25 Biggest Mistakes Teachers Make and How to Avoid Them

248 25 Biggest Mistakes Teachers Make and How to Avoid Them
Cognitive, Thinking, or Perceptual Outcomes
• Many nurture unhealthy memories for many years without intervention.
• Their perceptions of their abilities may be affected.
• Some may fail to see school as a safe haven of learning and fun.
• They may generalize the traumatic experience to other situations.
• They may promise themselves that they will not let their children
experience what they had to go through.
Affective Outcomes or Feelings
• They may experience feelings of fear, shame, depression, sadness, anxiety,
frustration, grief, or other socially handicapping emotional disorders.
• Some may continue to experience intrusive flashbacks or recollections that
may cause them to relive the event or experience over and over again.
• Some develop an intense dislike for teachers, school, or others in educational
settings.
• They may experience feelings of vulnerability and a lack of trust in academic
settings.
• Some may have feelings of inadequacy or apathy.
• They may internalize feelings of shame and have no viable outlet.
• A few may get sucked up into the pathology of the event and think it’s
ok, that they deserved whatever happened to them.
• Some become reactive and revenge seeking toward teachers.
Psychosocial Outcomes
• Their performance may be affected in the workplace as an adult, such as
not being able to give presentations because of fear of making a mistake.
• A few may identify with their oppressor and do what was done to them.
• They may be afraid to ask questions or seek help.
• Some may be reluctant to participate in school activities.
• Many become risk-averse in academic settings.
• They may develop a negative self-concept. We define ourselves partly
by what is communicated to us by others; some people fixate on the
negative comments.
• In some cases, they may cause the traumatic experience to become a
self-fulfilling prophecy or they could strive to prove the teacher was
wrong about them.
• They may avoid academic settings years after the event, which may
contribute to a lack of parent involvement in their children’s education.
• Some of them may experience diminished self-esteem or self-confidence.
• They may feel disempowered and through criticism, experience learned
helplessness, where they have difficulty learning to be autonomous.
• Regrettably, some are moved to aggression or thoughts of aggression,
mimicking what was done to them.