Mistakes are a part of life, and teaching is no exception.
Classroom
No Teacher is Perfect!
Mistakes are a part of life, and teaching is no exception.
The most important thing is to learn from your mistakes as well as you can, which will be important throughout your teaching career.
Education resources
Your classroom won’t always look the way you want it to
It may get a bit disorganized at times. While you’re likely to get better at the organization over time, it will still be rare for it to look exactly how you want it to. You also may find that you don’t always display student work correctly, which can take away from your classroom’s appearance.
You’ll make mistakes when interacting with students
Interactions with students don’t always go how you expect because it’s impossible to be prepared for all the situations that could arise. Also, some days are likely to be harder than others because of this. Here are a few examples of situations that could take you by surprise:
- Sometimes, a student who is normally well-behaved will cause disruptive behavior, which can surprise even the most experienced teachers.
- You may not always notice when a student is distracted, such as a student who frequently texts during class.
- You are likely to have an exceptionally difficult time getting certain students motivated, a problem that even the most experienced teachers are likely to face.
Not every lecture will be perfect
Sometimes, your lectures wander or go slightly off-topic, which is expected but likely less of a problem as you gain experience.
Furthermore, you’re likely to find that certain situations may make your lectures more likely to wander, such as these:
- If you’re teaching a new class for the first time, your lectures could be more likely to wander.
- In some cases, disruptive students could cause you to lose track of where you were in a lecture.
- If you are distracted or have not slept well, your lectures might be more likely to wander or be hard to follow.
You won’t always handle disgruntled parents well
Sometimes, you’ll deal with disgruntled parents during parent-teacher meetings or interactions with them at the end of the school day. While you’ll get better at handling these situations as you gain experience as a teacher, it won’t always go the way you expect.
These are a few reasons why you will not always be able to deal with disgruntled parents effectively:
- You may find that getting through to some people is impossible, which can happen for various reasons.
- Some parents become disgruntled because they’re hoping their child will receive preferential treatment, which is often an impossible situation to deal with.
- You may encounter parents who want you to change your curriculum in ways that compromise the education’s quality.
What you can realistically expect
While you can expect to make mistakes during your career, it’s also reasonable to expect that you’ll become more able to deal with situations that arise as you become a more experienced teacher.
Here are a few examples of reasons why you’ll be less likely to make mistakes as you become a more experienced teacher:
- You can expect that situations that may have caught you off guard in the past don’t feel so unexpected as you become more experienced as a teacher, which can greatly improve your performance as a teacher.
- Expect that you’ll be more easily able to improve in some areas than others, which is the case in any profession.
- You’ll become more familiar with the experience of meeting new students.
