completely blank when I asked them about their goals. Some students seemed more excited about the old magazines I had brought for them to cut up. They searched through the pages for pictures, words, and letters they could use for their collage.
And honestly, as I looked around the room, I wasn’t thinking, Wow, this is a huge success. But I wasn’t disappointed either.
I had already made peace with the fact that not everyone would connect with the activity.
Then, about a week later, I walked to the back of the classroom.
And there they were.
Two Goal Boards were posted on the board.
Just two. But I smiled.
Because I remembered my 1%.
I didn’t know what those two students thought while they were making their boards. I didn’t know whether they were excited about the activity or simply doing what they were asked to do.
But they had made them and now their goals were sitting on the wall where they could see them.
Two boards may not sound like much, but maybe that is the point.
And yes, that’s the power of 1%!
Why I keep believing in 1%
This principle has helped me become more adventurous as a teacher.
It gives me permission to introduce something new without demanding a guaranteed response. Because if I expect 100% enthusiasm before I try something, I will probably stop trying new things.
There will always be students who don’t respond. There will always be activities that don’t work as expected. There will always be ideas that seem better in our heads than they do in the classroom.
That’s part of teaching.
But somewhere in that room, there might be one student who needs exactly what I decided to introduce that day.
And sometimes, that one student is enough.
Maybe that is what the power of 1% really means.
Not that we should expect little from our students, but that we should never underestimate the possibility of reaching someone.
As for me, I will keep introducing new ideas, activities, questions, and possibilities, because we rarely know which 1% will matter and we may never know how far that 1% will go.
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