5 Ways You’re Telling Students “You Can’t”

In ways subtle but clear, scores of teachers are communicating to their students every day that they can’t do it.

They don’t measure up.

They’re not good enough, smart enough, or capable enough. Most troubling, these teachers have no idea they’re doing this.

In fact, they believe they’re helpful and supportive. But for students, the message they actual receive is devastating. Some never recover.

What follows are the five most common ways teachers unknowingly hold students down, crush their spirit, and tell them “You can’t.”

1. Poor Preparation

When you give the signal for your students to work independently, every one of them must be ready to immediately get down to work.

In other words, they must know exactly what to do and how to do it well without any additional input from you. When you say “Go” they must be able to attack their work aggressively and confidently.

If hands go up, if you have to run around the room helping, then you didn’t prepare them well enough.

Independent work is meant for mastering material already learned. It’s not learning itself. If there is consistent daily uncertainty, you’re telling your students that they’re not good at learning.

2. Micromanaging

Your involvement in anything your students can do for themselves hurts their confidence and stunts their maturity. You must teach your expectations well and then let them fulfill them.

Stop reminding, redirecting, and narrating—which only communicate that they need you to succeed. They’re too babyish, slow-witted, and forgetful to do it on their own.

Once your students prove to you they understand your objective, your only job is to observe from a distance. Let them experience success all on their own. Let them prove to themselves they can do it alone.

They don’t need you.

This is how you build complexity and challenge every day. This is why some classrooms are so much more mature than others at the same grade level.

3. Inconsistency

If you ever fail to hold misbehaving students accountable, you’re telling them that you don’t think they can improve. So why bother.

They’re not worth your effort. They’re too much trouble to deal with. They’re a lost cause. Real accountability is only meant for students who can handle it.

This is a tragic message.

To improve behavior and develop good citizens, you must care enough to make the hard decisions. You must believe they can learn from their mistakes, even your most challenging students.

Letting them off the hook, allowing mental breaks, and giving praise and prizes for expected behavior severely damages their chances of success and condescendingly tells them that they’re lesser people.

4. Special groups

Even if there is a clear and compelling diagnoses of a learning disability, never, ever put students into a special reading or math group.

Because it labels them as dumb. They know it and so does everyone else.

Instead, take responsibility for their learning. Teach them up. Yes, they may have to choose an independent reading book at a lower level. You may have to review along with your current math lesson.

You may have to put them on a long-overdue four-week basic math or phonics intensive.

But never, under any circumstance, crush their will to learn or brand them as less than. Never humiliate them for the sins of their parents or the poor teaching that came before you.

Yes, it takes skill and high competency. But it’s part and parcel to being a teacher. Show your students through your clear and detailed lessons that they can learn like everyone else, and they will learn like everyone else.

Note: You may have questions on this topic. Rest assured, we’ll cover how to do this in a future article.

5. Grade inflation

Grade inflation is a delayed, insidious message that tells students they’re not good enough. In the short term, however, it makes everyone feel good.

Parents are proud. Students are happy. Teachers can smile and convince themself they’ve done good. It’s the soothing balm that covers all wounds.

Until the devil gets his due.

That child you gave a passing grade to who did not earn it, whose skills did not warrant it, will discover one day that you lied.

They can’t read or write, think or communicate, reason or discern well enough to compete in today’s world. Sometimes the bill comes when they take their SATs. Sometimes it’s the first week of college. Sometimes when no one will hire them.

But come it will.

Just Common, Everyday Teaching

Sadly, all five are commonplace.

They’re standard practice, rubber-stamped and certified by the powers that be; masters of the educational monolith.

But there are rebels in their midst.

There are mutineers and nonconformists fighting to make things right. It’s a cadre of individual teachers and courageous principals dotting the landscape, and at least one remarkable New York City school district.

We’re coming. We’re growing. And we’re not stopping.

I encourage you to join us by subscribing to this website and our YouTube channel, sharing SCM with your friends and colleagues, and refusing to be part of the problem.

Our latest YouTube video is How to Make Time-Out Actually Work in Your Classroom. This one is a game-changer.