#057: Effective Ways to Help Students with Anxiety in Your Classroom

classroom management Aug 19, 2021

Do you have students struggling with anxiety? Unfortunately, your students are not unique in this. Anxiety is pretty common in classrooms around the world these days.

TUNE IN: APPLE PODCASTS | SPOTIFY | STITCHER

As I am living the student anxiety train with one of my own children, it has got me thinking about all of our students that regularly deal with anxiety. How do we help them to not only manage day-to-day but move forward?

Our very fast-paced and "connected" world today can be both a blessing and a curse for our students. While it's great to stay connected with, chat and play games online with both friends and family, our online lives can become a detriment to our real lives if we aren't careful. The declines in real social skills, stressful personal lives, and ever-increasing school standards and pressures combine to make for a rough go for many of our students.

While it's great to say be grateful, have a growth mindset, etc., that's not as easy to do as it is to say. We have to first understand how the brain really works.

Our brains are wired to make habits, to make as many things automatic so they can focus on new information coming in. If your student's cortex is busy trying to remember how to balance and sit up straight, then it can't focus on what the teacher is saying. It can only do ONE task at a time. So the brain makes pathways for repeated tasks, thought patterns, and actions - good ones and not-so-good ones.

In fact, the brain isn't picky. It doesn't place judgment on items we do all the time. That's why addictions can happen so easily. As we do something on a more regular basis [or even just continually think about it], the brain wraps myelin [think insulation] around those particular nerve cell axons [think wires that send info] each time we engage in that behavior. The more we engage, the thicker the myelin wrapping gets. As the myelin gets thinker, the brain defaults to those patterns as automatic habits [think - the path of least resistance]. At this time, I have not found any research to show those patterns ever completely go away. Hence why a recovering alcoholic is essentially always on alert. So, it's very easy to reactivate that old habit pattern lurking in the depts of the brain. The good news is...we can weaken the undesirable patterns and intentionally create newer, stronger patterns to override the old patterns. The more we choose those new actions and thoughts, the stronger they become.

Ok, enough brain science. Thank you for indulging my geeky side with the brain research.

Obviously, today's episode is all about anxiety and helping your students cope. While strategies abound, I have found that giving students both coping skills, practice when they are calm in using them, and giving students as much control for their self-care as we can, helps to begin to move students in the right direction.

Don't forget to grab the free guide below! ⬇️

Listen in.

In this episode, find out:

How to reframe habits of mind, actions, and speech on a daily basis in calm times helps
How to give students control to care for themselves
What you need for an effective calming space
How to train your class to be caring and accepting
One helpful check-in and calming routine [and where to go for other ideas]
5 classroom strategies for success

Praying this is your best year yet!

Don't forget to grab the free guide [How to Help Kids Get Unstuck]!

Teach joyfully,

Subscribe and Review in iTunes

Are you subscribed to my podcast? If you’re not, I want to encourage you to do that today. I don’t want you to miss an episode. I add bonus episodes to the mix, create all kinds of free resources and if you’re not subscribed there’s a good chance you’ll miss out. Click here to subscribe in iTunes, or go to wherever you like to listen and hit the subscribe button there.

Now if you’re loving the podcast, I would be really grateful if you left me a review, too. Those reviews help other people find my podcast and they’re also fun for me to go in and read. Just click here to review, select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review” and let me know what your favorite part of the podcast is or how it's helped you. Thank you!

You can listen to this episode HERE.

Here's some resources to help you get started:

Links to other episodes you might like:

#015: How to Have the Right Words at the Right Time for Better Classroom Management

#018: Building Community and Teaching Expectations with Picture Books

#033: How Our Expectations in the Classroom Have the Power to Impact Our Students' Success

#041: 7 Things You Might [unintentionally] Be Doing to Reinforce Poor Classroom Behavior

#042: 5 Mom Mistakes I've Made That Also Apply to Our Classrooms

#043: How to Solve Playground Disputes Quickly and Easily