25 Biggest Mistakes Teachers Make and How to Avoid Them

Mistake 4: Public Ridicule
This scenario is a classic case
of adding insult to injury.
After erroneously punishing the
student very publicly, the teacher
baited the student into insubordination
and misconduct by demanding a
public apology. The indirect consequence
of the student dropping
out of the honors program was an
unforeseeable injustice. The denial of
his actions makes this teacher’s
motives suspect.
Most teachers are honorable and
their intentions are good but they
sometimes make mistakes. Sagacious
educators know that they are not
infallible and that there are times
SCENARIO 4.4
Saving a Red Face
when they might be mistaken. These
teachers would never draw so much
attention to such a minor offense as
talking. The disruptive effects of conflict
and confrontation far outweigh
any positive benefits that may be
gained from public censure. This
unfortunate event could have been
avoided with private reprimand or
what MacDonald (1991) referred
to as the use of I-messages in a private
one-on-one conference. In the
conference, the teacher would have
found out that the child had not
been talking. It would have been
easier for the teacher to apologize, in
private.
The worst experience I had in school was when my sixth-grade teacher ridiculed me
and made fun of my answer. Then I made a comment to her that was rude and she
made me stay after school and write dialogue out of a book verbatim. I was literally
punished for trying.
It takes courage for a student
to raise her hand to answer a
question and risk the embarrassment
of giving the wrong answer. Stu -
dents’ worst fears are realized when
a teacher publicly ridicules their
ans wers. In this scenario, the
teacher’s cavalier disparagement of
the student goaded the child into
some discourteous face-saving behavior.
The subsequent punishment
deflated the student’s attempts to
save face and salvage her self-esteem.
The injustice of it all was mentally
tucked away to be nurtured for years
and years.
Truly professional educators
would never ridicule a child’s
answer. They know their job is to
help children come up with the correct
answer. They employ a variety of
techniques to achieve this outcome.
An effective approach to handling
student responses is to offer students
cues or prompts, to accept part of the
answer, or to look for something positive
about the response to move the
student closer to the correct response.
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