"That will be easy ..."

I've read David Johnson's 3 math teaching books, and I agree with his philosophy, and ironically, due to testing, some other teacher was in my room for one of my off periods this week, and I found myself cringing when he was going over an English assignment and scanning down the problems and saying, "yes, all of these are too easy .... yes, it should be easy ...". And what do I do??? As I was scanning over the math homework problems I was assigning on Friday, I said, "oh, #9 should be no problem ... or "easy"" or something like that.

Stop It!

That's a no win statement. If the kid gets it right, then she/he is like, "big deal, it was an easy problem". If the kid doesn't get it, then "I must be stupid, because it was an easy problem".

ARKHHHHH. I know this and yet, I did it without thinking. A girl (who coincidentally was also in the other teacher's class) called me on it inadvertantly, "Argh! I HATE it when teachers try to interpret everything".

Guilty as charged.