101 Ways To Make Students Hate Your Class

We’ve all had our share of students whose purpose in life seems to be making our own life miserable. If you haven’t, well you’re in luck. Here is a list of ways to make students hate your class.

101 Ways To Make Students Hate Your Class

1. Be boring
2. Be mean
3. Be inconsiderate
4. Be confrontational
5. Be negative
6. Be consistently sarcastic
7. Be impatient
8. Be satisfied with good enough
9. Argue with students
10. Yell at students
11. Threaten students
12. Pick favorites
13. Don’t learn names
14. Misspell names
15. Don’t try to pronounce names correctly
16. Discourage students
17. Focus on insecurities
18. Compare students unfavorably with their siblings
19. Compare students with other students
20. Don’t allow students to use the restroom in obvious emergencies
21. Haphazardly allow a “revolving door restroom policy”
22. Makes lots of rules
23. Make unnecessary rules
24. Inconsistently enforce rules
25. Ignore obvious misbehaviors
26. Selectively criticize minor mishebaviors
27. Assign detention daily
28. Don’t set clear expectations
29. Create an antagonistic learning environment
30. Embrace stereotypes
31. Share your opinions often
32. Prejudge students based on what other teachers tell you
33. Assign frivolous classwork
34. Assign frivolous homework
35. Don’t give feedback on grades
36. Ignore district grading policies
37. Set hard deadlines that leave no room for error
38. Don’t allow makeup work
39. Make a habit of not counting homework
40. Input grades irregularly
41. Miss school a lot
42. Go back on your word
43. Don’t care about students
44. Compare yourself to other teachers
45. Criticize other teachers
46. Criticize administrators
47. Don’t answer emails
48. Don’t return phone calls
49. Remain in  your classroom all day
50. Gossip with other teachers in the hallway
51. Spend instructional time on returning emails or phone calls
52. Eat during class
53. Don’t prepare for technology breakdowns
54. Use outdated technology
55. React rather than respond
56. Lecture frequently
57. Show videos frequently
58. Use one instructional method exclusively
59. Ignore looks of confusion on the faces of students
60. Don’t check for understanding
61. Give pop quizzes regularly
62. Avoid asking questions your students can answer
63. Force uninterested students to participate in class
64. Make test questions ridiculously hard
65. Make tests with 50 or more problems
66. Make tests with 4 or less problems
67. Ignore real-world implications of your subject matter
68. Make frequent allusions to musicians, TV shows, or movies that were popular 30 years ago
69. Make frequent allusions to musicians, TV shows, or movies that were popular 3 years ago
70. Try to be trendy
71. Type loudly while students are working
72. Talk loudly while students are working
73. Sing, whistle, or make other noises to yourself
74. Say “umm” regularly
75. Use “library voice” all the time
76. Use “teacher voice” all the time
77. Ask personal questions
78. Single students out in front of others
79. Have private conversations publicly
80. Call parents on speaker phone during class
81. Take things personally
82. Talk about your personal life frequently
83. Be secretive about your personal life
84. Arrive to work late
85. Leave work early
86. Take mobile devices away from students
87. Violate staff mobile device policies
88. Blame students
89. Blame parents
90. Blame administrators
91. Complain without offering solutions
92. Teach the same material every year
93. Go through the motions
94. Don’t push yourself to grow
95. Set low expectations for yourself
96. Set low expectations for your students
97. Frequently remind students how long you have been teaching
98. Count down the days until the weekend
99. Count down the days until Christmas break
100. Count down the days until the summer
101. Count down the days until retirement

What do you think? Leave a comment with some more ways you have accidentally found to make students hate your class.

Joel Wagner

Joel Wagner (@sywtt) began teaching band in 2002. Though he had a lot of information, his classes were out of control. He found himself tired, frustrated, disrespected by students, lonely, and on the brink of quitting. He had had enough. He resigned from his school district right before spring break of his second year and made it his personal mission to learn to be a great teacher. So You Want To Teach? is the ongoing story of that quest for educational excellence.