Imagine your students in front of you right now. In your mind’s eye see all their sweet smiles and small hands hard at work. They sit before you every day awaiting your light and guidance. You’re their hope and future.

But sometimes you feel like you’ve failed them because you lack clarity or everything becomes overwhelming. Following lesson plans from the curriculum or from the Teacher’s Edition, or even your colleagues doesn’t quite suit you. Or your students.

Everything feels clunky. Your students lose focus. Sometimes you lose focus, too.

As teachers sometimes we lack the confidence to blaze our own trail, creating our own plans. We often do what others do because that’s the path well-travelled. It’s safe and it’s easy. But the well worn path isn’t always the right path. We need to find the confidence to create our own path.

How do you find that confidence? Follow this 3 step process and you will gain the confidence you need to make the right decisions for your class and students. You’ll learn to trust in your own strengths and abilities as a teacher.

Step 1. Discover YOUR strengths. Not all teachers are meant to be detail oriented and fastidiously organized. Most often lesson plans and curriculum materials are designed for a certain type of teacher. Take the Teacher Super Power quiz to discover your own unique strengths.

Step 2. Use YOUR strengths. The most effective people focus on their strengths, honing them day after day, making them better and better. Trying to make a weakness stronger is ineffective when it comes to career success.

After you take the quiz, you’ll discover a “cheat sheet” to help you hone your strengths and use them to your advantage.

Step 3: Take Action. As you continually take action, using YOUR STRENGTHS, you’ll find your confidence in your own abilities growing. We can lose confidence in our abilities as teachers due to what others expect us to be—not because of who we are. The more we move into and own our abilities, we unleash our superpowers as teachers.

As you follow this 3 step process, you’ll grow beyond your own vision for yourself, and you’ll feel confident and happier in your teaching. Or you can not do anything, and you’ll continue to get the same thing you’re getting—decreasing confidence in your ability to be a good teacher.

Embracing who you are gives you power. The choice is yours alone.