39 Teachers So Infuriating, Their Students Just Had To Shame Them Online

That seems particularly important when students get something wrong—which, inconveniently enough, is kind of how learning works. As neurologist and former teacher Judy Willis explains in an article on Psychology Today, “We learn the most from our mistakes and the mistakes of others when we receive information (corrective feedback) to prevent our making the mistake in the future. This is part of the brain’s neuroplastic ability to change itself in response to thought and experience.”

But for students to learn from mistakes, they need to feel comfortable enough to make them without fearing punishment—or worse, public humiliation. As Willis explains, “The greatest school fear reported by students is being reprimanded for a mistake or poor performance of any kind in front of classmates.” She adds that embarrassment and negative attention can cause students to avoid participating altogether, while stress can impair working memory, problem-solving abilities and emotional self-control.

This is just one of the many ways teachers teach their students more than what’s on any lesson plan. They’re also modeling how to communicate, handle frustration, and respond to mistakes. Students might forget a history date, or how to solve for x, but they’re a whole lot less likely to forget how a teacher made them feel when they got something wrong.

Of course, teachers are human, too. They make mistakes and have bad days just like the rest of us. And, honestly, teaching is no small job. Keeping a room full of students engaged, well-behaved, and supported while dealing with wildly different personalities and needs sounds exhausting enough.

None of this is meant to bash teachers. Nor is it a case against them having high standards. Rather, it’s about what happens when enforcing those standards becomes more important than the common sense behind them. Because being strict and being unreasonable aren’t necessarily the same thing—although some of these examples certainly seem to blur the line.