25 Biggest Mistakes Teachers Make and How to Avoid Them (17 page)

Knowledgeable teachers are beyond the gender-specific roles typically assigned to boys and girls. They respect androgynous behavior, where students may exhibit both female and male characteristics. They realize that a student’s nonconformist, atypical behavior does not inform their sexual orientation. These knowledgeable teachers would not predict that she would become less feminine because she played ball and participated in typically male activities.

SCENARIO 7.3
Job’s Comforter

I struggled during my ninth-grade year. I would miss a lot of school. This one teacher pulled me out into the hall and told me horrible things I still remember to this day. She said that my looks and clothing weren’t always going to be there for me. She said I was going to work in McDonald’s the rest of my life. Even to this day I can’t figure out if it was to help me or not.

The dictionary defines Job’s comforter as “one who is discouraging or saddening while seemingly offering sympathy or comfort” (
American Heritage Dictionary
, 1992). Job was a famous man in the Bible whose faith in his God was sorely tested. He lost his children, his property, and finally his health, but he remained steadfast in his faith. Job’s friends pretended to comfort him but they were insincere and were actually trying to find fault with him. The term Job’s comforter is based on the friends’ actions.

The teacher in this scenario falls into the category of Job’s comforter. She makes discouraging, disparaging remarks about the student under the guise of helpful advice. The teacher’s focus on the student’s looks and clothing suggests some underlying jealousy or displaced anger. The dire predictions made by this teacher sounded like a mean-spirited wish rooted in jealousy. The experience left the student confused and scarred, but obviously undaunted. The student is now a preservice teacher aspiring to be a teacher.

Good teachers seek to be a wellspring of student hope and encouragement. They realize that the way they communicate their expectations can have a profound effect on students. They help students maximize their strengths and minimize their weaknesses in their struggles to reach their goals. Caring teachers are the antithesis of Job’s comforter. They are comforters in the truest sense of the word; they usually want what’s best for their students.

SCENARIO 7.4
Mirror on the Wall, Who’s the Worst Student of All?

My worst experience with a teacher happened during my sophomore year in high school. I was in an honors advanced algebra class with sophomores and juniors. Every other class, my teacher would have us take a homework quiz. We had to neatly tear a sheet of notebook paper into four pieces, and write the answer on a little sheet during the first five minutes of class. I was not that good in math and in this class, since it was honors, my teacher didn’t really teach us how to do and understand algebra. One junior named S. and I always had trouble with these quizzes and with the class in general, and when Mrs. S. would pass back quizzes every other day, she would say, “E., you didn’t do the worst this time,” or “S., someone did worse than you did.” Not only did S. and I hear this, but the whole class was aware of her comments and thus of our poor performance in class. It was the only class and teacher that I can honestly say I hated. I struggled for a B-/C in that class. The following year I changed to regular math and I learned in that next class.

Honors students, like most students, may take a course and find that it is a weak area for them. They may have difficulty grasping the course content. The teacher had high expectations for the honors classes and let them take responsibility for their learning. According to the student, the teacher made no effort to teach the class or to help them to understand the course material. However, she made it a
point to focus on the students who had the worst performance. This is not a common practice among teachers. They usually focus on the top-scoring students. She made very destructive criticisms and comparisons about these students in front of the class.

Apparently, she thought public disclosure would motivate the two students to improve their performance. Her personal attacks on the students were unprofessional and ineffective; these attacks only served to make the students hate the teacher and the class. She made her low expectations and poor perceptions of these students very evident. Although the student managed to pass the course, she didn’t feel that she had learned anything in the class. Perhaps she was misplaced because she felt she actually learned in a regular math class.

