25 Biggest Mistakes Teachers Make and How to Avoid Them

126 Classroom Management and Instruction
SCENARIO 15.6
Group Consequences: All or Nothing
In my senior year in high school, I had a group project in my sociology class. When the
time came for our group to present our findings, one of our group members didn’t
show up. The teacher proceeded to tell us that we would all get zeros on the project.
I then burst out of the room, went to the principal’s office, and waited to see the principal.
I was not going to allow my teacher to give me a zero. My teacher walks in and
starts to scream at me for walking out of the class. I was humiliated, but we got an
extension on our project.
The potential for unfairness
and inequity is an implicit
problem in the assessment of group
projects. In some instances, one student
does all of the work and in some
instances one or more students do
very little or no work. Assessment
becomes problematic when students’
grades are contingent on the work
of other students. The teacher had
a rigid, high-stakes, all-or-nothing
grading policy. All students had to be
present for anyone to get a grade. It
was not apparent that the teacher
had communicated these grading criteria
to students in advance because
they seemed surprised by it.
Understandably, such a rigid,
unfair policy precipitated a number
of undesirable consequences. One of
the students was vehemently opposed
to the teacher’s grading practice. The
student’s anger was possibly rooted
in a fear of the impact of the grade of
zero on being able to graduate. The
teacher had a tangential tantrum
about the student walking out of
class but seemed oblivious to the
looming fairness issue.
Proficient educators establish
guidelines for group assessment in
advance and make students aware of
their criteria for grading. They realize
the importance of basing individual
grades on individual effort. Grades
are not contingent on the performance
of others. Perhaps a separate
grade evaluates group effort and
collaboration, but students are not
penalized for criteria that are beyond
their control. Effective teachers are
mindful that students’ grades should
reflect their attainment of instructional
objectives. They encourage students
to do self-evaluation to become
more self-regulating (Stiggins, 1994).
They know that peer models are useful
for teaching self-evaluation and
other self-regulatory skills (Orange,
1999). These teachers model good
evaluation when they grade fairly
and follow these guidelines.
SCENARIO 15.7
Inflexible, Indifferent, Illogical, and Inaccurate
In third-grade math we took a test. I had all the answers correct, but I missed a space
on the test so all my answers were off. The teacher placed me in the “lower” math
group. She did not listen to me when I tried to explain what happened.