Working as a teacher has as many challenges as it does rewards, and many teachers struggle to find a way to balance their own personality with the demands of their students. Most teachers, when they enter the profession, have an idealistic view of teaching. They hope to be able to mentor and inspire their students, and the truth is that teachers are some of the most important figures in a child’s life. But there are also many challenges that each teacher will face, and in order to be truly fulfilled in their career, teachers must find a way to continually grow and strive for reaching your teaching potential.
The first thing that teachers, like most people, must accept is that there is always room for improvement – even if you are a great teacher already. But rather than focusing on your weaknesses, consider working with your strengths to find ways to become better at what you do. For example, if you are the type of teacher that is great at encouraging discussion among your students but you struggle with keeping the discussions on track and relevant, consider what strategies you can use that work with that ability. Can you help students by using the topics they are interested in to facilitate learning? Can you offer them strategies for note taking during a group discussion? Rather than telling yourself that you have to stop allowing open forum discussions to take up so much of your class time, try reading about ways to incorporate peer learning into your curriculum. On the other hand, if you are the type of teacher that is great at making and sticking to very detailed lesson plans that don’t allow very much unstructured discussion time, consider how you can incorporate student input into your lesson plans as a way to enhance your teaching strategies. No matter what your strength is, find ways to build upon that strength to get the results you want, rather than beating yourself up over what you perceive to be weak points in your teaching ability.
On the other hand, if you do have a significant weakness that you feel needs to be addressed, consider changing the way you look at that weakness. While you may never be the most organized teacher in your school, can you accept that you are a great teacher in many other areas? That doesn’t mean you can’t keep working on weak areas, it just means recognizing that you can’t be great at everything all the time. Find strategies to address your weaknesses that play off your strengths.
Understanding your own strengths helps you understand what your potential as a teacher really is. Your strengths are important for defining both your teaching abilities and your teaching personality, and your students will respect you for being yourself. Your strengths can often cover your weaknesses, and you can use the things that you are good at to replace the things that you are not as good at. And, more importantly, it is more fun and motivating to work with your strengths than it is to fight against your weaknesses. Work to improve yourself, but also accept who you are. Your students may just remember that the most important lesson you ever taught them was that being yourself is always good enough.
