25 Biggest Mistakes Teachers Make and How to Avoid Them (28 page)

One easily overlooked fact in this scenario is that the teacher was a biology teacher which suggests that he should have been aware of the consequences of suppressing bodily urges. I believe this toilet tyrant’s deep-seated need to sit on his tissue paper throne and rule his class may be deeply rooted in his low perception of himself as a capable adult instructor. It appears that he felt that his students would not take him seriously and recognize his legitimacy as a teacher unless he took a punitive stance in establishing classroom policy. This teacher would benefit from some professional development that focused on enhancing feelings of self-efficacy (Bandura, 1986) or feelings that he could handle the tasks inherent in being an effective teacher. Such training should alleviate possible fears of inadequacy and diminish his need to effect punitive policies. This scenario provides some evidence that abuse in education also occurs at the adult level, validating the need to enlighten teachers in higher education about establishing reasonable policies.

4

CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT
AND INSTRUCTION

“Class, I’ve got a lot of material to cover, so to save time I won’t be using vowels today. Nw Its bgn, pls trn t pg 122.”

Mistake

14

Inappropriate Educational
Strategies

SCENARIO 14.1
Gifted: One Who Walks on Water

In second grade I was told to write a research paper with reference notes and bibliography. One other girl and myself were in the GT [Gifted and Talented] program and we had to do this while everyone else got to dress up and give a book report as his or her favorite book character.

The stereotype of the outstanding, highly motivated, gifted, and talented student can be detrimental to the social, emotional, and academic development of gifted students. One hazard is going overboard and giving assignments that are not developmentally appropriate (Elkind, 1989), such as the research paper assignment in this scenario. Developmentally appropriate instruction is designed to meet the social, emotional, cognitive, and physical needs of students. Years ago, teachers were accused of not providing challenging assignments for gifted students. Today it is important to strike a balance and make sure that their challenging assignments are developmentally appropriate. Teachers of gifted students should also consider their students’ preferences in assignments.

Renzulli and Reis (1991) define giftedness as possessing a high level of creativity, a high level of general ability, and a high level of achievement motivation. Having a high level of creativity would explain why these gifted students would prefer to dress up and be their favorite character from a book rather than do a research paper. Gifted students enjoy “fun” assignments,
too. An added caution is to let gifted children be themselves—do not expect them to be “perfect” at all times. Such expectations could lead to perfectionism, which can be detrimental to these students (Orange, 1997).

SCENARIO 14.2
I Don’t Know, I’m Just the Teacher

I took a physics course in high school. We didn’t get our teacher until one month after school started. The teacher was a seventh-grade math teacher who never taught physics. He developed this “oh well” attitude with us whenever we didn’t understand. He would say things like, “oh well, that’s what the book says.” He couldn’t justify the explanation in the book. Because of this my grades suffered, and my GPA dropped while others were allowed to take other courses. My class standing dropped.

The school administrators share the responsibility for this twofold problem. The first problem is assigning a teacher to teach a subject that he or she is not qualified to teach. This strategy is doomed to failure. The second problem is not offering students who are forced to stay in the class some grade consideration and opportunities for remediation. The administration could have supplemented this teacher’s instruction by offering tutors. The knowledge gaps that result from this poor-quality instruction could have long-lasting effects beyond the GPA, as these students attempt to take higher level physics courses.

The teacher’s attitude is indefensible. Responsible teachers in such a situation would research the answers to the students’ questions if they did not know the answer. They would put ego aside and enlist the help of other teachers. They also would make student learning the primary goal and top priority. A lesser response is a teacher luxury that students cannot afford. The results of poor-quality instruction are evidenced in the high prices this student had to pay, namely low grades, lowered GPA, and lowered class standing.

SCENARIO 14.3
Get Thee to the Second Grade!

I was in the fifth grade and had a history teacher by the name of Mrs. W. She made us read aloud in class. The boy who read before me could not pronounce one of the words correctly and so she made him stand up. She yelled at him and called him names like “stupid.” Then she sent him to a second-grade class for a day to learn how to read with the young children. He was so humiliated and I felt sorry for him. He was my best friend and, even worse, she called on me to continue where he left off! I was so nervous, I felt like I had forgotten how to read.

It is unfortunate that sending the child to a second-grade class was used as a punishment. It could have been a very effective strategy with proper implementation. The teacher could have made arrangements with a second-grade teacher to have the student experiencing difficulties come to the class as a peer tutor. I used this strategy with a third-grade student who needed remediation. The second-grade teacher worked with my student in exchange for his helping a second grader. It removed the stigma of going to a lower-level class. Peer-tutoring a younger student seemed to improve his self-esteem and the remediation improved his reading. A bonus was fewer discipline problems with this student.

Another very significant problem evident in this scenario is the inhibition exhibited by the author. Bandura (1986) defines inhibition as an event where observing a model being punished for a particular event will likely keep the observer from performing the same actions. In this case, when one child saw another child being punished for trying to read, the other child was so inhibited when asked to read that she felt as if she had forgotten how to read. There were probably other students who had the same inhibition. This is a serious consequence for the minuscule error of mispronouncing a word. Teachers have many options that would have been more effective. The simplest response, with the least disruption to the class, would be to assist the child by providing the correct pronunciation of the word.

SCENARIO 14.4
Standing the Test of Time

My worst experience was in eighth-grade math. My teacher asked me to go to the board to work a math problem. When it was obvious that I had a problem with the math problem, my teacher failed to offer any guidance or assistance whatsoever. After approximately twenty minutes of standing and staring at the blackboard, she told me to sit down. From then on I had a problem with math and have been intimidated by it. It is only recently that I have begun to become comfortable with it.

It is difficult to determine this teacher’s motive for having the student stand for an agonizing twenty minutes staring at the blackboard. What was the point? After the first few minutes, it was apparent that the child did not know the answer. Humiliating the child by spotlighting his lack of knowledge for a long period of time would not make the answer appear. Apparently, the teacher’s motive was more sadistic than educative. Perhaps she wanted to make an example of this student or she felt that having to stand at the blackboard would be an effective deterrent to not knowing the answer next time. After class,
the student said he had nightmares about this situation for a long time. Academic trauma, such as this senseless act, usually has a very high price tag. It is not worth the detrimental effect that it had on the student.