Confidence in the Classroom

As an educator, one of my greatest strengths lies in connecting with students. I’ve found that students need to feel understood and supported before they can genuinely engage with learning.

In education, we often focus on the material being taught or the obstacles to learning, but we may overlook a vital step. For students to thrive, they need to feel comfortable taking chances, which takes confidence. Far too often, I hear students say, 'I’m going to fail,' or 'My teacher doesn’t like me.' This lack of confidence becomes a roadblock, preventing them from absorbing new information. After all, how can a student learn something new when they’re already expecting not to understand it?

By helping students build this confidence, we remove a significant barrier, allowing them to approach learning with an open mind and greater resilience.

So, how do we help students build confidence?

First, we have to understand what is keeping students from feeling confident in the classroom. Across all grades, there’s an implicit self-consciousness in students that makes them wary of being drawn out or highlighted in any way. For most, the goals of adolescents and teens are to fit in, not stand out. No surprise there. 

What can we do as parents to help our children gain confidence in the classroom?

1. Consider how much we share about our personal experiences with our children. 

If we tell stories about how well we did, how many friends we had, and how great school was, then we are setting the expectation that they will do the same.

I have many parents telling me that school was so easy for them, that they never had the support systems that their children do, that they had to finish their work on their own, that they went to an excellent school and were not the smartest in the class. They don’t see why school is difficult for their child.

I also have parents telling me how miserable school was for them, how difficult it was, and how much they suffered. They are fearful for their children and what they might face.

School is different today than when we were students in every way, so I encourage parents to stop drawing conclusions based on their experience. Listen more, talk less.

But that doesn’t mean parents should not talk at all.

I often speak to parents and students about the uniqueness of K-12 years.  It’s probably the only time in our lives when we are supposed to be experts at everything. One minute, we’re supposed to be a mathematician, then a scientist, then a linguist, and then move on to being a writer, a reader, a historian.

In my conversations with my students, I ask them what their parents do for work. When they tell me about their parents’ jobs or careers, I point out that their parents usually specialize in something. For instance, they might be a doctor or a lawyer, or they might work with their hands in construction or the arts. They are not expected to know everything; they have specialized in something that they most likely succeed in and often enjoy. Their parents have narrowed down their careers to things that they, in fact, feel confident in.  Their day-to-day is starkly different from a school day. 

I am the perfect example. I love meeting with students and figuring out how they tick.  I love speaking with parents and brainstorming ideas about how to support their children. I love inserting ideas around organization and study strategies. But if you come near me with anything resembling math or science, I will break out in hives. I’ve stayed away from those subjects since I entered college. I know what areas I feel confident in and what areas I don’t, and I have created a career that aligns with that. 

2. Help our children prioritize

The expectation that students can and need to get everything done in every subject, on every single night with the same attention and focus is another confidence breaker. If instead, parents help their children understand that they have to prioritize—that some days the English essay is going to be good enough because the week was very full, or that they did their best studying for the math test, but it’s now time to get to sleep—parents are letting them know that there is no such thing as perfection. It is impossible to keep the same cadence each and every day.

However, and this is a big one, it is not a reason to not do the work, give up, or give in. 

I see a see-saw with the parents I speak with. They are all in, and then when things get tough, kids complain or seem overwhelmed, parents give in and let them skip school, write notes to teachers, and reward them with time off. Students then get acclimated to the idea that they should push themselves to the brink of exhaustion and then drop everything to recoup. They are either all in or all out, and we need to help them understand the importance of showing up every day, doing their best for that day, knowing when it might be good enough, and moving forward.

3. Creating realistic outcomes (which often include failure)

Often, parents are so outcome-focused that they forget that school is for learning and not just doing. Setting realistic outcomes for our children is vital to how they feel about school. Parents often confess that they do not understand why their child is not doing well, and very often, they conclude that their child is just lazy or not focused. I encourage parents to set the expectation of showing up, engaging, and doing the work but focusing on the outcomes less. We seem to have lost the idea that school is for learning, not performing, that mistakes are inevitable and, in fact, one of the best ways to learn. We want to build kids who are curious.

Now that we’ve discussed what we can do as parents to help our children gain more confidence, we must look at the other half - instruction and confidence in the classroom. Below is a wish list of things I wish teachers would instill in their classrooms. 

1. Engaged summarizing

Recalling what has been taught allows students to process the information they are learning and absorb it. Summarizing comes before a written test, so there is less pressure. Summarizing and brainstorming create a safe space for students to think and question what they are learning before they are required to answer everything correctly.

2. Pause before answering

I wish every teacher would insert a mandatory 15-second pause after asking a question in class. This would allow all students to think and come up with their answers. So often, the minute someone raises their hand, all the other students disengage. This would allow some of the students with slower processing to participate and not feel left behind.

3. Push students to answer for the sake of answering and not getting it right. 

Students need to be able to practice talking and sharing ideas without always worrying if they are right or wrong.  Calling on all students, not just those who raise their hands, sets the expectation that students have to participate, but they don’t have to be right. 

I remind students they wouldn’t wake up one day and run a marathon. You would wake up and run a mile, and then the next time, add another mile, and so on and so forth. You would make sure you stretched your muscles in between and took care of your body so that it would be ready to run the next day. Being a student is very similar. Instilling confidence in our students means that we don’t boost them with empty praise and unrealistic expectations. Instead, we are honest and reflective. We can share that school can be a challenge, that there are areas that are more difficult, and that there will be areas where we fail and simply don’t understand. And there will be areas that make sense and come more naturally.  The confidence comes when students are okay with all the experiences and outcomes.