Teach Secondary 14.4

You are not an IMPOSTER If you’re not feeling up to the task of being a teacher, and perhaps even believe you’ve no right to wield such a huge responsibility, then you’re not alone, says Colin Foster ... P eople frequently enter teaching with the highest of ideals. They want to make a difference. They recognise that young people have only one chance of getting a school education, and that doing well in school can considerably improve a young person’s life chances. If this is the lofty motivation for being a teacher, then it follows that teachers can find themselves labouring under a huge amount of pressure and expectations to transform lives. Given all that, who wouldn’t harbour at least the occasional doubt about being equal to the demands of such a monumental task? Understanding imposter syndrome It’s therefore hardly surprising that teachers will often experience some flavour of ‘imposter syndrome’ – a term referring to a collection of beliefs centred around issues of self-doubt. It’s the voice inside a teacher’s head, telling them, ‘ Who do you think you are? What business do you have being a teacher? Soon enough, everyone will discover that you’re a fraud! ’ Similarly, it shouldn’t be surprising to learn that there are some well-established links between imposter syndrome and depression, anxiety and burnout (see tiny.cc/ts144-IS1 ). Imposter syndrome (or, to use the more neutral term, ‘imposter phenomenon’) tends to be associated with high-achieving people, having first been observed among successful women and other marginalised groups. If your experiences of getting into teaching involved some degree of struggle, in which you had to to fight to get people to take you seriously as a professional, the cumulative effects of that can be long-lasting doubts around whether your critics maybe had a point all along. If you came to the profession from a background where few of your relatives and peers went to university, where the tendency was to view teachers as very much the ‘other’, rather than ‘us’, then becoming a teacher yourself may feel strange at times; almost as though you’re ‘someone else’, rather than yourself. The fear of being found out Feelings of imposter syndrome are most likely to surface in already stressful situations – which, of course, teaching provides no shortage of. Perhaps you’ve made a mistake in the classroom, or during a meeting with colleagues. Maybe a student’s challenged you (possibly for reasons more to do with their own life than anything about you). Regardless, youmay respond by taking the situation personally, and seeing it as one more piece of evidence that you should never have allowed yourself to believe that you could do this job ... A common feature of imposter syndrome is over-generalising even tiny mistakes, by perceiving these as evidence of a general lack of ability – catastrophising that you never get things right and are always failing, even when that’s manifestly not the case. The perennial fear of imposter syndrome is the notion of ‘being found out’. The person susceptible to imposter syndrome will live each day trying to hide their belief that they shouldn’t be doing the job that they’re doing, while constantly waiting for everyone else to discover this ‘truth’ for themselves. This can in turn lead to unhealthy attempts at overcompensating, resulting in work martyrdom, where one’s work-life balance is sacrificed on the altar of ‘doing right by students and my colleagues’. Those with imposter syndrome strive to become professional superheroes, always attempting to work longer, harder and better than those around them. They’re constantly trying to prove themselves to everyone – including themselves – while at the same time living in constant fear of “Thosewith imposter syndrome strive tobecome professional superheroes, always attempting towork longer,harderandbetter” 70 teachwire.net/secondary