5 Ways I've FAILED as a Teacher

when you're following other teachers on the internet whether it be YouTube Pinterest Instagram other teachers blogs it's pretty easy to start feeling discouraged because it looks like all of these other teachers have got everything together all their lesson plans are awesome everything seems to be in order they seem to have such great relationships with their kids it begins to feel like it's highlighting the ways that you feel like a failure as a teacher and I totally get why this happens because as someone who puts his own teaching work on the Internet be it through videos

or blogs I generally want to share things that I have found success in in hopes that other teachers could replicate these assignments or these projects or these methods of teaching in their own classroom and hopefully it add value to them as educators usually a bit less in flops you don't want to be like here everyone you want to try this lesson that didn't work at all for me and as a teacher you don't want to come off like you're complaining about certain things in your classroom or in your school so you end up just sharing

a lot of the positive stuff these YouTube channels and Pinterest walls and Instagram accounts and of being a highlight reel for these teachers but don't fall into the trap of comparing your blooper reel as a teacher with everyone else's highlight reel that you're seeing my name's Tom Gibson and in today's video I want to share five of the biggest mistakes that I have made and sometimes continue to make as an educator the first mistake I made coming into the classroom seven years ago and still make to this day is feeling this need to be in

control my first few years this teacher I felt that how much control I had over the classroom was indicative of how good of a teacher I was the more control I had the better of a teacher I was control and my mind kind of looked like students doing exactly what I asked them to do in the way that I asked them to do it at the time that I asked them to do it anything that veered off of that track I felt like I was losing control a student starts laughing a little bit in the

middle of a lesson I feel like I'm losing control student not turning in their assignments on time I feel like I'm losing control and I would get frustrated because I'm like ha they're not doing what I asked them to do and I felt like I was really refining and perfecting my teacher face where it's just like and I was communicating like I am disappointed and you should feel bad about yourself because you are not doing what I asked you to do but then I realized you're not in control and no matter how much you can

coerce and manipulate students into doing exactly what you want them to do you're not in control they're in control of their own decisions and their own actions so the ideal situation is that the students will want to do the things that you asked them to do which is a motivation issue and so I found that the more autonomy that I gave my students in the classroom the more motivated they were to do what I asked them to do autonomy in the classroom could look like working in whatever part of the classroom that you want to

work in during independent work time could be getting a chance to choose your partners could be getting a chance to choose the order that you complete certain assignments in it could be getting the chance to actually do certain aspects of the assignment that they chose maybe they pick out of these five choices you pick three or something like that the more autonomy I felt that I could give the students the more motivated they were to actually do the work which in turn is ironic because the more control I was giving up the more kind of

they were doing what I asked them to do so the sooner you realize you're not in control and begin to give up some of that control the sooner things seem to kind of go more in the direction that you want them to go I'm still a fan of routines and procedures and having clear expectations but I realized I don't have to be and I can't be in control of everything the second mistake that I kind of realized a little bit early on was taking myself a bit too seriously in my early years of being a

teacher any kind of goofing around or telling little jokes or anything like that I would come down on and give my teacher stare and try to make the student feel bad for not meeting my expectation for even like the smallest things kids giggling in the hall when we were walking from class to class kids telling a joke in the middle of a lesson that's actually mildly related to the content but it's disrupting the flow of my lesson and back to that need of control I would take myself pretty seriously over the years I have begun

to just kind of take those moments and laugh them off a student says something kind of funny particularly in middle school I work in middle school now and middle schoolers are actually pretty funny I find that something that could be a distraction that if I just kind of laugh it off and keep going it ends up not being a distraction at all like everyone in the class just moves on the more I do all on the the silliness and how it's maybe annoying me or bothering me more attention I draw to it the more of

a distraction it ends up becoming obviously you can only kind of laugh things off to a limit if kids are goofing around to the to the point that it's interfering with the actual lesson and them getting their work done or others getting their work done you have to have some conversations with some students I found that students that are kind of goofy generally respond well to a private conversation of hey I think you're actually really funny and a lot of the things you've been saying if it make me laugh but it's been a excessive today

and I think it's kind of taking us off course of what we're trying to do in the classroom and so I'd like you to be mindful of kind of time in place of when when the jokes might be appropriate and when they are not appropriate I do appreciate and value your humor but I also want to make sure that we're getting done the things that we need to get done then I also found that just laughing what students can really be a bonding experience as well so don't take yourself too seriously the third mistake I

made as a teacher was worrying too much about being liked by the students what this ended up looking like in my first few years of teaching was me saying like okay if you do this then this will happen and then students would test me and push those boundaries but I wouldn't really want to follow through because I'm like I don't want to seem like I'm too strict and I want the students to enjoy my class and not feel like I'm gonna come down on them and get them in trouble or call their parents or things

like that and I was worried more with students liking me then I was students respecting me and naturally all teachers want their students to like them in some regard but when the desire to be liked becomes supreme you run into problems students begin to see you as a teacher that actually doesn't stick by their word they say they're gonna do something but they don't and so students begin to lose respect for you whether they consciously think they are or not when they lose respect for you there's little chance that they're really gonna like you unless

