As a leader in a school, I see a lot of teachers struggle with confidence. It’s not just the early career teachers either! Plenty of highly competent teachers struggle to feel like they’re making a difference.

Now, whether you’re an early career teacher or an old hand, building your confidence is essential. How you get there though will look very different. The core of building confidence is the same in either case: reflect on your lessons and be kind to yourself.

What is confidence?

This might seem like a bit of an odd question for an article like this. The truth is that while we all know what confidence looks and feels like, we often struggle to fully understand what it is and where it comes from.

A very wise principal of mine once told me that we don’t build confidence when we get things right; we build confidence when things go wrong and we get through it anyway. Things aren’t always going to go right, and confidence is having the knowledge that you can cope with whatever is thrown your way.

The challenge for perfectionists

I’ve written before about how gifted students are special needs students, but teachers are also the same. If you take the above definition of confidence, then the most planned and successful teachers would naturally struggle with confidence.

To build your confidence, my advice is going to be a little controversial. You’re going to have to let things go wrong.

Don’t plan for that lesson until 7pm at night. Come to class not knowing what your students are going to throw at you. When you’re in lesson and the students are starting to check out, don’t stay on-track, pivot and try something that might not work. And if something goes wrong, don’t focus on how you could plan to improve next time, but focus on all the things you did in that moment to deal with the situation.

Focusing on our failures

We as humans hate that idea. When we have a bad lesson we want to fix the problem, but this only increases our anxiety and results in hyper-preparedness.

Instead, think about what you did do. What strategies did you default to? How do you react in the moment? Did the situation really turn out as bad as it could have? Focusing and reflecting on these elements also serves to get you thinking about what you could do next time, but in a way that celebrates the work that you do and your ability to teach.

Teaching is an art, not a science

I’ve also recently written about the importance of a being critical of evidence-based practice and the idea that there is a “best” way to teach. What’s really important is that the students are learning, both on a micro-scale (by lesson or even activity) as well as across an entire semester or year of schooling.

It is essential that we as teachers are always aware of our students’ learning, and are open to a broad range of lessons that our students may be learning in our classes. If you can do this then you can really teach the students in front of you, instead of teaching the theoretical “average” student.

You are a professional, even if you haven’t been teaching for very long. You get a sixth-sense with practice and experience, and your gut is the final word on the strategies you use in class.

So while we absolutely need to learn from our mistakes, avoiding them is not the best way to do this. A confident teacher is more credible to students and parents, and this alone exponentially increases the positive impact of any strategy you use in your classroom.

Still struggling with confidence or don’t know where to begin? Check out my template for lesson reflection below. I’ve designed this template based on human psychology and adult learning principles to support your growth as an educator not just intellectually, but emotionally as well.

If you give it a go, leave a comment to let me know what you think! I’d love to hear how it’s working for you, or how to improve it so that it can.

Lesson Reflection Template

Designed to support the development of teacher confidence by highlighting not only challenges, but also achievements and adaptive responses.

“We don’t build confidence when we get things right; we build confidence when things go wrong and we get through it anyway.”