No matter how much experienced you’re in teaching, trials and errors are part of the process. Because we’re always learning about our students, ourselves as teachers, and individuals. And we grow more when we experiment with ‘the New’, reflect on our mistakes, and learn from them. That process of reflection is key to streamlining as it mirrors our practices and opens up our eyes to ‘the unknown’. To support you to engage in such a process, I have focused on the most common classroom management mistakes I have observed, as a teacher-trainer, among teachers.

So, here is the first part of my blog series of 16 Common Classroom Management Mistakes Teachers Make.

1. Moving in the classroom while explaining the lesson

While explaining or providing instructions you’re the focus of your students’ attention, so don’t move in the classroom. Standing at the front next to the board is the right position to achieve such a role.

However, even staying there you should not keep on moving or doing things that make your students distracted (playing with your pen, hair, etc.).

This means while you’re explaining stop making movements because these can make students tired of following you and so distract their attention. Keep eye contact with all of them.

You can write on the board or use any other materials to explain your point without causing much distraction.

So, when can teachers move around the classroom?

You can move around the classroom while maintaining your visibility in the following cases :

• After assigning a task to students in the class, you monitor their work,
• when you’re dictating something to students,
• to check out how legible is your handwriting on the board,
• scaffolding during projects,
• while controlling students during tests and exams.

2. Focusing on the good students to create competition

Showing the rest of the class that good students are your focal concern through calling them often to answer and praising them does not necessarily push the other students to compete and make more effort to learn. On the other hand, it can induce hatred towards those good students and make those reluctant to say a word change their minds to take that step forward.

Because when we create a big fuss around that image of ‘the good student’ we raise the bar and make it seem difficult or impossible for others to realize it.

It’s true that in every classroom there are brilliant students and even intelligent ones who fascinate us with their creativity and genius ideas. But, we should focus on all students and never show favour to anyone.

Listening to all students, not just the good ones, and giving them all opportunities to learn is a way to show them that we care about all of them.

Even for those struggling students who don’t possess the potential to do well and succeed you should push them forward. Make them believe in themselves and support them to learn and progress instead of asking them to be like the good ones.

We should not instil this culture of comparison but we should help our students understand that each one of them has his own identity and is able to draw his own path towards success.

3. Repeating instead of re-explaining

We should not assume that all students have understood from the first explanation even when our teaching content seems easy, obvious, or has been already dealt with. Reexplaining or clarifying further things is necessary for every lesson.

However, if we keep on repeating what we’ve already explained in the same way, using the same words we’re likely to annoy our students with too much talking, not helping them concentrate and get the intended meaning.

Reexplaining does not entail repeating, but it is about clarifying and simplifying our input in a more flexible way to help our students process it.

So, in your second explanation or reexplanation use simple language. Go slower than you did in the first explanation. Use more examples to illustrate your point and more materials (the board, tasks, etc.).

Also, call upon students’ involvement (those who said they’ve understood) by addressing your questions and asking them to explain what they’ve retained from the lesson.

4. Overloading students

We can get more concerned with doing it all than caring about how much our students have learned. This is what happens when we’re teaching for exams: we get eager to finish off with that syllabus or content and win over our struggle with time.

Even during those last moments of the lesson, we keep on pushing forward while our students are tired, no longer attentive, and willing to learn. So, why drain our energy explaining or doing something essential for students’ learning if they’re not attentive enough to work it out!

We’d better leave it for the next lesson when our students’ minds are fresh to absorb it. And do a task that is fun and distracting for them, instead.

Do not think that this is a waste of time. It is NOT since the focus is still on learning but in a more distracting and amusing way. Besides, if you keep overloading students with too much content you’ll find yourselves going over it again and again later on thus consuming more time and energy.

Remember that in learning there is time to focus and time to hyper and have some fun.

5. Taking risks when the unknown is common

It’s important to innovate and bring change to our practices to help our students learn at their best. But, there are situations where we should not take risks. This is mainly when we’re not sure about or master the task at hand.

I still remember that novice English teacher who told me about her first experience as a substitute teacher. I could feel her regret and frustration while she was talking about it.

When she met her students for the first time they told her that their previous teacher had assigned a task to them as homework. They did it and wanted to get it corrected. She took the risk of correcting it, though she knew nothing about it.

So, she messed up. Her confusion was apparent for those students whom she could not control later on (due to discipline issues).

That teacher could have postponed the correction for the next lesson and taken the time to learn more about the task. But, her excitement and desire to show she KNOWS everything drove her to get into the ‘UNKOWN’ and feel embarrassed.

So, you should think carefully before making any decision. Avoid precipitating and taking risks that will cost you a lot (you become no more trustworthy).

Besides, if you’re explaining the lesson, then you forget what to say next. Or you’re thinking in your head and doubting that next idea. Stop immediately. Don’t take the risk of giving your students information that might be wrong.

Make them busy thinking; answering a question that relates to previous content, addressing their own questions, or predicting what’s coming next (for some minutes). Meanwhile, check out that information.

To learn about the other Classroom Management Mistakes please join us, If you haven’t done so already.