they like going to your class because they think oh I can do whatever I want this teachers not gonna do anything about it and again paradoxically when you actually follow through with what you say you're gonna say students do begin to respect you more and then the teachers that they respect the most end up being the teachers that they like the most and so the less you chase being liked and the more you focus on respecting students and being respectable by sticking to your word the more students end up liking you I don't consider myself

friends with my students and even though in my school there's a pretty casual relationship between teachers and students and we go by the first-name basis there still is that boundary of I am your teacher and I am an authority figure in your life I'm gonna be respectful to you and I'm also gonna hold you to high standards and when you don't meet those standards or when you do something that I say does have consequences I'm gonna follow through with that and I'm doing it because I care about you students get that and students resonate with

that and students want that and so don't make being liked by your students your top priority follow through with what you say you're gonna do to maintain respect regardless of if students like you or not the fourth biggest mistake that I've made as an educator is not taking time to reflect on my teaching practice my first few years I was just trying to my head above water I talked fifth grade I was teaching all the content areas and it was tough I had the same group of kids all day and once I taught a lesson

I didn't have a different group of kids that I could be like alright well let me try it this way with this group the next time I was gonna teach that lesson was next year and in those first few years I did not write down what worked and what didn't and what I'd like to add or take away or change about any of the lessons and so I would try them again the next year and then run into the same problems be like ah this happened last year I completely forgot and so in the last

three or four years have begun reflect more regularly through blogging or through making videos like this or even just making notes in Evernote about a particular lesson that says in read next year when you do this change XY and Z going back to read those blogs or to see the videos or to read those notes in Evernote before I actually taught the lesson again was like oh yeah I completely forgot that that part of the lesson bombs and I even had ideas of what I could do differently this year and so that's improved a ton

of lessons for me I've had the privilege of teaching pre-algebra for the last four years and so this is harder to do if you're teaching different courses year after year but even just reflecting on general practices of teaching that go across the disciplines can be helpful so take time to reflect through a blog or through a video or through a private Evernote that only you see and the fifth biggest of many mistakes that I have made as an educator is trying to be a purist of any methodology and the pedagogy side when I was starting

to explore like how do you have an inquiry-based math classroom where it's not just lecture and students copying down whatever problems I write on the board and I remember there were two quotes that I came across that I was practically living and dying by when it came to math education one was never say anything that a student can say and the idea behind that was the students should be the ones that are talking and making connections and my job as an educators to kind of draw that out of them really great in theory the second

one was once you've told a student the right answer they've stopped thinking about the problem and the idea behind that is to kind of question students and what they did whether they got the answer right or wrong so that way they continually engage in the problem and it's just not just like oh all right I got a right I got it wrong I'm moving on I still think both of these quotes are awesome but trying to be a complete purist in both of them led to some pretty frustrating moments in class I had days where

students were trying to figure out what this one student did wrong it was such a small thing but I would let the go for twenty or thirty minutes back and forth like well what about this what about that instead of just saying oh you just had a multiplication error everything else was fine or that pretty much everyone would have a right answer and then I would just continually be like well I don't know what do you think how do you know can you prove that which sometimes has its place but doing that like every problem

even though problems that everybody gets it's okay to be like all right we've all got it we're moving on and so once I kind of stepped back and really just kind of took the general ideas of these methodologies and implemented them in a way that made sense to me and to my students in those moments it got better and on the same token I think some people are afraid of trying new things because they feel they have to be all or nothing in those things like a flipped classroom for example where you record a video

lecture that the students watch at home and then in class they do what is traditionally the homework whether it's math problems or have the discussion or whatever I know some teachers we're hesitant because they were hearing about other teachers that their entire class they flipped and then all of the videos where I watched at home and then they spent all our time in class doing the problems and doing what was traditionally the homework aspect of it and teachers like I don't know how to do this I don't have time to make all these videos I

can't do this for my whole curriculum instead of just trying it once with one lesson and seeing how it goes and then seeing if it makes sense to do it with another lesson later on and so don't try to be a purist in whatever methodology that you pick take the aspects of it that makes sense do you experiment with the methodologies see what you like see what you don't like and then just keep the stuff that seems to be effective with you and your classroom and so these are our five of the biggest mistakes that

I've made as an educator and sometimes continue to make and have to remind myself I have two questions for you one what's been your experience watching other teachers on social media I imagine it's probably a mix of finding a lot of value in it but also feeling discouraged today but I'm curious on your thoughts about it and - what's the mistake that you've made in the classroom be it being a big overarching idea like not taking yourself too seriously or maybe something really specific like something you said to a student by the way that you

presented some kind of assignment or whatever it is let me know in the comments below for those who are new here my name is Tom Gibson I teach middle school math robotics and YouTube video technology this YouTube channel is all about the stories from the classroom from educational podcast to take videos like this to teaching vlogs so if you'd like to stay in the loop with upcoming videos consider subscribing and hopefully I will see you in the next video you