10 Mistakes New Teachers Make (And How To Avoid Them) New Teachers by Joel Wagner - August 8, 2016February 6, 202025 If you're anything like me, you gained a great deal of academic knowledge about your content area in college and very little actual knowledge about getting students to stay quiet long enough to learn from your abundant knowledge base. Over the years, I have observed young teachers enter the profession and make many of the same mistakes. I have compiled a list of 10 mistakes new teachers make. Nobody makes all of the mistakes, but invariably we all go through a few of them within our first few years of teaching. Mistake 1: Many new teachers try to be "the cool teacher" and end up being "the pushover" I get it. We all want to be liked by our students. The mistake many teachers make is that they