Some classrooms just aren’t effectively facilitating student learning, this blogger observed when visiting 21 high schools last fall.  In the previous post I wrote about many of the classrooms that I admired and appreciated very much, more than thirty in all, (and I named the schools where this excellent teaching was happening).  In this entry, however, I am going to share times when I observed what I believed to be quite ineffective teaching.  Although I will not be naming the schools at which these ineffective lessons took place, I should emphasize that all comments below are based on first-hand observations of actual classrooms at the 21 very good high schools I visited.

Classrooms that Aren’t Working for 21st century Students:

  • The Too Much of  a Good Thing Classroom
  • The Distrusting Classroom
  • The Ill-Will Classroom
  • The One Student at a Time Classroom
  • The Uninterested in Motivation Classroom
  • The Trying his Hardest but Unprepared and Unsupported Teacher Classroom
  • The Teacher-Centric Classroom
For each, after the jump, I explain a bit more what I mean, and give examples of these practices in action, (scrubbed of any association with the particular schools).   More…