Advice on Teaching Anxiety

[needcoffee]

Hi, I'm new to the forum and a first-year business faculty member, but I have taught as an adjunct in the past. I'm an introvert (you could say shy) that really does not like to be the center of attention. To be fully transparent, I also have social anxiety disorder, which I receive ongoing treatment for. My first few weeks on the job and in the lecture halls have been pretty rough, and I'm starting to question whether I have chosen the right career path. I'm curious about a few things:

1. Has anyone else experienced teaching anxiety? If so, were you able to get over it? How?
2. For someone with my personality type, is the best I can hope for to "tolerate" teaching, or can the shy/anxious grow to love it?

[marshwiggle]

FWIW, I've known profs who have been at it for decades who still get anxious before classes start. Since every class is different, until you get the "vibe" of this class you can feel awkward.

I keep notes after each lecture and lab about how long it took, what needs tweaking, etc., so I can make changes for the future. That perspective (of this as an ongoing process) helps me to not sweat the small wrinkles that invariably come up.

[apl68]

Hi, I'm new to the forum and a first-year business faculty member, but I have taught as an adjunct in the past. I'm an introvert (you could say shy) that really does not like to be the center of attention. To be fully transparent, I also have social anxiety disorder, which I receive ongoing treatment for. My first few weeks on the job and in the lecture halls have been pretty rough, and I'm starting to question whether I have chosen the right career path. I'm curious about a few things:

1. Has anyone else experienced teaching anxiety? If so, were you able to get over it? How?
2. For someone with my personality type, is the best I can hope for to "tolerate" teaching, or can the shy/anxious grow to love it?

Surely there's enough anxiety floating around nowadays without anybody needing to go to the trouble of teaching it!

But seriously:

1.  I got over it, to the extent that I did, by simply making myself do it.  I tried consciously to improve.  Over time I made progress.  Teaching is like anything else in that respect.  By the way, as you're probably already aware, "introverted" isn't just a fancy word for "shy."  Shyness is something even we who are strongly introverted can learn to overcome.  Honest, I'm living proof!

2.  I didn't teach long enough to get beyond "tolerating" it, but I have grown to enjoy the related business of public speaking.  Though it helps that public speaking is only a part of my current job, not a major duty.  We introverts tend to feel like we're playing a role in interactions with others in general.  One can learn to enjoy playing the teaching/speaking role. 

My mother is not an introvert, but she did never completely get over a sense of "imposter syndrome" regarding her teaching.  Still, over time she learned to love her work.  This was because she truly cared about her students, and focused on the ones that she succeeded in getting through to, not the ones who never really wanted to be there.  She found teaching at first high school and later college levels rewarding for many years, even if she was never entirely comfortable with some aspects of the work.  I'm sure an introvert who cultivates that same love and concern for students can also learn to find teaching fulfilling.

[needcoffee]

Hi, I'm new to the forum and a first-year business faculty member, but I have taught as an adjunct in the past. I'm an introvert (you could say shy) that really does not like to be the center of attention. To be fully transparent, I also have social anxiety disorder, which I receive ongoing treatment for. My first few weeks on the job and in the lecture halls have been pretty rough, and I'm starting to question whether I have chosen the right career path. I'm curious about a few things:

1. Has anyone else experienced teaching anxiety? If so, were you able to get over it? How?
2. For someone with my personality type, is the best I can hope for to "tolerate" teaching, or can the shy/anxious grow to love it?

Surely there's enough anxiety floating around nowadays without anybody needing to go to the trouble of teaching it!

But seriously:

1.  I got over it, to the extent that I did, by simply making myself do it.  I tried consciously to improve.  Over time I made progress.  Teaching is like anything else in that respect.  By the way, as you're probably already aware, "introverted" isn't just a fancy word for "shy."  Shyness is something even we who are strongly introverted can learn to overcome.  Honest, I'm living proof!

2.  I didn't teach long enough to get beyond "tolerating" it, but I have grown to enjoy the related business of public speaking.  Though it helps that public speaking is only a part of my current job, not a major duty.  We introverts tend to feel like we're playing a role in interactions with others in general.  One can learn to enjoy playing the teaching/speaking role. 

My mother is not an introvert, but she did never completely get over a sense of "imposter syndrome" regarding her teaching.  Still, over time she learned to love her work.  This was because she truly cared about her students, and focused on the ones that she succeeded in getting through to, not the ones who never really wanted to be there.  She found teaching at first high school and later college levels rewarding for many years, even if she was never entirely comfortable with some aspects of the work.  I'm sure an introvert who cultivates that same love and concern for students can also learn to find teaching fulfilling.

