About my job

[tartanposies]

Long one, and I have namechanged, sorry.

I am a secondary school teacher and I'm no good at it.

I think I've managed to pull the wool over people's eyes for a while. but I don't think I am very good.

What else can I do?

[wasonthelist]

Suspect you need a second opinion. I have particularly bad imposter syndrome - maybe you are the same. When I switched teams recently I was very surprised by all the people who said they were sorry to lose me -which made me temporarily wonder if I am actually OK at it.

[tartanposies]

I don't think it's imposter syndrome. If anything it's the opposite, I think I have fooled myself and fooled others.

[PoundingTheStreets]

I think when people feel inadequate about their performance at work, it is symptomatic of their confidence being on the floor, rather than an accurate reflection of their abilities. The trick is in working out why your confidence is so low.

It doesn't seem that you're having poor feedback, in fact you imply the opposite when you say you think you've fooled others.

Is it perhaps feeling overwhelmed and (probably mistakenly) believing that everyone else takes it in their stride so it must mean there's something wrong with you?

Is it the feeling that you're never good enough because anything public sector based these days seems to confuse 'continuous room for improvement' with 'constantly moving the goal posts' and requiring people produce lots of evidence for improvement which necessitates less time doing the actual job they're being measured on.

Is there a particular incident that's playing on your mind?

Do you have a particularly difficult year group?

Can you talk to your peers and get some support? Hoe you feel better about it all soon.

[user1483981877]

That isn't a long thread Tartan, I wonder if your judgement of your own ability to teach is suffering from the same problem? Have you been criticised at all for your teaching or has something else happened? Is anything else going on for you that is affecting your confidence? If it's any consolation, I have had a number of different jobs and have managed to take my very critical self judgement along with me to each of them and have left many a job because of it. My point being that it has consistently been about my mindset rather than my job.

[leccybill]

I thought I was shit at being a secondary teacher. I was certainly made to feel inadequate anyway. So I left. Went to another school with nicer children and management- turns out it was them, not me. I'm actually quite good at it. Well, as good as everyone else.
We're only human remember. I know the govt want us to be superhuman.

[tartanposies]

No, it isn't is it! I thought I wanted to write a lot more.

Pounding yes to all those. everyone else seems so sorted and in control. I think I learned bad habits early on and they are very hard to break.

[PoundingTheStreets]

I don't work in teaching but I am a fellow public sector worker and know several teachers. I think we are all worn down by the constant bureaucratic pressure to 'evidence' our abilities and improvements following guidelines laid down by those who have no real idea about what we do or the time constraints we are juggling. This is incredibly demoralising and it's often only sheer love of the job and amazing juggling abilities that get us past that.

The trouble is that when you get a particularly difficult job (in my case) or a particularly difficult year (in a teacher's case), the love of the job isn't necessarily there to carry you through. It all feels just horribly stressful.

The only thing I can recommend is talk, talk and talk. When I am with people who are new in service, I make a point of talking about how difficult I found it at their stage, etc. It's amazing how many times I am told "I thought it was just me." It's lovely to see how knowing it's not gives them the encouragement to keep on trying and improving and the courage to ask for help when feeling overwhelmed.

If you're worried about admitting 'weakness' appeal to people's vanity. Say something like "I love the way you manage to x, y, z Could you give me some tips?"

[EnormousTiger]

You may be better than you think. Men tend to think they are much better than they are and women that they are hardly up to the job which is a pity.

[Trifleorbust]

Education charity? Publishing company?

What do you teach?