Teacher Tip #16

Teacherscribe’s Teaching Tip #16

Praise in public; criticize in private.

How would you want to be treated if you were in your students’ shoes?

It’s the golden rule of teaching.

Again, praise in public; criticize in private.

Praise in public can come in a number of ways: recognize a student’s effort in front of the class, Tweet at them, send them a note or postcard, send the principal a note and have him mention how well they are doing in your class, call home and brag them up to their parents . . .

On the other hand, it’s simple to criticize in private.  I used to on rare occasions ask a student to step outside for a little tet-a-tet.  But I find myself sending a text (a carefully worded text) to get at an issue.  I’ve sent emails too.  This is great because I will also include the principal or vice principal on the email too.

And one thing I try to do more often is after I criticize a student, before ten class days have elapsed, I will try to praise them.  The trick is it has to genuine praise.  So if I send a text to a student who has been slacking on revising his work, I will praise them later on when they have taken my criticism to heart and applied it to their writing.  I might pull up part of their essay and share it with the class.

It all gets back to something my football coach told me once when I asked him if I ever did anything right since he was constantly criticizing me and calling me out.

He said, “When I stop yelling at you, that is when you have to worry.  That means I’ve given up on you.”

Since that moment, I’ve always viewed criticism in a different light.