Thanks for the quick reply. Out of curiosity, what made you leave teaching and what did you move on to? I guess what I'm trying to decided is if all of the practice at teaching will be fulfilling for me in the long run, or if my personality is just better suit to that of an administrator. I'm trying to figure out where my long-term "home" in higher ed might be.

[nescafe]

I have been teaching for 10 years and still get teaching anxiety pretty regularly. I love teaching and working with students, but still struggle with both emotional and physical manifestations of anxiety/stress around the classroom space. There's no getting over it for me, but I have done a few things that consistently mitigate the anxiety or (on bad days) let me off the hook a bit.

- First and foremost, I plan my teaching prep time each week for the following week, and I never prep classwork on the day-of. I mean in a perfect world, no one would be reading for class or writing lectures less than 24 hours before, but let's be real: lots of folks do it. I stay a week ahead, even (or especially) with new preps. I have a planner where I budget my prep time and do my best to stick with it. And I do not allot much more than 2 hours or prep per 1 hour of time in class (and this is with new preps). After a certain point, more prep isn't better prep... it's just more.

- I blend delivery types and make sure most courses have a group-work/discussion component. This is good pedagogy, but it also shakes up the routine and it takes some of the attention off of me. When I'm having a bad anxiety day, I will rely on group discussions like think/pair/share, close reading/mapping assigned readings, or application of class lessons in a "real-world" scenario.

- Attached to above, I structure my syllabi so that I'm writing no more than 2-3 lectures a week (even with as many classes per term).

- More generally, I do talk therapy and if the anxiety is pervasive, ongoing, and makes your job less enjoyable, it's worth considering some additional help!

I'm not sure I will ever be cured of my anxiety, but I don't think it's something I have to tolerate/push through either. Adapt your pedagogies in a manner that honors your strengths in the classroom while giving you breathing room. Some of the best ones for stress alleviation are also good, inclusive practices that will benefit the students, too!

[Parasaurolophus]

My Master's supervisor will be retiring shortly, and she still has panic attacks about teaching. I don't think that it's at all unusual for profs to have pretty severe teaching anxiety. Academia in general, and some disciplines in particular, seems to really attract introverts and people who are afraid of public speaking, and it's pretty ironic that so much of it is part of our jobs.

For my part, I started out pretty anxious about it. But the more I did it, and the more conference presentations I've given, the less it's bothered me. At this point, although I'm only a few years out from my PhD, it pretty much doesn't bother me at all any more, except when I'm dealing with a significantly different format from the ones I'm used to.

Oh, and a trick that works for me when I do feel anxiety about it: I pretend I'm an actor, acting out the part of a professor who's not at all worried about teaching or speaking publicly. The distancing from my feelings is helpful.

[needcoffee]

I have been teaching for 10 years and still get teaching anxiety pretty regularly. I love teaching and working with students, but still struggle with both emotional and physical manifestations of anxiety/stress around the classroom space. There's no getting over it for me, but I have done a few things that consistently mitigate the anxiety or (on bad days) let me off the hook a bit.

- First and foremost, I plan my teaching prep time each week for the following week, and I never prep classwork on the day-of. I mean in a perfect world, no one would be reading for class or writing lectures less than 24 hours before, but let's be real: lots of folks do it. I stay a week ahead, even (or especially) with new preps. I have a planner where I budget my prep time and do my best to stick with it. And I do not allot much more than 2 hours or prep per 1 hour of time in class (and this is with new preps). After a certain point, more prep isn't better prep... it's just more.

- I blend delivery types and make sure most courses have a group-work/discussion component. This is good pedagogy, but it also shakes up the routine and it takes some of the attention off of me. When I'm having a bad anxiety day, I will rely on group discussions like think/pair/share, close reading/mapping assigned readings, or application of class lessons in a "real-world" scenario.

- Attached to above, I structure my syllabi so that I'm writing no more than 2-3 lectures a week (even with as many classes per term).

- More generally, I do talk therapy and if the anxiety is pervasive, ongoing, and makes your job less enjoyable, it's worth considering some additional help!

I'm not sure I will ever be cured of my anxiety, but I don't think it's something I have to tolerate/push through either. Adapt your pedagogies in a manner that honors your strengths in the classroom while giving you breathing room. Some of the best ones for stress alleviation are also good, inclusive practices that will benefit the students, too!

Well said. I have looked into some of the research about the flipped classroom and think it could work for some of my classes that require a lot of quantitative practice problems. Though it would be nice if the anxiety eventually went away with practice during lectures!

[Caracal]

Well, if it makes you feel better I'm not particularly introverted, do generally like people paying attention to me, and still was paralyzingly anxious for the first few semesters of teaching. I used to get comments that I was too nervous and needed more confidence on all my evals.