A simple remediation strategy for students performing poorly in an advanced class is to offer them retreat privileges without penalty. If students feel that they are not doing well in a course, they can take the class that’s a level lower and not lose their honors status. Responsible teachers may opt to offer lagging students more instructional assistance. They realize that honors students encounter difficulty in certain courses just like any other students. They can reasonably expect a high level of autonomy and responsibility from honors students, but when it seems that someone is drowning alone in their own little pool, it’s the teacher’s responsibility to jump in and give some assistance and reteach problem concepts when necessary. I took a graduate calculus course that was practically self-taught. The professor gave us copies of his typed manuscript as our text. We were thrown into the choppy waters of calculus and we had to sink or swim to survive. We had to complete so many chapters and take a test before we could move to the next level. By the time we were ready for Integral Calculus, many of us were sinking fast. Finally, in a desperate move to save the class, the professor started having class again and actually started teaching the course material. He made no comments or jokes about our poor performance. His assistance helped us to regain our confidence and pass the course. Effective teachers are alert to student difficulty and assume the role of instructor or facilitator, whichever is most appropriate for the learning situation.

Mistake

8

Inappropriate
Teacher–Student
Relationships

SCENARIO 8.1
My Teacher, My Friend?

My worst experience with a teacher was my senior year in high school. I was taking AP chemistry, and I needed to write about some research I had done for a scholarship essay for college. My chemistry teacher and I came up with a project for me, developing a lab for students, and I stayed after school one day to go through a stack of lab manuals, looking for ideas. As I sat in the lab looking through the books, my teacher hung about and started telling me the sad story of his life—his past few years of unemployment, his having to go back to teaching in order to work. He had often acted like he considered me a friend or perhaps even a colleague since I was the best student in the class and was planning to teach. He would call me up and explain to me his rationale for the seating chart and suggest that I consider using it someday, and explaining the seating chart involved telling me other students’ grades. This teacher had a very unprofessional manner toward me and overstepped the conventional boundaries between teachers and students. I did not respect him as a teacher and therefore did not learn very much from him.

Each age level has its own rules of social interaction and socialization. Henson and Eller (1999) investigated the developmental nature of friendships and found that adolescent reasons for being friends differ remarkably from adult reasons. They found that adolescents wanted
someone who would be there for them and not give them a hard time, whereas adults wanted someone that they could talk to and someone who would give honest feedback. The teacher in this scenario is guilty of trying to impose an adult concept of “friendship” on a child. He expected the student to talk to him and give him honest feedback. His actions suggest a lack of social cognition or knowledge of how to reason and act in social situations (Eisenberg & Harris, 1984). He told the student the story of his life and sought honest feedback on a teaching strategy that he was using. Understandably, the student was uncomfortable with the teacher’s behavior. Teachers who choose to act like their students’ “friend” often undermine their own credibility and lose the respect of their students.

Savvy teachers know that no matter how mature, focused, and “adultlike” children seem, they are not adults and they should not be treated as peers. To treat children as peers puts too much emotional and psychological responsibility on them. Astute teachers are sensitive to the social boundaries separating children and adults and they make every effort not to cross those boundaries.

Students clearly see the delineation of social roles. They understand that teachers are not supposed to be their “friends” or their peers. They do not want or need to know intimate details of their teachers’ lives. Adolescents are usually able to sense hidden motives or unspoken intentions. They are not limited by the egocentrism and the inability to see another’s point of view often found in young children (Piaget, as cited in Woolfolk, 1998). Children who are imposed upon may feel powerless and reluctant to show their overt resentment of adult social advances. Covertly, they may harbor resentment and harsh feelings that may affect them for years, such as in this scenario. Good teachers are “friendly” and they believe in letting a child be a child. They seek their companionship and feedback from interested adults.

SCENARIO 8.2
A Wolf in Teacher’s Clothing

Even though I have had numerous experiences that were “awful” in school, most of them taught me positive lessons. I learned to voice my concerns and let people know what I feel. I also learned that people can abuse others’ positions. I suppose the worst experience would be the inappropriate behavior one male teacher exhibited toward the “attractive” girls in school. He was fired a year after I graduated. One girl finally was pushed too far and complained. Since then, I’ve had other experiences that were worse, but I felt that this experience would have the “biggest” impact.