Teaching Past Imposter Syndrome

Why Imposter Syndrome Hits Teachers Hard

Teaching is about knowledge.  The ability to learn, remember, and share information — that is the teacher's life.  But there is far more kowledge in this world than any of us could ever hope to master — and no matter how much you know, there will always be someone who knows something you don't.  Especially in an educational institution, where you have a whole collection of experts in a wide variety of disciplines.  So even when you are an expert in your field, even when you are doing great work helping your students learn, it can feel as if you're surrounded by people who are somehow "smarter" or "better" than you.

American attitudes about teaching can be very dismissive.  I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard the phrase "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach."  In the United States, there's this belief that teachers somehow "fell short" of becoming "real" professionals.  The agrarian heritage of our country also means that students have long summer breaks — and many Americans falsely assume that teachers are being paid to "just sit around" during those long summers.  In reality, teachers are only paid for the months they're working, even if those paychecks are distributed across twelve months — this means annual salaries for public educators are low, and this often puts teachers in a low income bracket.  And without that social mobility, many of the "best and brightest" choose to avoid education in favor of a better financial future — thus further promoting the idea that we teachers "aren't capable" of doing more with our lives, even when we chose teaching because we really enjoy working with students.

Ironically enough, this dismissal teaching can get even worse in the competitive research settings of higher education.  Some of the most successful scholars are individuals who don't focus on teaching, and some of the most successful teachers are those who don't focus on their own research.  And that makes sense — we excel in our areas of interest.  Teaching is a skill — just like any other pursuit, it takes time to get really good at it.  Time spent grading and lesson planning is time you aren't spending on reading and researching and publishing — and then you have responsibilities to family, friends, and your own mental well-being.  The most successful scholars in the world of publication end up with very visible successes for their resumes and curriculum vitae — the most successful teachers have a group of students who move on with their lives at the end of the term.

Our friends, family, and colleagues can't provide realistic reassurance.  Friends and family aren't in the classroom with us.  Hell — we generally don't even have other colleagues in our classrooms.  Aside from an evaluation every couple years, you don't have another adult in the room to let you know how well you're teaching.

Your students don't know enough to know if you've succeeded.  Asking your students to comment on your teaching is like having a patient explain whether their doctor understands medicine — you're the expert in a room of people who are learning your subject from you.  Worse still, our students are a captive audience who may not want to be there.  Now, if you develop great rapport with your students, you likely love teaching — you may even have students who rave about how much they're learning from you.  But what happens when you teach a challenging subject, and your students naturally feel frustrated?  What do you do about the students who are missing class because the material intimidates them?  And what about those students who blame you for their poor grades — and then take out their frustrations on their student evals?  Those experiences can make you feel like a failure.  Never mind that most of your students made it through the course, or that you have the papers and test answers to show that your students mastered new skills thanks to your mentorship.  At the end of the day, how a students feels about your teaching comes down to an emotional response.  A perfectly understandable and acceptable emotional response, but one that may not reflect what they've actually learned or how well you teach.

Addressing Imposter Syndrome

So as a teacher, what do you do?  How do you overcome these feelings of inadequacy?  Here are some strategies that have helped me over the years:

Accept that No One Is Perfect

Master the material as best as you can, but don't expect yourself to be perfect.  In the army, I had a sergeant tell us "Competence builds Confidence."  And it's true: one of the best ways to feel good about your teaching is to be the best teacher you can be.  I feel far, far better about teaching today than I did my first few years, and much of that is because I have more skills.  I don't know everything — and I never will — but I know enough to teach.

Regardless of where you are in your career — whether you're fresh out of undergrad or you've been teaching for years — you're in the same boat.  If you're a brand new teacher, maybe a first-year grad student, remember that you went to college in this field.  You've taken focused, research-based courses on this topic — the kinds of coureses that none of your students have taken yet.  You are the subject matter expert in the room.  Not every student will believe that — the Dunning-Kruger Effect is real — but you know more than enough to share something that none of your students have learned before.  If nothing else, you've picked up the essential study skills to help you get through college, and you can show your students how that skills will get them through your assignments.

Don't Confuse Preferences and "Best Practices"

Some teachers give the message that "This is the right way to teach — and if you don't do it this way, you aren't teaching."  That is absolutely not true.  There are many, many ways to teach — and each approach has its pros and cons.  No matter what style you use, there will be students who like it and students who don't.  You're goal is to develop the innovation and flexibility in your teaching to serve as many students as possible.  But again, no one's perfect — and there is no such thing as "perfect" praxis.

