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excerpt from 101 "Answers" for New Teachers and Their Mentors: Effective Teaching Tips for Daily Classroom Use by Annette Breaux
Do not ask a question unless you are prepared to receive an answer…
Teaching Tip #14
Do Not Provoke Defensiveness
The following are actual teacher questions and the resulting student answers:
Teacher: How many times do I have to tell you?
Student: 6,284.
Teacher: Don’t you have any home training?
Student: My daddy is in jail, and my mother is on crack!
Teacher: Do you want me to send you to the office?
Student: Actually, yes. It would be a pleasant diversion.
Teacher: Do you have a problem?
Student: No, but you do!
Teacher: Don’t you know this material?
Student: If I did, then I guess you’d be out of a job!
In all of the above scenarios, can you guess at what the teachers’ reactions were? You guessed it. The teachers were horrified and highly insulted. Though I am not, in any way, suggesting that the students’ answers were the most appropriate ones, I am suggesting that these teachers “set themselves up” for the answers they received. These teachers were acting, as we often tend to do, out of anger and frustration. In actuality, they were fueling the exact behaviors they were trying to diminish. The simple fact is that sarcastic questions provoke sarcastic answers. And, as we will discuss in Tip # 85, there is no place for sarcasm in the classroom. If a student is struggling, instead of asking, “Do you have a problem?” in a sarcastic tone, simply say, “I notice that you’re struggling with this, and I’d like to help.” Then do just that – assist the student. In the last question and answer above, the student actually made a very valid point – if students knew all the answers and exhibited perfect behavior and ample amounts of self-motivation, we would all be out of a job!
Teaching Tip #31
Observe Other Teachers
Teaching continues to be a very “isolated” profession. We spend the majority of our time in our own classrooms and rarely see beyond our four walls! Yet collaboration has proven time and again to be very beneficial, rejuvenating, and enlightening for teachers. So why don’t we do more of it? Some of our best ideas are “stolen” from other teachers. And the good news is that teachers are a very generous group of people, always happy to share their successes with others. Ask teachers how many opportunities they have had to observe other teachers teaching and they will tell you that these opportunities have been either rare or nonexistent. If you are a mentor, don’t just observe the teacher you are mentoring. Allow that teacher to learn from observing you and others. Just as it’s crucial that as teachers we model the skills we teach our students, so must mentors model good teaching for the teachers they’re mentoring. If you are a new teacher, ask your administrator to schedule some time for you to observe your mentor and others. You’ll be amazed at how much you will learn from watching others. Oh, and don’t sell yourself short. Your mentor will also be amazed at how much there is to learn from watching you!
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