When the Teacher Makes a Mistake

The Player(s)

We were still in the first few days of school. It was [the student]’s first time to volunteer for anything. We were talking through how to do an assignment. Sadly, I was about to make a large mistake.

The Setup

I had written a term up on the board. I was walking the class through the setup of the online textbook and how it works. It’s not as user-friendly as it should be.

The Sequence

We were talking about the steps in getting to where we needed to be to accomplish tasks using the textbook. Small steps, one small step at a time. The class was getting into it, realizing that wrong answers wouldn’t be punished and that time would be taken as needed to ensure student success. Many in the class were visibly relaxed, smiling, going along with the discussion wonderfully.

The Denouement

I asked the question: “What comes next?” [the student] raised [the student]’s hand and gave the wrong answer. It wasn’t a bad wrong answer, but it was wrong – [the student] couldn’t see what I had written because I had written it too small. My flippant, unthinking, mistaken comment back to [the student] was, “What’s wrong – can’t you read my writing?”

It’s always a horrible moment in the day of a teacher when the light in a student’s eyes goes off and meekness and reluctance appears. My flippant, unthinking comment ensured that my job is going to be much, much harder with [the student] during this year.

The Moral

Flippant, unthinking words can kill a teacher’s working relationship with a student.