Today, I feel pretty good about my teaching — I have a lot more practice putting together good assignments, responding to student questions, and managing my grading.  (Just kidding — I will never learn to manage my grading . . . )  But every semester brings me new perspectives.  Every semester reminds me of my own shortcomings.  I am a slow, slow grader, and it takes me forever to learn the names of all my students — from a "best practices" perspective, some might call my teaching a disaster.  But I still show up every day, I still talk my students through their individual projects, and I typically get my students to write far more words than they would for other English courses.  When it comes to writing, I favor quantity over quality — and not every instructor does.

Some of my students love this.  They don't read those extensive notes that other teachers scrawl on their papers, so they appreciate that I'm talking them through the writing process rather than just giving written feedback.  A few students hate this.  They feel that a "real" teacher would be marking every single misplaced comma.  (Okay, I'm exaggerating a bit — but I did once have students claim that their website project with seven images and seven primary source examples didn't count as "real writing.")  But there are teachers who do mark every single comma — and those teachers helped me become a better writer.  I've always loved writing and grammar — as a student, I found the precise critiques helpful.  But this same teaching style — which is an excellent teaching style for many students — has also led some students to believe they will never be capable of writing well.

So much comes down your personal preferenes — and also your students.  At the community college where I teach, I regularly have students who simply don't like writing, and they believe they have "proof" of their own failure because every past sentence is mortally wounded from red pen wounds.  The harsh marks that helped me write better sentences are the same marks that convinced many of my students to give up trying.  This is not the fault of the teachers or the students — it's the reality that your pedagogy can't match the learning style for every student.  I find that my "quantity of quality" approach works well for my nontraditional community college students who've spent several years away from school while working or raising families — I don't my teaching style would be well received by those students who take AP Literature courses while applying to Ivy League colleges.

This is why I dislike the term "best practices."  I find that it's often overrused.  Just consider grading timelines: some teachers prefer portfolio grading, some use weekly or even daily grading, and others use ungrading.  All of these are valid forms of grading.  Then there are attendance policies.  For a course with a lot of lecture and regular in-class quizzes, you absolutely need a strict attendance policy.  For a course like mine with far more writing, I can have somewhat more relaxed attendance policies.  Same with extensions.  I give frequent extensions on assignments — and I specifically tell my students that not every class can do this.  Like if there's a midterm coming up, and a student needs to have the material mastered in time to pass that big exam, there's no way the professor can allow extra time for those key formative assignments.  That's just setting up a student for failure.  But for me?  It doesn't hurt a student's learning if the research happens this week or next week — just as long as I hold every student to a consistent standard for completing the work and passing my course.

Unfortunately, other instructors might judge you for following preferences that differ from their own.  Or — more likely — you'll hear an instructor describe something really cool they do in their teaching, and you'll feel guilty for not doing the same thing.  Please, remember that every teacher is different.  Every classroom is different.  Hell, I've had different sections of the same class in the same semester where one section did incredible work and the other section went off the rails.  Same lesson plans, same assignments, same teacher — very different results.

Don't Feel Guilty About Setting Boundaries

Boundaries are a personal necessity unique to each instructor — not a best practice.  Yes, it could be a "best practice" to reply to emails within 24-hours — but it's not always possible.  Not if you have three preps and a hundred students and this little thing called "a life."  (I'm a single parent who's also running a website...and I know of many adjuncts who are even more overwhelmed with work.)  And maybe sometimes you need a day off to sleep.  Or binge watch your favorite show.  Or go for a run.  We all need time off — if Thursday morning and afternoon are your only free hours during the week when you aren't grading or feeding a hungry teenager, then you shouldn't feel pressured to check emails during those precious hours away from the world.

For me, I found a way around the email conundrum.  As a white male with gray in my beard, I give out my cell number for students to text me — I find that helps me make sure I'm getting quick answers to the students who need immediate help, even on the days when checking emails would be too distracting.  But I would never suggest that this is a "best practice."  There's no way in hell I suggest that a young, female instructor should feel "obligated" give out her cell number in this world where there are some male students who would seriously abuse that privilege.  And yes, I have seen male students harass female instructors.  So my personal preference for giving out my cell number should obviously never be described as a best practice.  (I am not saying it's impossible for a female student to harass a male professor — I have read at least one case of that happening.  But I'm not going to ignore the reality of #metoo.)

So please, do not feel guilty because you are aren't doing "enough" for your students.  Don't feel as if you need to sacrifice yourself for your teaching.  If you're worried about paying rent and you find yourself grading papers on weekends, then you've already sacrificed more for other people's children than most non-teachers would ever dream of.

(And if you're judging my prior sentence because I ended it on a preposition, we clearly follow different best practices . . . )