Leadership magazine Sept/Oct 2016 V46 No 1 | Page 8

Harnessing the power
of rigor and self-efficacy
in the classroom
Current academic
rigor can push even
the most motivated
students to exhaustion.
Providing students
opportunities to
discover their strengths
allows them to
cultivate the belief that
they can succeed.

As leaders in schools, we un-

derstand that creating and sustaining caring, inclusive learning environments for
all students is a high priority. Yet in these
times of educational reform, and with the
implementation of Common Core, we need
to consistently and enthusiastically support
our teachers in their endeavors within the
classroom.
We know our teachers can experience
exhaustion with the instructional challenges, and students are pushed to new limits. In fact, it is not uncommon to overhear
a teacher share that, “it’s a task to keep them
engaged” or “the new standards require a lot
of focusing.”
These are just examples of the many comments we have heard on our campus, but
they have an underlying message for us as
leaders: We must understand how to help
our communities embrace and utilize two
critical concepts: rigor and self-efficacy.

The power of rigor
Rigor is powerful, but not always wellunderstood. According to author and learning consultant Barbara Blackburn, rigor is
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Leadership

creating an environment in which each student is expected to learn at high levels, each
student is supported so he or she can learn at
high levels, and each student demonstrates
learning at high levels. Blackburn reminds
us that rigor is not about giving students
more to do; it’s about giving students higher
level tasks.
Clearly, rigor cannot truly occur without
creating an environment where expectations are high for all students.
Rigor in the classroom does not happen
without intentional effort and continual
teacher ref lection. Robert Marzano explains that for teachers to truly focus on
supporting students in the area of rigor, 13
essential strategies must be addressed:
•  identifying critical content;
•  previewing new content;
•  organizing students to interact with
content;
•  helping students process content;
•  helping students elaborate on content;
•  helping stude nts record and represent
By Julie Perron, Audri Gomez
and Robin Testa