I don't think you should think of yourself as unsuited for teaching because you are shy in the rest of your life. Teaching isn't much like going to a party or meeting new people. It is more like a form of performance and most people aren't good at that off the bat. It just takes repetition. All the work you do on it helps, of course, but it really is just about doing it again and again. Eventually, you'll feel more at home in class and less nervous.

I have moments now where something happens in class that once would have really sent me into a panic; The technology fails right as class begins, or I realize I have the wrong powerpoint downloaded or a wasp keeps flying around the room and panicking the students (that actually happened once, I stood on a chair and killed the wasp with someone's textbook, but broke an exit sign in the process..). I'm always kind of shocked at how I can now roll with this kind of stuff. I haven't become a different less anxious person in general, but I have just become pretty chill about this stuff because I've done it a lot now. I know that I can just apologize and go find the right file, or make do without the powerpoint and it will all be ok. I also know that even if one class session is crummy, the world will go on, my evals will be fine and nobody besides me will care much.

[spork]

[. . .]

- I blend delivery types and make sure most courses have a group-work/discussion component. This is good pedagogy, but it also shakes up the routine and it takes some of the attention off of me. When I'm having a bad anxiety day, I will rely on group discussions like think/pair/share, close reading/mapping assigned readings, or application of class lessons in a "real-world" scenario.

[. . .]

Adapt your pedagogies in a manner that honors your strengths in the classroom while giving you breathing room. Some of the best ones for stress alleviation are also good, inclusive practices that will benefit the students, too!

I find the above practices to be incredibly helpful.

Keep in mind that free advice is worth every penny: I do not have social anxiety or any other clinically-diagnosed disorder, but I have certain traits/preferences/behavior patterns that superficially make me an odd fit for the classroom. For example, my happiest days are when I only have to speak a few sentences to another human, and eye contact often takes conscious effort. So over the years I have shifted completely away from the "lecture from outlines for the whole class" mode of teaching to lots of Q&A, small group discussions, and in-class project assignment work.

[Bede the Vulnerable]

I've just started my 24th year of college teaching.  I have won three major teaching awards.  Last year, I taught 2-2.  My evals on "Overall Teaching" last year were 4.9, 4.9, 5, and 5--Out of a possible 5.  I've been called on to teach the mini-course on how to teach teaching to our PhD students.  I have a perfect 5 on RMP.  (Yes, I checked RMP.  Always a mistake!)

You all know where this is going, right?

I am HUGELY anxious about the new prep that I am teaching this term.  Every day before class I stress out, and wish that I were on leave.  (I also have a serious underlying anxiety disorder.) 

As my best friend has told me, it's an odd thing that we do, and a scary one:  We get up and perform for 75 minutes, twice a week, in front of (mostly) strangers.  They can ask us anything.  We have to look knowledgeable, even when what we are teaching isn't even close to our research specialization.  IT IS SCARY.

I've dealt with it in a number of ways, including anti-seizure meds, which have dampened down the anxiety significantly after nothing else worked.  But the Good News is that, even for me, the anxiety has dissipated with each year.  Experience with good evals, great relationships with students, kind notes from the kiddos AFTER grades are in:  All this helps.  If you're new, you don't have that capital to draw on yet.  But you will.

The final point:  I still have class sessions that don't go anywhere near as well as I'd like.  I just have to make sure that that doesn't cause me to ruminate so much that I can't be effective the next session.  Easier said than done, I know.

[fast_and_bulbous]

As my best friend has told me, it's an odd thing that we do, and a scary one:  We get up and perform for 75 minutes, twice a week, in front of (mostly) strangers.  They can ask us anything.  We have to look knowledgeable, even when what we are teaching isn't even close to our research specialization.  IT IS SCARY.

What I realized long ago as a newish prof was that indeed, we *are* knowledgeable - much more so than the students we are teaching on the subject (as a whole).

The second thing I realized is that IT IS OK TO SAY I DON'T KNOW. Perhaps followed by, That's a great question; I'll look into that.

The whole "I have to be a perfect beam of golden knowledge" idea is crap we hoist upon ourselves as academics.

But anxiety is a real b*tch and I understand that. I worry about crap that is out of my control way more than I should. It takes a lot of mental effort for me to break the feedback loop of anxiety sometimes.

[dr_codex]

[. . .]

- I blend delivery types and make sure most courses have a group-work/discussion component. This is good pedagogy, but it also shakes up the routine and it takes some of the attention off of me. When I'm having a bad anxiety day, I will rely on group discussions like think/pair/share, close reading/mapping assigned readings, or application of class lessons in a "real-world" scenario.

[. . .]

Adapt your pedagogies in a manner that honors your strengths in the classroom while giving you breathing room. Some of the best ones for stress alleviation are also good, inclusive practices that will benefit the students, too!

I find the above practices to be incredibly helpful.

