Page 79 - Teaching Principles and Methods Student Textbook short

3. Lack of good communication skills.

I used to have a math teacher who had a lot of communication “ticks.” The
one that drove the entire class crazy was this: she would face the chalk board
and teach something, then say, “How many understand?” We would raise our
hands. But she never turned around from the chalk board to see if any of us
raised our hands to inform her we understood. She did this several times a
class period over an entire year! After a while, students quit raising their hands and started making
funny faces at her….but she never turned around to see.

This teacher has poor communication skills. If a teacher does not work on improving their presentation
to the students, this normally is what will happen. A teacher is a poor communicator when they do not
properly illustrate concepts and talk over the heads of their students, leaving them not understanding
the content. A teacher has poor communication skills when they use the same teaching methods daily
and never makes an effort to modify their presentations. Their skills are poor when they wander off the
subject matter and walk down rabbit trails. They demonstrate poor skills when their presentation is
monotone, and the students are bored out of their minds. They reveal their poor skills by covering
too much material at one time. This is called “dump trucking” on the students. They back up the
truck and dump a huge load of information on them, leaving them without understanding. And
finally, a teacher demonstrates poor communication skills by teaching the students information that
has nothing whatsoever to do with the subject matter and may be worthless to the students.

It’s not hard to be a lousy teacher. All you have to do is quit working on improving how you
communicate to your students, become self-centered, and learn to just not care. A lot of teachers are
quite successful at becoming lousy teachers.

4. Lack of care for their students.

Teachers can communicate to their students that they don’t really care
about what they think or feel. Those teachers keep a distance from
their students. It does not take the students long before they see that
their teacher really does not care. They see their teacher as one who
has a job to do and does it with minimal effort. So, most students
respond to this attitude with a like attitude; “You don’t care so I don’t
care.” The result is that very little learning will take place between a
teacher and a student who are distant relationally. The foundation for learning is built on relationships.
Students will be motivated to learn from a teacher whom they know loves them, cares, and really wants
them to learn.

A lousy teacher keeps his distance from any intimate relationship with the students. As a result, the
students will not learn much from a teacher with this posture.

5. Knows everything from their lofty position.

A lousy teacher may have an exhaustive knowledge about
the subject he teaches, or at least he thinks so. When asked
a difficult question that he might not know, he shoots some
“hot air” answer in the place of “I’m not sure of that. Let me

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