You’re not perfect. So why pretend to be a perfect teacher?

As a student teacher, new teacher or an experienced teacher at a new school, you might feel the pressure to present a highly polished image.

I suggest you leave this polished image behind. 

Think about it this way. You’ve been (and may still be) a student. Part of being a student is experiencing frustrations, disappointments and the occasional success. You might have even made mistakes — potentially some very notable ones.

Embrace this reality and leave the highly polished image behind. 

In the classroom you can do this by sharing your mistakes with students. In my opinion, great teachers discuss their own mistakes during student interactions. When you’re working with students think about using language such as:

• “When I did questions like this, here are the typical mistakes I made…”

• “This is the strategy I used to deal with questions like this. It wasn’t very successful. What I did instead was…”

• “I didn’t do as well as I wanted to do on a task like this. This was what I did next…”

From a pedagogy perspective, I reckon you’re demonstrating two valuable teaching traits.

1. You’re modelling good practice. You’re demonstrating the importance of understanding your mistakes and using this information to improve. 

2. You’re building relationships with students. You’re being honest with your students and discussing your own personal challenges, in a way that’s relevant to them. Hopefully you’re doing this with a good sense of humour.

Your imperfection can be a terrific tool in building rapport with students and helping them view their mistakes in a more positive light.