It is easy to cut a student’s confidence with words, and it is easy to miss the signs that one has. As teachers, our words carry weight, at times far more than we realize. We know how uncertain we feel inside, but typically the student does not.
So it behooves us to be observant. If we notice a wounded look on our student’s face, or their words show a sudden shift in confidence, consider how we may have contributed to this. If we cut by accident, understand how so that next time we cut with intent, or not at all. When we cut deliberately, it is our responsibility to watch and see how the cut takes and what it accomplishes and what it costs.
Is it in the student’s best interest? It may well be. To weaken a student’s confidence may open the way for them to learn more, to learn deeper. Or it may slow their progress.
We should also remember that the student’s confidence may be mere bluster, intended to convince us – or themselves – that they are more assured and competent than they feel. When we look, if we only see arrogance, we should pause and look deeper. To cut something that is not there is almost certainly not in the student’s best interest.
There are times to weaken a student’s confidence, to open the closed door of rigid certainty. This is the problem with hardening confidence, that it can serve to shutter vision and slow learning. Of course, the opposite – meek insecurity – can do the very same thing.
Our certainty as teachers can also cloud our vision and make us see our own problems in the student’s behavior, so another of our responsibilities is to see beyond ourselves to the student’s best interest. Be sure of our own motivation; irritation and frustration make us likely to miss important subtleties. It is best to seek our clarity first, and see the student’s confidence – or arrogance – in this clearer light.
My offered practice: look for a time to use words to cut a student’s confidence and ask yourself what benefit it might have to the student and what cost. Ask these questions, whether you choose to act or not.
A teacher’s words are powerful. Be careful of what you tell your students because they may believe you.
I have read and re-read this thought provoking article, and what sticks with me is the cost-analysis factor. What is the risk we take by undercutting confidence? And additionally, what are the motives behind making such a cut? These are good questions.
Janet, thank you.
There is the issue of the student’s confidence and whether it impedes learning, but also there is the issue of the teacher’s vision and whether we are seeing the student’s confidence clearly. As usual, I ask the teacher to look at themselves first. I have seen teachers become annoyed at confident students because they think this bespeaks inappropriate arrogance or lack of humility and respect, rather than ask, is the student’s learning impeded? Or ask, what are other students learning in proximity? The excellent teacher studies their own to reaction to a confident – or over-confident – student first, investigates how their own biases affect their judgment, learns the lay of their internal land first, and then looks anew at the student and the classroom and issues of confidence.
I try to remember compassion in moments when a student seems to be acting out of arrogance etc. I try to remember that it may be a sign of fear. It also gives me a chance to look at my response, and examine myself.
Thanks for this article.
Thank you for the comment. One of my teachers once gave me a useful technique: make up two convincing stories, one that is as unfavorable to the student as possible (they are deliberately trying to sabatogue the classroom, for example) and another that is as favorable to the student as possible (they are afraid, hoping for your approval, covering their fear with a weak arrogance they don’t really feel). This can help serve as a reminder that our reactions to students are based entirely on our own conclusions, about which we might do well to be less certain.