Keep in mind that free advice is worth every penny: I do not have social anxiety or any other clinically-diagnosed disorder, but I have certain traits/preferences/behavior patterns that superficially make me an odd fit for the classroom. For example, my happiest days are when I only have to speak a few sentences to another human, and eye contact often takes conscious effort. So over the years I have shifted completely away from the "lecture from outlines for the whole class" mode of teaching to lots of Q&A, small group discussions, and in-class project assignment work.

Chiming in on this, in particular.

Some people try to plan it all out as a way of coping with anxiety. I was trained this way, and for some kinds of teaching it is important. (Large audience performances and time-restricted ones benefit from TED-Talk levels of prep, as do job talks and some professional conferences.) However, if something goes wrong, people who work this way can be in trouble. Also, perfectionism as an answer to anxiety can lead to writer's block and procrastination. It's not a fun cycle. A lot of students go through it, too, for similar reasons.

Putting yourself in the role of expert respondent might look a lot more scary, but the expectations for the perfect phrase are greatly reduced. Students appreciate hearing that they've asked a good question, and that you might not have a complete answer on the spot.

dc

[apl68]

Thanks for the quick reply. Out of curiosity, what made you leave teaching and what did you move on to? I guess what I'm trying to decided is if all of the practice at teaching will be fulfilling for me in the long run, or if my personality is just better suit to that of an administrator. I'm trying to figure out where my long-term "home" in higher ed might be.

I got out of teaching because I got washed out of grad school at the ABD stage.  I just couldn't get my dissertation licked into the kind of shape my committee (or at least my chair) wanted to see.  In my overcrowded humanities field (history) there was absolutely no hope of ever getting anywhere without a PhD in hand, so I gave up.  I got on full time at the university library, where I already had a couple of years of student worker experience, found I had an aptitude for the work, got a job directing a small-town public library in my home state, and eventually completed a library Master's degree. 

What I do now as a librarian is largely what you'd call administrative work.  It keeps me from having to deal with the public all day long on the service desk.  But I do deal with members of the public every day, and I'm continually managing a staff of people who have their own needs and issues in life that can't always be left at home.  I'm a public servant who has to speak in public sometimes.  So there is still the need to "play the role" of trying to be more outgoing than I am by nature.  Those of us who are seriously introverted can seldom find a place where we don't have to keep doing some of that.

In my case I think it's best that I did have to get out of teaching and find another profession.  I can't tell you whether that might be best for you.  Just because we're both introverts doesn't mean we have the same personality and aptitudes.  I'd suggest that you don't give up on teaching yet.  It takes time to find out whether one is--or is not--truly cut out for something.  That doesn't mean you can't still begin thinking about alternatives.

[needcoffee]

I am HUGELY anxious about the new prep that I am teaching this term.  Every day before class I stress out, and wish that I were on leave.  (I also have a serious underlying anxiety disorder.) 

As my best friend has told me, it's an odd thing that we do, and a scary one:  We get up and perform for 75 minutes, twice a week, in front of (mostly) strangers.  They can ask us anything.  We have to look knowledgeable, even when what we are teaching isn't even close to our research specialization.  IT IS SCARY.

I've dealt with it in a number of ways, including anti-seizure meds, which have dampened down the anxiety significantly after nothing else worked.  But the Good News is that, even for me, the anxiety has dissipated with each year.  Experience with good evals, great relationships with students, kind notes from the kiddos AFTER grades are in:  All this helps.  If you're new, you don't have that capital to draw on yet.  But you will.

Thanks Bede the Vulnerable. This is both encouraging and terrifying, haha. Encouraging in the sense that you were able to be so successful and find a solution that worked for you. Terrifying in the sense that I'm not sure if I could gut it out for years before feeling comfortable. Anyway, thank you for the input as I try to figure out if teaching or admin is the longer-term path for me.

[Bede the Vulnerable]

Well, there's a hugely positive side to teaching as well.  Sometimes a class will be going so well--as one did on Wednesday--that I actually say to the kiddos:  "Can you believe that they're paying me for this?"  And you'll find that you have more days like that than not, once you've taught your preps a second time. 

I thought about quitting, but I'm convinced that sticking with it was the right decision.  No question.

One thing I can say--as a guy with an acute anxiety disorder-- is that one worries that the students are judging one, and judging harshly.  In fact, they have a matrix:  Confused or clear; bored or interested.  That's pretty much it.  If you can present things clearly, you've already won.  If you can then move the needle away from "boring," you're a rock star teacher.  (I'm DUS in a rather large department, and I hear student comments about profs all the time.  Those four elements are pretty much all I ever hear.)

Oddly, it's not that hard to be a "good" undergrad teacher.  And good is enough at this stage in your career.