During my PGCE I have noticed that, a number of my cohort of trainee teachers, suffer from general anxiety. These are professionals; successful people who have managed to navigate their own education and career, despite the barriers they have faced.
Since the COVID 19 pandemic, many more learners are reporting generalised anxiety. Websites like this one have been established to help educate others to support them:
I am reflecting on this question; do anxious teachers, like those on my PGCE course, make better teachers for these anxious learners?
There does not seem to be very much literature on this topic. Dweck (2017) talks at length about Maths anxiety, and there are scholarly articles on how female teachers with maths anxiety push that maths anxiety onto girls (Beilock et al, 2009). This does not really address the question of generalised anxiety.
I Digress - or do I?
I was recently in an online CPD event, run by a colleague with autism. I was impressed by how this teacher had overcome obstacles and now was able to help others to learn. Certainly, she had an extremely good understanding of what it was like to be autistic, from her point of view.
Inhabiting, socialising and living in that "community", she had developed her understanding of the complexities of autism and how it affected people in a variety of ways, like the mixing deck on a DJ sound system. For example, referring you to the graphic - some learners may have none of the blue aspects but extreme impact from the purple. This gave her a deep understanding of how learners with autism are so unique - one size does not fit all.
I came away from that CPD session with a feeling that she would be a great teacher of autistic learners, as she would never make the mistakes to which naïve teachers were prone.
She would always show them respect and understanding. She may have strategies and tactics to share with them, beyond what we could know without that understanding.
So, back to anxiety. You may have spotted that anxiety appears on the ASD graphic - a blue circle. Though, having anxiety, alone, is not a diagnosis of autism, I believe there is a parallel.
I believe it is not a far stretch to compare teachers with ASD with teachers with general anxiety. The same things could be said, in my view. I cannot back these up with any research, as I cannot find any.
It is from my observations, and discussions, that a person with general anxiety, who has navigated their life successfully to the point of being a teacher, would have these abilities:
Showing empathy, through a shared lived experience
Sharing strategies and tactics to share - life skills for the anxious
Combining these experiences into engaging, impactful stories which may prove transformative to the anxious learner
Behaving as a live-demonstration role model - showing what can be achieved despite a personal challenge
This is a counter to the arguments made by Dweck and others, which have the effect of downgrading (especially female) teachers with maths anxiety into a position where they are seen as a poor influence on learners. Maths anxiety does not equate with general anxiety, though there may be an overlap.
Indeed, I contend, generalised anxiety, like with fully diagnosed ASD, can provide teachers with a set of tools that those without anxiety could not possibly possess.
I believe anxious teachers have hidden, teaching superpowers.
References
Beilock, S. L. et al. (2010) “Female Teachers' Math Anxiety Affects Girls' Math Achievement,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 107(5), pp. 1860–3. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0910967107.
Dweck, C. S. (2017). Mindset. Updated edition, revised edn. London: Robinson.
Goodwin, S. C. and Jenkins, A. P. (1997) “Teaching through Stories,” Journal of School Health, 67(6), p. 242
Symposium Ithaca (1995). Role Models in Education. Cornell University.
