I went to school for 5 years to be a teacher and then for another 3 years after that to get my Master’s degree in Curriculum Development and Instruction. And while I went to one of the most highly respected education schools in the country for my Bachelor’s degree and teaching certification (not so much for my Master’s degree, but that’s another story), I can still say without question that a ton of the stuff they shove down future teachers’ throats is complete malarkey.

Not long into my fifth year internship did I wonder if the people telling future teachers what to do ever actually had any classroom experience at all, because once I began to settle into a classroom of my own, I quickly discovered the following teacher training myths to be untrue.

1. Grammar instruction is old school and therefore must be done away with. No. Just no. My first year teaching, I was all set to follow the lead of my college instructors, giving my high school students free rein to focus on content over conventions, but then they turned their first writing pieces in and I had absofuckinglutely no idea what they were trying to say. Their grammar was so terrible, their work was indecipherable. It’s great to emphasize ideas over form in some instances, but when you can’t even tell what those ideas are, you have a problem. A big one.

2. All classes should be student-centered. Well, obviously. It’s a classroom, right? So isn’t it by nature student-centered? Apparently not enough, because they wanted us to make everything student-led and discussion-based. This is great when you’re teaching a group of kids who somewhat value learning, are motivated to succeed, and are relatively free from learning and emotional disabilities. But when you have a classroom full of students who take their pants off in front of the white board and report to their parole officers weekly (I wish I were kidding), asking them to get in a circle and discuss Macbeth without calling each other faggots and throwing food across the room is just this side shy of impossible. It is conceivable to one day get there with them, but not right from the start, and not without having a solid backup plan in place that doesn’t even remotely involve letting them run the show.

3. Young teachers have an uncontrollable desire to diddle their pupils. I cannot tell you how many times we were told as undergraduates to avoid getting too chummy with students for fear we may be unable to resist our inherent desire to have sex with them on the spot. OK, maybe they weren’t that direct, but they sure spent a hell of a lot of time making us terrified to even say hello to the children. Really. I’m surprised there wasn’t a course titled How to Not Feel Up the Kids 201. As a result, I didn’t even want to ask my students how their weekends were for the first 3 years of my career on the off chance one of them should mistake my friendly chatter for sexual harassment. To be clear, most teachers (sadly, there are some crazies out there, though they’re definitely the minority), young and old, have no desire to molest their students, and establishing a rapport with them does not a sexual predator make.

4. Classrooms should look less like classrooms and more like dorm rec centers. One of my college instructors seriously suggested we get away from the traditional desks and fill our classrooms with bean bags and comfy chairs. You know, to make the environment just a bit more “comfortable.” Not surprisingly, he didn’t mention just how much it would cost to replace the furniture out of pocket, nor did he give any thought to the fact that bean bags + kids with parole officers and no pants = an explosion of tiny foam beans and constant patrolling for sexcapades among students. Besides, the environment looks comfortable enough to me. There are some students who have no trouble falling asleep directly on the hard desk surfaces every.single.day.

5. Teachers should never lecture. Ever. Sure, I agree teachers should never make getting up in front of the class and droning on and on and on a daily habit, but there are some instances in which lecture really is the best way to deliver information. It’s all about balance. A lecture here, a discussion there, a kinesthetic activity and a hands-on project later. You have to know your students and your intended outcomes. After that, you have to decide the best way to reach your goal. And sometimes, lecture is it.

6. Differentiation is Lord. I swear to God, it got to a point there where if one more person talked to me about differentiation, I was going to differentiate all the ways to punch them in the ear. Differentiation is fine, but it’s not The Fail Proof Way to Educate The Masses. Also, I’m pretty sure they’re now coming out with research that says differentiation doesn’t work. I’M SHOCKED.

7. Students will love learning if you just make it fun! Right. Try as you might, there’s only so much you can do to make a lesson on properly embedding quotes in an essay riveting. I’ve tried it all: games, contests, rewards, songs, videos, dancing in front of the room whilst berating myself for their pleasure. There are always a handful of students who don’t care and hate everything. ALWAYS. The sooner educators realize and come to terms with this, the less they’ll feel like failures and the better they’ll be able to keep working at reaching those kids while still meeting the needs of the ones who do care.

8. Teachers who really love their jobs are willing to do it all. Class sponsor, basketball coach, newspaper advisor, homecoming chaperone, field trip coordinator — if you truly care, it won’t matter that you never sleep and don’t get paid for it either. Ok, then. Teaching is damn hard, but add extra duty responsibilities to the load, especially when you’re a brand new teacher, and you can almost guarantee burnout by year 5. Slow and steady wins the race. SERIOUSLY.

9. Out with the old; in with the new.  Just because a teaching practice is old doesn’t automatically mean it’s bad. The same holds true for new practices. Just because it’s new doesn’t mean it’s good. The teaching profession is under constant best-practice-and-buzz-word assault. One day, it’s project based learning. The next, it’s high stakes test prep. Whatever the theory du jour is, it’s important to remember that theory is not equal to practice. Not even almost. And simply because somebody with an impressive degree and a publishing agent somewhere says we have to try this new thing here doesn’t mean we have to abandon all the tried and true practices we’ve been implementing for years. It’s not “out with the old; in with the new.” It’s “out with the old stuff that doesn’t work so well; in with the new stuff that does work (until such time as we determine it doesn’t work for our unique students).”

10. Don’t smile until Christmas. FALSE. Smiling does not make you a lamb at slaughter. It makes you human. And that’s what those kids need most of all.