Let's Talk About Learning: Teaching Students with Anxiety

I recently attended a workshop on “Anxiety Disorders in the Classroom,” and wanted to share some of the ideas and applications that were discussed. The workshop was given by Bev Miller M. Ed. and had lots of great information and practical strategies for teachers to care for students with anxiety.

When non-educators think about what goes into an excellent school, they often miss a key ingredient: the mental health staff and mental health programming. We are responsible to provide a mentally healthy safe school and classroom environment. Teachers and administrators need to learn how to do this just as much as they have to learn about student engagement, classroom management and assessment. If anxiety is not handled correctly, three likely outcomes will be fight, flight or freeze. Some people will react by acting rude or defiant (fight) while others will be very avoidant (flight). Other students will freeze in their trackes, hoping not to be noticed until the perceived danger passes. We need to help students manage their anxiety so they can function as learners in our classroom.

This workshop discussed three types of anxiety: General, Social and Separation.

1. General anxiety - General Anxiety challenges are characterized by excessive worry. Students who have this type of anxiety tend to show the following symptoms in the classroom: Distracted, easily overwhelmed, muscle tension, fatigued, difficult to reassure, headaches, stomach aches, weaker than expected academic performance, social challenges such as volatile relationships, only having a few friends or perhaps being a total loner.
a. Children with general anxiety challenges often complain of self-doubt and worry about
their future, social acceptability and ability to perform at an acceptable level.
2. Social Anxiety - social anxiety challenges are defined by excessive and unreasonable levels of fear regarding social embarrassment or negative evaluation in social situations, which interfere with everyday function. Kids who have social anxiety, tend to show the following symptoms: fear of being humiliated, afraid of judgement or rejection, fear of being called on to answer a question in front of a group, fear of less structured times like recess, assemblies or group activities, and fear of being the centre of attention. Keep a look out for students who ask the teacher to help clean up the room while the other students go out to recess or those that often asked to go to the bathroom at those unstructured times.

a. Children with social anxiety do not tend to respond well to simple reassurances or distraction.
b. It is the teacher’s obligation to help students prepare for these kinds of situations. We can prime them and ease their anxiety to a point that they can function in these situations.
c. In these situations we should look out for students who are speaking very softly or avoiding eye contact with you. They are also more prone to blushing or having a shaky voice. These kids might try to escape into their technology at these times when their social anxiety is high.

3. Separation Anxiety - Separation Anxiety challenges are characterized by excessive, unreasonable and persistent stress associated with actual or anticipated separation from their primary attachment figure that is not developmentally appropriate. This type of anxiety is more typical in younger students. These children make it almost impossible to leave the trusted adult. If this is displayed in children who are 4 or 5 years old or a bit older but new to the school, this would be normal. The following actions would make it appear beyond normal and more concerning: The child being inconsolable, they might become aggressive as attachment figure leaves, or they might engage in self-injurious behaviour as the attachment figure leaves. In older students with separation anxiety, the above behaviours might come out if you take away their cell phone or other important possessions.

a. Knowing when these types of behaviours are signs of serious anxiety is a little difficult for the non-mental health professional. The general indicators to look for would include the frequency, duration, impact and intensity levels.

Thought Distortions

Children dealing with anxiety issues are often prone to thought distortions. Here are some examples:

1. Catastrophic thinking -they always think that the worst case scenario is the most likely scenario.

2. Ignoring the Positive - they feel that anything right they do or anything positive that happens is only a fluke.

3. Negative Self Talk - they constantly speak negatively about themselves.

4. Perfectionism - they tend to never see anything as good enough

5. Mind-Reading - they tend to tell people that they know what they are thinking about them and it isn’t good.

Strategies for Teachers

Teachers are able to adjust activities such that students with anxiety challenges experience less worry and anxiety.

a. When assigning group work, teachers can:

b. Create the groups and deliberately place the anxious student with more patient/kind peers.

c. Create groups with random selection, but deliberate placement of the anxious child.

d. When asking students to go to the board to demonstrate work, have students come in pairs so the anxious child has a supported teammate.

e. When asking students to answer questions, give them the option to “phone a friend.”

There are tons of practical tips that teachers can do to manage their students anxiety. That goes beyond of the scope of this posting, but see below for some good websites to find these strategies.

Websites