Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Is Johnny A Good Kid?

In class, after I handed in my first observation, we started talking about the self-fulfilling prophecy. The self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that directly or indirectly causes itself to become true due to positive feedback between belief and behavior. In other words, behavior influenced by expectations causes those expectations to be true. I believe that Johnny is a good kid, I’ve seen him get really excited about work and do well. On the other hand, I have also seen him talk back and hit people for no apparent reason. Last week two boys were throwing a toy back and forth when one of them missed the toss and it ended up near Johnny. One of the kids yelled out to the other friend, “Get that toy before Johnny steals it from us!”. Johnny was not even paying attention to the boys until that statement when he looked over at them puzzled. The boys then yell at Johnny again to stay away from their things. Johnny then ran, picked up the toy, and would not give it back. Everyone expects this kid to always be doing the wrong thing, but he was not even interested in their toy before they said something to him. …show more content…
However, other kids are constantly shutting his ideas down and telling him to leave them alone. Whenever the kids have a group project, Johnny always chooses me as his partner and sometimes I can get him working while other times he just wants to fool around. I like working with Johnny because I like those moments where he finds something he is super interested into. Csikszentmihalyi describes flow as a state in which a person is fully immersed in whatever activity they are doing. When Johnny is experiencing flow he can accomplish everything that the other kids do. However, I feel like since no one expects anything from him, he barely is ever able to motivate