Classrooms can be hectic places to say the very least. On top of the classroom management, endless hours of planning and marking of pupils work, and the dreaded parents evening, teachers are constantly projecting their voices to teach, control, educate and communicated with large numbers of students.
Coupled with a lack of acoustic design in most classroom environments, artificial heating (and cooling systems… if you’re lucky), and very brief and largely inadequate training on voice care when studying to become a teacher, it’s no wonder voice care problems within the teaching profession are so high. According to some reports, teachers are 32 times higher than non-teaching professions to suffer voice complaints.
In this short voice care guide for teachers, we will be talking about how teachers can better look after their voices with our very own list of hints and tips. We hope that together we can start to reverse the trend of vocal discomfort, and in extreme cases long lasting vocal damage which has become increasingly commonplace in teachers lives.
Posture
Posture is key to anyone who relies upon their voice, so that naturally includes teachers. When people usually talk about posture we always assume this silhouette of a broad chested, arms straight down and chin assertively up empowered being. Whilst it’s important to retain a good posture to allow you to project your vice with greater ease, it’s equally important that your muscles are relaxed.
For example, your neck. People have a tendency to lock their neck in place by stiffening their neck muscles. This in turn means unnecessary added tension is being created in your neck area. This makes your voice work even harder. Make sure to loosen those neck muscles!
Warm Ups
You’ll never see a proficient athlete jumping straight into sports without a warm up, and as the voice is a muscle just like the rest of the muscle in our body, it too needs to be warmed up prior to extensive and/or more intensive use. Time is an issue, we completely understand, but the repercussions for not warming up your voice are very clear. You are greatly increasing the chances of losing it, just like the athlete who doesn’t warm up properly and feels a tight muscle. Besides, not all warm ups have to take long, and they can easily be completed as part of a morning routine to save you time. Check out the straw exercise below. We find this exercise particularly useful for teachers. Other warm ups to explore include gentle humming and the yawn-sighing exercise.
Environment
Aside from the physical obstacles that classrooms can present for vocal wellbeing, there is also an increased risk of catching an infection from the spread of germs from being in close contact with people for extensive amounts of the day.
The reality is that there is no way to eliminate this risk; especially not in a classroom. However mitigating the risk with hand sanitiser is always sensible. If you are unlucky enough to catch a bug, make sure to take the time to rest up properly, and that also includes limiting or not using your voice. This can be as minor as a sore throat, but sore throats can very quickly evolve into an underlying problem.
Granted, there are pressures to go into work as often as possible across all professions, and anaesthetic based voice care remedies may seem like the simple answer to getting into work, but in the long term, there is an increased chance of furthering the damage by initially masking it under the veil of Benzocaine or similar numbing agents.
Breathing Exercises
Breathing exercises have multiple uses in the world of teaching. In this context, breathing exercises can help increase your lung capacity which supports your voice.
>Ok, you may not be breaking into song and dance unless you work in the performing arts department, but look at this two ways:
One, any exercises you do are going to help further strengthen the muscles required to use your voice, just like going to a gym to increase our fitness levels.
Two, think of yourself as a marathon runner and a performer as a short distance sprinter. You are not belting out melodies for an intensive yet relatively short session, just like a 100m sprint. You are using your voice less aggressively over a much longer period of time which does accumulate strain. Both disciplines require strength and conditioning of the muscles, albeit for very different uses.
No Caffeine
It pains us to say it, but caffeine can easily be one of the worst offenders for causing vocal problems for teachers. Its widely documented drying properties can be detrimental for your throat meaning you’re more likely to strain your voice when using it.
If possible, why not try replacing your coffee with caffeine free herbal tea or a Vocalzone Tea? For that extra energy boost nuts, berries and B vitamins are a perfect replacement! If you simply can’t give up your coffee, make sure to remain hydrated, to compensate for the dryness that drinking caffeine based drinks can lead to. It is recommended that we all drink a minimum of 2 litres of water per day.
We hope you found this short Vocalzone voice care guide for teachers useful. Please be sure to check out our other articles on Voice Care Tips For Teachers and Vocal Exercises For Teachers.
