25 Biggest Mistakes Teachers Make and How to Avoid Them

Mistake 20: Teacher Misjudgment
mortified. I do recall looking at my
teacher, imploring her to intervene,
but she did nothing but look away. I
do not think she ever took responsibility
for letting us go. She certainly
never apologized to us for setting us
up for trouble. Fortunately, we were
not suspended. I did learn years later
that the seemingly innocent “candy
157
shop” was really a front for drug
dealers who sold drugs to kids. As I
reflect back on my experience, I see
the importance of rules and policies
that are designed to safeguard children.
Teachers should not knowingly
violate school policy no matter
how well intentioned the situation
might be.
SCENARIO 20.4
The Whole Is Greater Than Its Parts
Mrs. W. called me up in front of the class to reprimand me for a 68 in spelling on a
scholastic achievement test, when I had made a 99 cumulative score overall.
A classic mistake that teachers
and parents make is focusing
on the negative and effectively discounting
the positive. In this scenario,
the teacher virtually ignored the high
cumulative score and zeroed in on the
low spelling score. The public reprimand
was perceived as a punishment.
The high cumulative achievement
was neither recognized nor rewarded.
This is confusing for the student. It is
not clear if the student was a success
or a failure at the task.
Savvy teachers know that if they
feel they must criticize some aspect
SCENARIO 20.5
Excluded!
of a student’s performance, it should
certainly be put in proper perspective.
In this scenario where the child
was weak in spelling but overall did
an excellent job, a word of encouragement
to improve in spelling and
a jubilant focus on the overall accomplishment
would be appropriate.
Weiner (1979) proposes that we help
students to properly attribute their
successes and failures to their ability
and effort. If a child is confused
about his or her successes and failures,
he or she may never learn to
attribute appropriately.
In my sixth-grade drama class after the script was written and handed out to the students,
I looked on the character listing and I wasn’t even in the script! She had to write me in.
Sometimes teachers make
honest mistakes that can be
perceived as having malicious intent.
In this scenario, the author obviously
believed that the teacher had an ulterior
motive in writing her out of the
script. Although the teacher wrote
her back in, the student was unable