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Are you worried about your students mental health? Want to know the teaching mistakes that kill your student’s confidence? If you are looking for the teaching mistakes that destroy a student’s mental strength, then you have come to the right article.

Teachers have a very stressful day where they have to handle all the student’s bad behavior and problems in their personal life. As, it is difficult for teachers to look after the student’s emotion and mental resilience. Mentally strong students are likely to self guide and boost their mental strength. But, weak mental strength students have high time to deal with problems which lack them confidence.

To overcome such mistakes, there should be a proper interaction between students and teachers. Teachers must communicate their classroom management expectations to students and parents at the start of the school year. Ambiguous classroom policies from the start can create dissatisfaction for everyone throughout the year.

Every teacher wants their students to feel good and be proud of themselves. Studies have shown that confident students benefit from a variety of factors, including less anxiety, increased resilience, healthier relationships, and improved academic performance in school. Teaching mistakes can lead to breakdown of a student’s confidence and future. Here are the seven biggest teaching mistakes that destroy a student’s mental strength.

Cold Calling to Students

Stopping in the middle of the lecture and pointing out to the particular students for a question can be uncomfortable for students. Some students thrive under such pressure, but many may have difficulty remembering their own name. If you frequently call on students without giving them time to think, those who are intimidated by it will be more concerned with hoping that you don’t land on them. Worse, when you call someone, the others breathe a sigh of relief and stop thinking.

Active learning is a better approach to questioning in class. Ask the question and give the students a short time to respond, either individually or in small groups. When the time is up, stop them and ask a few of them to report what they came up with. Then, if you haven’t received a clear or complete response, ask for volunteers.

The students will have time to consider the question, unlike what happens when you always ask for volunteers right away. Most people will try to respond because they don’t want to look bad if you call on them. You’ll also avoid the intimidation of cold-calling, and you’ll get more and better answers to your questions with active learning. Most importantly, real learning will occur in class, which does not happen much in traditional lectures.

Teaching Without Clear Learning Objectives

The traditional method of teaching is to create lectures and assignments that cover topics on the syllabus, then give exams on those topics and move on. The first time most teachers think about what they want students to do with the course material is when they write the exam question. It would be too late to provide adequate practice in the skills required to solve the exam problems. It is pointless and possibly unethical to test students on skills that have not been taught.

The only way to make courses coherent and tests fair is to write learning objectives. All the things students should be able to do after the course should be written. Objectives should be used as the basis for designing lessons, exams, and assignments.

The objectives should all specify observable actions such as define, solve, explain, calculate, design, model, and critique rather than vague and unobservable terms such as learn, understand, know, and appreciate. In addition to using the objectives to design your instruction, consider sharing them with your students as exam study guides. The clearer you are about your expectations, the more likely it is that students will meet them. Nothing clarifies expectations like good learning objectives.

Give Tests That Are Too Long

Some professors take exams that are far too long for the majority of their students. Exam questions may include time-consuming analysis, or calculations, or problems with unfamiliar twists that may take a long time to figure out, or simply too many problems.

The few students who work quickly enough to finish may make careless mistakes but still do well because their responses may earn partial credit. Whereas those who never get to some problems or can’t quickly figure out the tricks receive failing grades. After many such experiences, many students may drop the course or switch to a different school.

If you want to evaluate your student’s potential, test their mastery of knowledge and skills that you’re teaching, not their problem solving speed. After you create a perfect test, take it and time yourself, and make sure you give the students at least three times as much time to complete it as you did.

Disrespect Students

The amount of knowledge students gain in a course is heavily influenced by the teacher’s attitude. Two different teachers could teach the same material to the same group of students using the same methods, take identical exams, and can still achieve dramatically different results.

Students may receive good grades and give high ratings to the course under one teacher. However, the grades may be low and the ratings may be abysmal under the other teacher. if the course is a gateway to the curriculum, many students may not be present in the following semester.

The difference between the student’s performance in two classes can vary from the teacher’s attitudes. If a teacher respects the students, students can sense that their teacher cares about their learning. Whereas, if another teacher disrespects the students, then the differences in exam grades should be no surprise.

To avoid the appearance of indifference, teachers should never make sarcastic remarks about their student’s abilities and intelligence in class. Also, teachers should not disparage their own questions or their responses to your questions. If you show students that you respect them, the class will most likely be a positive experience for everyone.

Fail To Establish Relevance

Students learn best when they understand how course content relates to their interests and career goals. The “trust me” approach to education does not inspire students to learn, and those who do learn are primarily motivated by grades. To increase motivation, begin the course by describing how the content relates to important technological and social problems.

Whatever you know about the student’s experience, interests, and career goals, repeat this same process with each new topic. You should use inductive methods such as guided inquiry and problem-based learning to provide context for all course material.

Have Students Work In Groups With No Individual Accountability

All students and instructors who have ever participated in group projects are aware of the potential drawbacks. One or two students do the work, the others coast along with little understanding of what their more responsible teammates did, everyone gets the same grade, resentments, and conflicts develop. The students learn nothing about high-performance teamwork and how to achieve it.

The best way to make group work better is cooperative learning. Cooperative learning is a good method to develop both cognitive and interpersonal skills. One of the distinct advantages of this method is individual accountability.

The individual accountability method helps to hold each team accountable for the entire project. Rather than just the part on which he or she may have focused. Individual accountability can be achieved by giving individual exams covering the full range of knowledge and skills required to complete the project. Also, assigning individual grades based in part on how well the students met their responsibilities to their team.

Fail To Provide Variety In Instruction

Non-stop lecturing gives very little learning. If good instructors never lectured, they would be unable to motivate students by sharing their experience and wisdom. Pure PowerPoint presentations are ineffective, but so are lectures that lack visual content, animations, schematics, diagrams, video clips, photos, and so on.

Individual student assignments would not teach students the critical skills of leadership, teamwork, and conflict management that they will require as professionals. But team assignments would not teach the equally important trait of independent learning. Effective instruction incorporates a variety of methods, including multimedia, boardwork, activities, storytelling, discussion, individual assignments, and group work. The more variety you include, the more effective the class will be.

These are some of the teaching mistakes that teachers make in a classroom. Doing some of these things may occasionally be justified, so we’re not saying you should avoid them all at all costs. We’re just saying you shouldn’t make a habit of any of them.

Conclusion

These biggest teaching mistakes can have an effective effect on a student’s future. It is necessary to address them and apply them in our daily classroom. Small efforts like showing up at office hours and motivating students can add confidence to students. I hope these mistakes made some clear clarification in your study method. If you feel i have missed some of the important teaching mistakes, please mention them in the comment section.