25 Biggest Mistakes Teachers Make and How to Avoid Them (32 page)

SCENARIO 14.20
Ready, Willing, and Able

My worst experience with a teacher is one where I was singled out without my permission to “help” a student with dyslexia. I didn’t mind helping at first, but the experience turned into one where I did all the work and the teacher did none and neither did the other student. I felt unappreciated and felt that the situation was unfair.

Peer-tutoring has its merits, provided the tutor is willing and able to provide quality instruction. In this case, the child assigned to be a peer tutor was neither willing nor able. This child did not “agree” to tutor the student and this child was not trained to teach students with learning disabilities. The teacher passing the total responsibility for teaching the dyslexic student onto a resentful child compounds this problem. Apparently the dyslexic student sensed the teacher’s abandonment and the tutor’s frustration and opted out of that educational process.

Peer-tutoring has been shown to benefit the tutor and the tutee (Good & Brophy, 1997). Teachers should only use peer-tutoring if it is mutually beneficial to both students. Student tutors should be willing participants and should not be expected to work beyond their level of mastery. Caution should be exercised with students needing tutoring to avoid making them feel “less than” for needing assistance.

SCENARIO 14.21
Talk, Talk, Talk

My worst experience with a teacher was in eighth grade at St. L.’s School. Her name was Mrs. D. Even as an eighth-grade student I realized that she was a bad teacher, the worksheet queen, Ms. Boring!! She taught her class in the lecture style all year long and half the time I had no idea what she was talking about. She never smiled and never tried to make any connections with her students.

Lecture can be an appropriate teaching strategy, but this strategy should be reserved for students at the high school level and above. The younger the students, the more disengaged they become as time goes on. If lecture is used, it should be interesting and include as much media as possible. Integrating video, audio tapes, visual aids, PowerPoint-type computer presentations, and other sensory sources will keep students engaged and will enhance the effectiveness of lecture as a teaching strategy. Kindsvatter, Wilen, and Ishler (1988) suggest three ways to enhance the lecture presentation: Use visual aids, present simple material before complex material, and use nonverbal behaviors to hold students’ attention. This teacher missed the mark on all three points. She used worksheets, a less-desirable instructional tool, she used no visual aids, and she presented complex material most of the time. She never smiled. This simple nonverbal expression would have helped her to connect with her students and to minimize the gap that seemed to emerge from her ineffective use of the lecture method.

A more effective approach is articulated in the concept of connected teaching, proposed by Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule (1986). They suggest that connected teachers function as a midwife who helps students give birth to their own ideas as opposed to functioning like a banker who merely makes knowledge deposits in a student’s head.

SCENARIO 14.22
Here an “F,” There an “F,” Everywhere an “F,” “F”

My single worst experience in school was my high school economics teacher. I had this teacher my last semester during my senior year. On the first day I had his class, he stood in the middle of the classroom and proceeded to tell us how he prided himself on failing students. From that moment on, I knew I was in trouble. He gave us two chapters to read every night and would lecture over things not in the book. His tests were hard because nobody ever knew what he would test us over. I had a horrible time making him happy with my projects. In the end, after working very hard, I made a B in the class.

There is a degree of irony in the pride this economics teacher took in failing students. Little did he realize that failing a large number of students is a direct reflection of the inadequacy of his teaching. He entertained the misconceived notion that the goal of education is to fail students. His deliberate attempt to fail students was apparent in his practice of not communicating the objectives of his instruction to students and not relating his tests to those objectives.

Effective teachers would make every effort to avoid failing a student. There are a variety of strategies available to teachers to avert failure, such as providing cues, encouraging students, and offering multiple exposures to the material and multiple opportunities to learn the material presented.

Effective teachers would try to make sure that students understood what is expected of them. They would provide specific instructional objectives for students that would help students to direct their study efforts to meet the teacher’s goals and objectives. Gronlund (1995) recommends objectives that focus on student behaviors and learning outcomes.

SCENARIO 14.23
Academic “Payday”

In 1985, 1 moved to San Antonio from Houston. The school placed me in an advanced math class. Though honors math wasn’t new to me, I found the class learning aspects of math that I had never been introduced to. I fell behind. Feeling frustrated, I approached my teacher on several occasions for help. However, she never made time for me. Within six weeks, I was failing and felt demoralized. The school chose to put me in an average math class. On my last day, I told my teacher that I would ace the quiz. She said, “I doubt it.” Well, 1 earned a 100. 1 showed it to her, left, and never spoke to her again. In case you’re wondering, I made all As in my new math class.

While in the end, I believe that I came out triumphant, I find it a very negative memory. In my opinion, no one is permitted to doubt my ability. Not even me.

This teacher missed her “payday” by failing to find time to help a student. Teachers often derive a psychic income from helping students who truly need help. In this scenario, the student’s failing grade spawned a vengeful motive for achievement that was conceived in hostility and resentment. It would have been so much easier and productive to help the student or to provide help for the student. There are many help venues available such as computer-assisted instruction, tutors, peer-tutors, or one-on-one instruction. This teacher could have been a beacon of light for this student; instead, she became a lasting negative memory. This lost opportunity was truly her loss.

SCENARIO 14.24
If at First You Don’t Succeed,
Try, Try Again, and Again, and Again

I was a very sensitive child, easily hurt. Probably the worst times with teachers were when I felt ostracized or made a spectacle of. Sometimes teachers would have no regard for how much they can embarrass a child in front of his peers.

One particular time when I was in eighth-grade PE class (the worst year of my life), we were practicing batting the softball. The teacher had us line up and each had to stay until we hit the ball. Everyone else hit it after a few tries, but I had to stand there and swing and keep missing. After about ten to fifteen tries, he let me pass. That class was also bad for letting the kids pick teams. I was, all through school, the last one picked. I will never intentionally let that happen to a child.

This student sums up the problem in his statement that some teachers “have no regard for how much they can embarrass a child in front of his peers.” This teacher crossed the boundaries of reasonableness when he forced this child to keep trying to hit the ball for an excessive number of tries with no apparent hope for success. The child obviously did not have the skill set to hit the ball. This teacher crossed the boundaries of decency when he made an example and spectacle of this child and allowed the classmates to witness the agonizing event.

Effective teachers would set a reasonable limit on the number of attempts students would be allowed to make before they could pass. If a child cannot perform after several tries, teachers, as trained professionals, should diagnose students’ weaknesses and reteach those skills until the students succeed.

Physical education classes are notorious for creating anxiety by fostering the anxiety that accompanies “picking teams.” Insightful teachers can anticipate the stress and anxiety that students who are at the bottom of the pick list will feel. If teachers used a lottery system or a similar method of selection to assign teams, the stress level would be significantly reduced, if not eliminated.

Mistake

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