Are You a Bad Teacher?

It’s more likely than you think!

• can’t handle students making comments that are ahead of the lesson schedule.
• keeps students’ attention by moving around constantly and making sweeping gestures, rather than with interesting lectures or insightful remarks.
• reads PowerPoint slides verbatim, adding very little.
• embarrasses students by lecturing thinly, engaging in long pauses, losing train of thought, and otherwise breaking the attention-spell.
• lets people whisper, text, or sleep.
• relies too heavily on students to carry the lecture by repeatedly asking, and waiting for answers to, rhetorical questions, when the teacher already knows what answer they really want to hear.
• engages in stupid, time-consuming activities and demonstrations that seem poorly rehearsed and have a weak link to the lecture.
• depends too heavily on students’ participation in online discussion boards, when unable to inspire useful discussion in class.
• loses control of class discussions: can’t stand up to the bigot, bring the rambler back to focus, defuse personal attacks, or shut the motormouth up.
• handholds: constant quizzes, worksheets, strict attendance policy, daily in-class work, nightly homework, nagging, overabundance of extra credit, easy grader…it makes people lazy.
• makes students feel stupid or like they don’t get it, because the teacher didn’t understand their question or comment, or it didn’t fit with that day’s lesson plan.
• has a bad voice: screechy, warbly, breaking, monotone, impenetrable accent, rushed or slurred speech, very long pauses mid-sentence.
• spends an entire 50-minute class basically summarizing the book for those too slow to get it, or too lazy to read.

YOU ARE A WASTE OF MY TIME AND MONEY. Thanks for reading.

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