You’ve been through teacher training college and passed your teaching degree but nothing in your training said how to be a confident teacher. Sure, there were teaching practices but most of the time the class teacher is in the room so the class are at least reasonably well behaved. But their animal instinct kicks in when you’re standing alone at the front of a class.

Or maybe you’ve been teaching for a while but have a new class or you’re in a new school or you’ve been asked to teach a new subject or you’ve changed the age range you teach.

Whatever the reason, your confidence level isn’t as high as it could be…

Can you become a confident teacher?

You’ve got the teacher equivalent of an actor’s “first night nerves”.

Trouble is, you’re set to stand up in front of a whole class of children. And you know that they will sense your fear if you’re not exuding confidence.

And if they do that, you’ve lost control for days or weeks or maybe even the complete academic year.

So you have no option but to go into the classroom and face your fear…

If you were an actor, you’d spend hours rehearsing what you’re going to say until it was perfect. But you don’t have that luxury when you’re facing umpteen different classes each and every week.

Instead, you need to learn how to pull off being confident even when you know only slightly more about today’s subject than your class.

A lot of this is how you approach the task. Posture helps – standing up straight and tall will help you to come across as more confident. It sounds silly but this definitely comes across in your voice and the authority that gives will help you to keep control of the class in front of you.

Know your subject

This is probably the number one secret to becoming a confident teacher, especially as the age of the class gets older.

Different subjects have different degrees of knowledge – sometimes more is less. That was the case when I was at school – our maths teacher could waltz his way through differential calculus but he just instinctively knew his subject (apparently he’d not encountered anything in maths he didn’t just “understand” until the second year of his degree course). But that means his ability to explain was poor. If you’ve never actually learned something, it’s not easy to explain how to do it – think about explaining to someone how to breathe and you’ll get the idea.

But we also had a geography teacher who was ill prepared at best. One of our class worked out that our teacher was one chapter ahead of us in the text book we were using. So he read ahead by an extra chapter and asked questions from that. The teacher was stumped and their confidence crumbled to the extent that they actually gave up their career.

So knowing your subject is essential to be able to exude the confidence that comes with knowledge.

Not smug knowledge – just the basic knowledge that you’ll be able to answer most questions accurately.

Or you could do like my mother often did with infant classes and say “let’s find out” and do the research with your class.

No-one knows everything – even Stephen Hawking has gaps in his knowledge of physics because the enormity of the subject is such that you’d need to be a supercomputer for it to be otherwise.

So don’t be afraid to admit you don’t know everything – but equally don’t let the “I’ve got no idea” answer be the one that crops up too often, otherwise your students will begin to doubt your ability and their doubts will affect your confidence, potentially sending things into a downward spiral.

Check your posture

If you slouch and generally give off an air of being down or unsure, that will come across in your confidence.

Fake it until you make it is a bit of a cliche but it’s also a surprisingly successful approach.

Stand tall – practice in front of a mirror if need be.

And remember the standing part – there’s something more authoritative about teaching when you’re standing up rather than tilting back in your chair or gripping the desk in front of you as though it was a white knuckle ride.

Dressing well can help – teachers don’t have a reputation for particularly good dress sense and the budget isn’t necessarily there to wear expensive suits to school. But that doesn’t mean you need to wear shabby clothes that haven’t seen the inside of a washing machine in longer than you’d care to admit and that would have no idea what an iron looks like.

Another thing you can do (depending on the view your class have of you) is clench your fists as you talk. That’s a technique used by the more persuasive telephone sales people because it comes across in your voice – there’s more power. If you haven’t got a desk as a barrier between yourself and your class, you can do the same kind of thing with your feet (roll them into a kind-of ball shape) to much the same effect.

And, incidentally, consider whether or not that desk standing between you and the class is a good idea or not. There’s no right answer here – a lot of professional speakers use something to stand behind because it stops their audience focusing on their (maybe nervous) body language but other professionals use the whole stage and dominate it. Take some time to figure out where you were in the classroom for your most successful lessons and replicate that in other classes you teach.

Lay down the rules with your class

Most of us – and that includes the children you’re teaching – prefer to have rules and boundaries.

In fact, if you want to make most people more uncomfortable, try giving them free range with near enough no rules.

Clear rules, clear boundaries, clear things that will happen if those boundaries are transgressed are all good to have.

Will your class test those boundaries?

Of course they will.

