25 Biggest Mistakes Teachers Make and How to Avoid Them

82 Classroom Policies and Practices
This teacher has the mistaken
impression, shared by many
teachers, that group competition is
an effective motivator. She announced
that the test was going to be “so
easy,” which implied that everyone
should be able to do it. In spite of the
teacher ’ s overconfidence, two of the
students did not make a perfect
score. She seemed happy that there
were mostly 100s yet she only
rewarded the students that made
100. Her actions suggested that she
expected perfection; 100% of the students
making 100%.
Skilled professionals recognize
that there are very few tasks that are
mastered by 100% of the class at
any given time. Such expectations
are frustrations under construction.
SCENARIO 12.5
Sour Note Switch
Instead, reasonable teachers recognize
student effort when evaluating
student performance. This teacher
could have established a policy of recognizing
self-competition as well as
group competition. Self-competition
takes effort and improvement into
consideration. She should have given
everyone in the class a penny and she
should have recognized the efforts of
the two students that did not make
the grade. She could motivate them
by saying, “I could see you were trying
very hard. I’m going to help you
practice your times tables and I’m
sure you’ll do better next time.”
Effective teachers know that there is
much more mileage to be gained
from encouragement than there is
from exclusion.
When I was a senior in high school, I was first chair flute in the symphonic band and the
marching band. I was a soloist, and the only flute player who could play a specific solo
in a piece. However, I was always out of tune on the high notes and could never figure
out why. What was bad about this was when the band was on a trip to a competition.
My teacher waited until an hour before our performance and suddenly informed me I
wasn’t going to play that solo and gave it to the second chair flutist (who didn’t know
how to play it but had a nice tone!). I was rather humiliated by the way he did this, and
then, afterward, on the bus, he informed me that the band hadn’t even been competing!
He did this to encourage the second chair to be interested in band for the next
year, but then she quit, so it was all for naught. He was brusque, gave me no warning,
and then tried to act happy!
If he needed to do that and I can see why, he did it in a very poor manner and
offended me, my pride, and should have explained things a bit better. I would hope I
would avoid bruising students’ pride.
The band teacher hit some
sour notes on several counts in
this not-so-virtuoso performance. He
failed to give the student appropriate
feedback on her achievement. He
understandably was not happy with
her performance but he chose a very
ineffectual method of apprising her
of the changes he planned to make.
Giving the solo to the second chair at