{"id":12014,"date":"2019-06-21T11:55:21","date_gmt":"2019-06-21T18:55:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/teachinginhighered.com\/?p=12014"},"modified":"2019-06-21T11:55:21","modified_gmt":"2019-06-21T18:55:21","slug":"confidence-in-teaching","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/teachinginhighered.com\/2019\/06\/21\/confidence-in-teaching\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Demonstrate Confidence in Your Teaching"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This article was originally\u00a0posted on EdSurge<\/a>\u00a0and is part of the guide\u00a0Toward Better Teaching: Office Hours With Bonni Stachowiak.<\/a>\u00a0You can pose a question for a future column\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Dear Bonni,<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Various times I get feedback from students that they find me too unsure when in front of the class. What are helpful strategies to get better at this? This is especially hard for me since I teach large classes and it is challenging to connect.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014From a professor ready for confidence<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

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When I taught my first class at the college level, I was somewhat nervous, but not as much as I may have been if I had comprehended the magnitude of what I was about to do. The first decade of my career had been in a dissimilar context, the franchising industry, teaching computer classes, and my expectations were unrealistic as to just how different it would be to teach at the college level.<\/span><\/p>\n

The person who had originally instructed me how to teach had ingrained in me that you should avoid telling people that this was your first time teaching a class. While never asking me to lie, he had proposed that my first-timer status should not ever be brought up by me. He said that otherwise, I ran the risk of having people lose confidence in my capacity to guide them through the day of learning a new software program.<\/span><\/p>\n

As I began my first night of teaching in a university setting, I asked the students to take out their textbooks for the class and turn to a particular page. My secret about this being my first trip to this particular rodeo was out. It almost never happened that students would bring their books to the very first class session at our institution. My request was met with blank stares. It was time for me to begin asking some questions and learning more about this new environment. My confidence was shaken, but not broken.<\/span><\/p>\n

Think of someone who contributed to your learning in a meaningful way at some point in your life. If we gathered all the stories of people reading this column together, we would have a tapestry of diverse people who all had unique approaches to contributing to others\u2019 growth. But I suspect that one characteristic that would be common among all the stories is that these influential teachers had confidence in the importance of the content they were teaching, if not also some belief in their teaching abilities after having built up their capacity over some time.<\/span><\/p>\n

Gaining confidence can be elusive to those of us in higher education, since academic culture can often subtract from our confidence, instead of building it up. Our strength may already be worn down by going through a challenging promotion and tenure process, or after years of having our research evaluated by peer reviewers who sometimes reject work without giving effective feedback; or reading negative comments from students on our course evaluations.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, a wonderful anecdote to those encounters is to have a strong connection with our sense of meaning and purpose in our work. Regularly answering the question surrounding why we teach in the first place can build up greater protections against those factors that may detract from our assurance.<\/span><\/p>\n