25 Biggest Mistakes Teachers Make and How to Avoid Them (29 page)

Sensible teachers would have given the child some assistance at the board or would have invited another child to come to the board to help. One of the least threatening ways to use the blackboard is to have students work at the board in groups or with a buddy. Perhaps it is even more effective to ask for volunteers and make it clear that they can sit down at any time without penalty.

SCENARIO 14.5
Math Mania

I guess my worst experience was in elementary math. We always had to change classrooms for math class and we were grouped according to the grade level and the week of the year that we were up to, so if you were in 4.5 you were fourth-grade math, fifth week. Math has never been my strong subject so I was always behind all my friends and was in classes with kids who were younger than I. This was always so devastating to me and made me so upset that it would make me ill.

This is a multifaceted problem that stems from ability grouping, where students are assigned to classes based on test performance or other achievements. First and foremost, research has shown that ability grouping is not a particularly effective teaching strategy because it tends to benefit high level students more so than low level students (Slavin, 1990). Teachers often have lower expectations, lower demands, and less tolerance for low-level classes. The quality of instruction is usually less for low-level ability groups, making it more difficult for them to break the cycle of underachievement and move to a higher group. In this process, students’ self-esteem and self-efficacy or beliefs about their abilities are at risk. Low self-efficacy is evidenced in this scenario where the student said she was always behind all of her friends and her acknowledgment that math is not her strong subject. Gardner (1993) suggests that humans possess multiple intelligences, with strengths or weaknesses in one or several. If teachers seek out and recognize a student’s strengths in other areas of intelligence, competence in those areas may focus a more favorable lens on a student’s weak areas. Having a more favorable view of a student may encourage teachers to supplement a child’s lagging performance with remediation and enrichment (Mason & Good, 1993) or with peer-tutoring. These strategies offer favorable alternatives to ability grouping.

SCENARIO 14.6
No Play, You Pay

I was kicked out of music class almost every day because I would not participate. My music teacher would make me take a chair outside and wait till class was over. This would result in missed recess time as punishment by my homeroom teacher.

Upon walking into my math class the instructor told me to sit outside today because she did not want to put up with me today. This was a shock because class hadn’t even started.

The key words in this overplayed scenario are “punishment” and “every day.” Obviously putting the child outside of the class every day was not effective because the undesirable behavior continued on a daily basis. Viewing this problem from a behaviorist perspective, putting the child outside the classroom is negative reinforcement that increases the likelihood that the behavior will occur. Perhaps the student enjoys being outside of the class more than he enjoys being in class participating. The teacher should try to find out why the student refuses to participate. If it is lack of ability, she could help the student develop an action plan for improving performance. If it is lack of interest, the teacher could solicit suggestions from the students and offer them choices to add meaningfulness and interest to the lessons.

If students are disruptive, teachers may be justified in removing them from the class. However, to make the removal of a student effective, teachers should eliminate the attractive aspects of removal, such as opportunities to socialize with friends.

SCENARIO 14.7
Prime Time

My worst experience was in eighth grade when Mr. E. yelled at me on my second day at a new school because I did not know what a prime number was. I became so upset that I threw up in the hallway and had to go home. My dad picked me up and taught me a prime number lesson.

Teachers should not expect new students to come into a class knowing all of the answers. Prior assessment is usually necessary to ascertain a student’s skill level. It is inappropriate and unnecessary to yell at such a student. This teacher’s loud rebuke distressed the student so much that it caused extreme anxiety, which is often accompanied by a physiological reaction. The vomiting, an outward manifestation of this student’s distress, underscores the importance of developing tolerance for students’ mistakes and lack of knowledge.
Without tolerance and understanding, teachers may risk intimidating students. For new students, who are already insecure and uncomfortable, additional anxiety could interfere with their performance.

SCENARIO 14.8
Once More, With Feeling

In chemistry my teacher would always call on me knowing well how lost I was. Then she would roll her eyes, take a deep breath, and say something like, “Okay, let’s go over this one more time since you obviously weren’t paying attention.” She would repeat it (the same way as before) and once again it made no sense to me.

There is a euphemistic expression that suggests that pointing a finger of blame at someone leaves the other fingers pointing back at you. In this case, the teacher blames the student for his confusion and accuses him of not paying attention, when in fact she may be doing a poor job of explaining the material. It is a known fact that chemistry is a difficult subject for many students. Knowing this, the teacher should be prepared to vary her presentation of the material to accommodate the needs of her students that are having trouble.

Making a dramatic production of answering the question “once more” for the undeserving, inattentive student may be a way of masking her inadequacies. This tactic of giving students a hard time if they ask questions would protect her from questions that she might not be able to answer. The students would be so deflated and discouraged by her words and actions that they would not dare to ask a question. Her inadequacy is evident in that she presented the material exactly as she did before.

A better approach would be to vary the presentation and take into consideration student’s learning styles and learning preferences, if possible. Students’ learning styles determine how they approach the material. Snow, Como, and Jackson (1996) found that some students see learning as a means for understanding where others may be more concerned about surface learning rather than meaningful learning. My high school chemistry teacher required that we outline every chapter for homework. This seemed to “force” some understanding of the course material.

SCENARIO 14.9
Teacher, Can You Spare a Sign?

My worst experience with a teacher was during algebra. I loved math and really thought I knew and understood math. But my algebra teacher sent me home crying every day because she marked my homework and tests wrong because I used to get my positives and negatives wrong; I knew how to do the problems, but I would get my answers with the wrong sign.

This teacher missed an opportunity for meaningful instruction and shifted the responsibility of learning the correct way to use signs to the student. It was obvious that the student could not learn the difference between the symbols without assistance. In his work, Vygotsky (as cited in Wertsch, 1991) identified a zone of proximal development, an area where a child cannot solve a problem alone but may be able to successfully solve the problem with appropriate assistance from an adult or skilled peer. As in this case, the student may be on the verge of solving the problem, but may need some cues, prompts, heuristics, or words of encouragement from the teacher.

Resourceful teachers would have provided their students with some simple tips or reminders for using signs. My math teacher made a little reminder chart for our class that really made using signs much easier:

This heuristic is a form of scaffolding (Wood, Bruner, & Ross, 1976) where skilled adults provide students with just enough hints and clues to guide them in their efforts to give a correct answer.