Work Says I’m Great. I Disagree!

Welcome to an advice column by me, Sara Benincasa, a person with opinions. This column will not diagnose anything. Send questions to me via DM on Instagram or via email to saratoninnewsletter@gmail.com. If I use your question, I’ll change your name and details to protect your exotic life as an international superspy.

Dear Sara,

I’m a high school teacher who has consistently found himself nominated for a Teacher of the Year award each year. I am honored and flattered, but also mortified. I genuinely do not believe I deserve to win.

I feel my main weakness as a teacher is that I’ve always naturally appealed to the higher-achieving students. I struggle to fully engage the lower-achieving students.

However, I have several top students that absolutely love me. Their parents love me. These are the students and families who nominate me for the top honor at our school. They have to fill out a pretty extensive packet, and it takes considerable effort. Last year, a group of families nominated me. It felt amazing, and also awful.

To my relief, I have never won the actual award. I want to start politely refusing these nominations. I would feel like such a fraud if I actually won, considering that I mainly find success with the kids who would likely do well anyway. What I’m really looking for is some insight into why I feel so averse to these deeply kind gestures. Why do I get so embarrassed? Why can’t I just be happy about it?

— This All Makes Me Very Anxious

Dear TAMMVA:

I suspect you are somebody who tends to be rather too hard on yourself. Your letter contains neither false humility nor braggadocio, and it is actually very sweet. If indeed you are somebody who is highly self-critical, it makes sense that you would not bask in the glory of potentially scoring a pretty big award.

I understand that you want to do better with students who struggle in your subject area, and I encourage you to reach out to colleagues who set a good example in this regard. At least one of them may be delighted to do some peer-to-peer coaching with you. It’s not like any of you is getting paid enough or given enough continuing education, so you may as well help each other out.

But turn down these nominations in future? Methinks not.

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I suspect you think that in order to be worthy of Teacher of the Year, you should embody some combination of Edward James Olmos in Stand and Deliver, Michelle Pfeiffer in Dangerous Minds, Samuel L. Jackson in Coach Carter, and the nice gay teacher on My So-Called Life who grew up to work with Ms. Olivia Pope on Scandal (I speak, of course, of iconic American actor Jeff Perry!)

You do not have to direct a life-changing teen production of Our Town or even take in beautiful Ricky Velasquez after his homophobic family kicks him out! Oh God, let’s pause for this moment also.

Anyway, not a single one of the Teacher of the Year winners is always great at teaching all of the students all of the time. Okay? And you may not be a perfect teacher. NOBODY IS!

I say this as a former high school teacher who got to watch some great teachers and some shitty teachers and some mediocre teachers. I wasn’t as great as I wanted to be, so I left the field. Also, I didn’t love it enough to keep it up. But you do! You love it! And you’re excellent at it.

Think of accepting these nominations as an act of service to your students and their families. THEY would feel proud and glad and joyful if you won. They may have easy facility with your subject area, but you don’t know the extent to which your caring attitude, your sense of humor, your good boundaries, and your patience may help model adulthood for them, too. They may endure stressors at home that they’ll never share with you.

So yeah, they may be the ones who seem like they’d get good grades no matter what. They may seem like the ones with the sweet, supportive families. But I guarantee you some of those shiny, bright kids are enduring deep pain at home, and you just being you is enough to get them to stick through another day of school sometimes.

Also, you would win mega bonus points with some colleagues if you ever won and took the opportunity to give credit to other teachers at work who inspire you.

Congrats on completing another school year! You are awesome.

A one-time gift to us, if ye please?