Unless they’re a bunch of automatons, that’s perfectly natural behaviour.

But you need the rules and you need to carry out the threats you’ve made if those rules are broken.

You’ll almost certainly need to have different rules and punishments depending on how far the rules are broken. There’s a difference between a pupil whispering a couple of words versus one who’s permanently texting and generally ignoring what you’re teaching.

And, of course, the option of corporal punishment has long gone. What would have been acceptable from a teacher when your parents or grandparents were at school is not necessarily still allowed. Society changes so make sure any punishments are fair and ones that you can enforce without getting yourself called up in front of the head teacher or board of governors.

The more often you let the rules you’ve set lapse, the more often they’ll get broken.

Think back to your school days – the stricter teachers were scary at first but were usually the best because you knew where you stood.

Make your teaching interesting

This works for your confidence as well as the enthusiasm of your class.

OK, some subjects are just plain boring. Conjugating verbs, solving quadratic equations, that kind of thing.

But almost every subject can be flipped round to make it interesting.

You could use the crash of a Mars spacecraft to illustrate the importance of checking calculations.

You could bring in the sometimes pedantic crowd who freak out on Twitter if an apostrophe is misplaced. And you could use sentences that bring in several variants of a word in the same sentence to emphasise the importance of getting things right.

That works for any subject.

It takes a bit more thought but if that means that your class pay more attention to your words, that will help boost your confidence as well as their grades.

You could even challenge your class to come up with solutions that work but aren’t immediately obvious.

That way their minds are stretched, they’re not just thinking “I’m bored” and they’re not watching the second hand slowly tick round until the end of lesson bell rings.

Slow down

Most people speak faster (and quieter) when they’re nervous.

Slowing down – not to a snail’s pace obviously – gives you more control.

It even gives you a bit of time for your brain to double check the words that are coming out of your mouth.

Pace yourself as you speak.

That might mean rehearsing out loud at home with a recorder running and then playing back the recording, ignoring the fact that you probably hate the sound of your own voice, to listen for the bits where you raced through because you weren’t totally confident about what you were talking about.

Deliberately slow your speech down so that the words have chance to sink in to your class rather than all being run into one incomprehensible sentence.

Watch a few television documentaries if you’re not convinced about this idea.

Almost all of them have relatively slow speaking, dramatic pauses and some background music to accompany some of the shots. OK, you may not be able to totally recreate that experience but you can certainly get close to it by pacing yourself and using visual aids in place of those lingering camera shots.

Your class will learn more.

You’ll be less nervous.

And – as a bonus – the material you’re teaching will spread over more lessons.

Keep your classroom fairly quiet

Unless you’re teaching music or a spoken foreign language, silence is golden.

Or something close to it.

Background noise and chatter isn’t conducive to learning for most people – there may be an exception for certain types of music but since that’s personal it’s not particularly practical for a class of 30 where some might want metalcore, others chart material and yet others classical.

If your class gets too noisy, it’s easy to think that shouting at them is the best option.

But actually it often isn’t.

Years ago when I had to stand up in front of a thousand or so students, the lecturer gave me some excellent advice that I’ve used to good effect ever since. He told me to quietly repeat the first sentence or two until the noise of the crowd subsided, then get on to the rest of the speech.

It works.

At first you think that no-one is listening to you but a few pick up on it and the noise in the room subsides.

Silence works well too – remember those teachers at school who only had to glance at you for you to be quaking in your boots? That still works – it’s part of human nature. It’s not a skill that you’ll pick up overnight but it’s one that’s well worth honing as longer term it’s worth its weight in gold and will boost your confidence no end.

Use hypnosis to help your mind

Hypnosis is an excellent way of building your confidence levels, so that you can face your classroom with the sure and certain knowledge that they’re going to get the best lesson they’ve ever had!

At least part of the issue with lack of confidence as a teacher is your subconscious mind – the part that takes care of almost every part of your life on something very close to autopilot.

Hypnosis can delve into your subconscious mind and tweak it so that it works with you more often.

It works with any habit and lack of confidence in yourself or your teaching ability is as much a habit as biting nails or even breathing.

All you need to do is listen to a hypnosis track to build your confidence as a teacher.

And if you need to develop your confidence even further, just listen to the track over again. Doing this will build on your previous session and before you know it, even the most daunting class will be putty in your hands.

Download a hypnosis track to become a confident teacher here.