25 Biggest Mistakes Teachers Make and How to Avoid Them

36 Discipline
SCENARIO 4.2
Don’t Bother to Raise Your Hand
When I would raise my hand to answer, my teachers would never call on me. When I
would get in trouble for talking, Mr. F. would make me sit in a desk right in front of the
class. I felt so dumb. I hated the fact that the teachers always would put the smart students
on everything. They forgot about the rest of us.
I had a professor who said,
“The best way to extinguish
good behavior is to fail to recognize
it.” This bit of advice is rooted in
Beha vioral Learning Theory (Skinner,
1950), which suggests that failure to
reinforce a behavior decreases the
likelihood that it will occur again. The
teacher’s failure to call on a student
who raises her hand to answer almost
guarantees that the child will eventually
stop raising her hand. Failing to
recognize a child could lead to alienation
and hostility or rebellion. The
child may decide that she will never
answer a question in this class as an
expression of her frustration.
Competent teachers are well
aware of the power of recognition and
praise. They would make every effort
to acknowledge every student who
wanted to contribute to the class discussion
and offer acceptance of the
answer, praise when appropriate, or
SCENARIO 4.3
Adding Insult to an Unjust Injury
assistance when needed. They try to
create a supportive environment that
encourages participation. Resourceful
teachers would develop some systematic
technique for making sure that
each student is called on at some
point in time (Weinstein, 1996).
The purpose of questioning is to
ascertain a student ’ s level of understanding.
This includes all students,
not just the popular students or the
smart students. Wise teachers would
never assume that the lower achieving
students would probably have
wrong or “silly” answers and avoid
calling on them. On the contrary, they
realize that such assumptions and
behavior might cause the student to
become a nonparticipating member
of the class (Harvard University,
1988). Caring teachers know that it is
humiliating and hurtful for children
to raise their hands again and again
and never be recognized.
In sixth grade, my teacher embarrassed me in front of the class because he thought I was
talking and he made me stand in the corner! He then asked me to apologize in front of
everyone. I refused and walked out of the class. I was in an honors program and I had
to get out because if I stayed in, I would have had to take his class. He then had the nerve
to deny to the principal that this incident ever happened. Of course, they believed him.