25 Biggest Mistakes Teachers Make and How to Avoid Them

Mistake 11: Humiliation
what the coach intended. He was
using shame as a motivator to get the
student to do the required number of
pull-ups.
Sensitive, knowledgeable teachers
know that shame is not a motivator;
in fact, shame can be an inhibitor.
Children can internalize shame and
continue to feel its effects into adulthood.
Good teachers would first rule
out any physical reasons that the
student could not perform the pullups.
Next, they might use a multiple
SCENARIO 11.3
Shake, Baby, Shake
intelligences approach in teaching the
student to do pull-ups (Campbell,
Campbell, & Dickinson, 1996). Using
this approach, teachers must believe
that students have strengths across
content areas and must encourage
them to pursue those strengths while
minimizing their weaknesses. If the
student does not have the arm
strength to engage in pull-ups, perhaps
she can improve her arm strength
by lifting weights or by working out
on a rowing machine.
My worst experience was in second grade. My teacher would grab us by the arms, shake us,
and get right in our face and yell at us. I remember being so embarrassed after she did this.
She yelled at me because I was crying about having no friends; boy that really helped. NOT!
The same dynamics that underlie
shaken baby syndrome
(Lancon, Haines, & Parent, 1998) are
present in this scenario. In shaken
baby syndrome, caregivers become
very frustrated in their efforts to console
or quiet a crying child. They resort
to grabbing the child by the shoulders
and shaking her back and forth in such
a way that her brain hits the inside of
her skull. The child may suffer a serious
injury and, in some cases, death.
In this scenario, the teacher’s
actions were the same but the prognosis
is better because the children were
older and the shaking was milder. The
teacher did grab the child and shake
her. The child’s crying triggered the
teacher’s actions. The teacher apparently
lost control and started yelling.
There was no sympathy for the child’s
friendless plight, only humiliation.
Effective teachers would try to
find out why the child is crying rather
than try to suppress the crying
through humiliation and physical
aggression. If they find that they cannot
console a child, they know that it’s
okay to let the child cry. Perceptive
teachers use sociograms (McConnell
& Odom, 1986) to ascertain student
popularity, student cliques and
friendships, and students who are
social isolates. Once they are aware of
the unpopular or isolated students,
they can make efforts to help those
students. One strategy might be to
pair students to work together to
pave the way for friendship. Good
teachers might offer one-on-one help
sessions on how to make friends. A
foolproof strategy for making a friend
is for the teacher to volunteer to be the
child’s first friend.
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