You place unique demands on your voice as a teacher. What other profession has to address their audience up to 7 hours a day, 5 days a week for months at a time? Unsurprisingly many surveys have found that a majority of teachers suffer voice problems. 

Yet voice problems are often seen as inevitable: an occupational hazard. They’re also often attributed to upper respiratory tract infections – also seen as inevitable – rather than a symptom of something deeper. It’s all too easy to get into a vicious circle. If your voice is strained and uncertain you are more likely to have problems in class making yourself heard or managing behaviour, which makes you stressed, which in turn depletes your immune system, which then makes you more vulnerable to infections that give you voice problems. So you go round the circle again, and again… 

And if your voice fails completely – as could happen – then your career is over. 

Even if your voice is coping at the moment, you may well be producing it in a way that is storing up problems for the future.