Taking Care Of Your Voice

As a teacher your voice is your most important tool!

Gwyn Richards, BSc, MSc, Postgrad Dip in Clin Comm Studies, MRCSLT, Reg HPC

Do you know how your voice works? How do we actually make the sounds? What is a voice?

Few of us understand or ever ask these questions and yet your voice provides you with a means to communicate; you will use it to build relationships with your pupils (and others), encourage, motivate, maintain discipline and deliver your message. Any teacher who has lost their voice will know that without a voice they struggle to teach and rapidly they find they are heading for problems – anxiety and loss of confidence, ultimately perhaps considering a career change.

50% of teachers experience problems with their voice, with 20% taking time off work because of their voice (Journal of Voice, 1998).

Hoarseness, voice fatigue and throat discomfort are all common. In fact voice problems are a major occupational hazard for teachers. Unfortunately most teachers carry on working, establish damaging vocal behaviours and by the time they seek help their voice will take longer to recover. It has been shown that teachers who have voice training, experience fewer voice problems during their careers than their peers (DoH 2001)

What can you do to prevent voice problems?

Simple measures can be very effective. Understand how your voice works and how to identify problems early on; then you can stop things progressing.

6 TIPS to look after your voice:

• Drink lots of water – hydration is important to your throat
• Avoid throat clearing – this creates discomfort and tension
• Identify reflux – very common, often undiagnosed, this will create discomfort and affect voice quality, sometimes causing changes to the vocal folds
• Don’t smoke or drink excessively–inflammation results in a deep hoarse voice that is hard to change with therapy. Your risk of throat cancer also increases
• Rest your voice if it feels tired or strained
• Always seek medical opinion if your voice has altered for 3 weeks. Your GP may refer you for an ENT examination after which you can be referred (or you can refer yourself) to Speech and Language Therapy.

Giant Impact Voice Workshops - Inset Events

• Voice Care workshop will help you gain knowledge about how your voice works and what can affect it, recognise areas of difficulty, optimise your voice production and explore how to modify the environment to make it easier for your voice.
• Voice Projection workshop will build your confidence to use a loud voice or for sustained voice use and teach you how to compete with background noise and shout safely. This will be useful for anyone who has a high level of voice use in their job.
• Your Voice and Stress workshop will help you understand this link, help to identify triggers, provide strategies to manage stress and ways to reduce the muscle tension that accompanies stress. Most voice problems have a stress-related component.