25 Biggest Mistakes Teachers Make and How to Avoid Them

Mistake 17: Academic Shortcomings
SCENARIO 17.8
All Talk and No Teaching
My worst experience with a teacher occurred with my dance instructor my senior
year. She taught the dance class the dance team was required to take. I was the
colonel of the team and therefore had to work very closely with the teacher. It
was her first year at the high school; however, she had been a teacher for another
Texas school for two years before. She was totally unprofessional with her job.
Days that we were to practice a dance routine for competition, she would sit the
whole team down and explain how her house was haunted with ghosts. She
wanted to be everyone’s friend instead of teacher. She was eventually fired about
three-fourths of the way through the year. Being that I was the colonel, an unbelievable
amount of stress and responsibility was placed on me. I should have been
paid for doing her job. There are so many stories I could tell you that you wouldn’t
even believe. It’s really sad when I look back to my senior year as being the worst.
I truly believe that if I hadn’t gone through what I did, I would have gone on
to become a professional dancer. This teacher just took my will to dance and
crushed it.
A favorite source of recreation
for many students is to get the
teacher to go off on the proverbial
tangent, in other words, to digress
from the subject matter. Students
find it more difficult to get experienced,
prepared teachers to digress.
This teacher was inexperienced and
obviously unprepared. She pre s ented
very little challenge to students; as a
matter of fact, she made it very easy
for students to deviate from the subject
matter. She totally abdicated her
responsibilities as a teacher to talk
about ghosts in her home. Perhaps
she wanted to entertain her students,
or there is always the possibility
that she was mentally disturbed.
Whatever the problem, she was not
functioning as a competent teacher.
She shifted her responsibilities to
her student assistant. Her student
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suffered much psychological harm as
a result.
Competent teachers know that
first and foremost, they should put
their students’ instructional needs
before their own personal needs. Most
teachers like to interact with their
students. They are well aware that
teachers should be friendly but not
necessarily the students’ friend. Effective
teachers will entertain their students
occasionally but they realize that
entertainment is no substitute for
structure, organization, and quality
instruction. These teachers will have
instructional objectives that will keep
them focused on the lesson and make
it harder for students to distract them
or direct them to some tangential topic.
Finally, most conscientious teachers do
their own teaching and rarely shift that
responsibility to a student.