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.