At Upward Bound, we believe that our students have endless potential and outstanding abilities, but we are not here to enforce standards. Instead, our mission is to help students have and meet high expectations.

"HIGH EXPECTATIONS" MEANS:

• We assume and behave as if our students are smart, interesting, inherently valuable, and capable of entering and graduating from college and growing up to be important and successful human beings.
• We challenge our students to go beyond their current level of thinking, learning and self-definition: we teach and expect students to learn at a college level.
• We continually challenge ourselves to find new resources and ways of teaching; and we examine our own attitudes to make sure we place no limits on any group or individual.
• We demand that students respect themselves, each other, and us, and that their behavior demonstrates kindness and tolerance of cultural, age-based, and gender-related differences.

NOT HAVING "HIGH STANDARDS" MEANS:

• We never assume or behave as if a poorly performing student cannot or will not ever achieve academic and personal success.
• We realize that a lack of information and access to top resources may sometimes discourage our students, resulting in a lack of motivation or apathy, which we must help them overcome.
• We know that traditional definitions of intelligence are limited, and that a student who appears to do badly in school may have gifts and talents no one ever noticed and that we must help students to discover these gifts.
• We never get mad at students for not knowing what we were hired to teach them. If students could already behave and achieve at a college level, they would not need this program.

(Adapted from the website of www.asu.edu)