6 Tips to Help Teachers Manage Students With Anxiety Issues

A student learning. Image source: Rogersbh.com

Thirty percent of youth in the United States alone have experienced anxiety disorders, and one in two hundred children suffers from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and other related disarrays. It is alarming that fifty percent of the adult population with anxiety disorders have reported that their symptoms appeared before the age of eighteen.

Unhealthy dynamics at home and deadlines, unfavorable learning experiences, crippling competition, harmful performance expectations at school, and the stress associated with all these factors have a negative impact on the mental well-being, cognitive functions, and social functioning of these students. Several years of conditioning under these factors, without healthy coping mechanisms, result in these students growing with anxiety, leading to anxiety disorders, OCD, and other related diseases. These conditions have severe repercussions that could follow them well into their adult lives. 

Let’s discuss the common causes of anxiety disorders in children and how to overcome them.

Causes and Effects of Anxiety in Children

A child frustrated. Image source: Parenting.firstcry.com

Anxiety issues have roots in unhealthy conditions that prevail in homes, schools, and society in general. Traumatic experiences during formative years, unhealthy performance expectations, and unhealthy competition are all parts of the problem. If or when conditions worsen, children might tend towards Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder as a coping mechanism. 

Causes of Anxiety Issues in the Kids

• Conditions at home: Unfortunately, the root of anxiety-related issues in a substantial portion of affected children lead back to their homes. From the point of view of children, their home is their safe place. They learn their first lessons in life from their homes; they expect to be treated fairly and safely in their homes. On the contrary, children are subjected to dangerous levels of competition even in their homes. The stress of deleterious expectations from parents and next of kin puts children under duress and constant fear of underperforming. This fear of failure and constant comparison even at home causes them to withdraw from social setups and confine themselves. Corrective measures and steps taken to motivate children are often demeaning and, at times, even traumatizing. Such unhealthy environments are not conducive for healthy growth and the learning process. 
• Conditions in society:  The world is becoming increasingly transparent with the advent of modern technology. Technology makes it easier for people to celebrate their victories; it is just as easy for people to make failures, setbacks, or flaws public. This results in people facing dreadful comparisons, unsolicited advice, or even ridicule and bullying. People have to take extra care to protect their privacy from society. They are constantly trying to perform up to expectations placed by societal factors and keeping setbacks to themselves. The pressure and the stress from these factors result in anxiety. Increased transparency also leads to the exploitation of weaknesses by antisocial elements. Children either face the ill effects of such exploitation, leaving them in constant fear or forced to exist in a constant state of defensiveness or anxiety.
• Conditions in educational institutions: School is another important platform that is meant to contribute to the holistic growth and development of a child. Many educational institutions still follow archaic teaching practices that aren’t student-centric at all. There is a shared learning experience that is forced on all students despite their preferences and requirements. And they are all expected to exhibit the same level of competency and performance. Teachers are either not approachable or are not trained enough to make the learning process more engaging for all their students. Some students have learning disabilities or require additional attention or time to grasp concepts. Instead of being proactive in identifying such needs among students, teachers resort to unorthodox methods that could make the learning experience a traumatizing one. School is another platform for harmful interactions or practices such as bullying or exploitation from other students or educators. These are against the basic principles of an educational institution and result in students growing with anxiety issues.

Effects of Anxiety Issues in Students

Without healthy means to cope with anxiety, students experience the following results that could make their growth and life difficult.

• Limited attention span and learning difficulties: Anxiety puts children’s minds in a constant state of alertness or defensiveness to protect them from anticipated negative experiences. Such conditions make students more mindful of their surroundings and less focused on their education. This lack of attention in itself is a learning difficulty. At other times, students with anxiety tend to spend more time on concepts they do not understand, making their progress slower than other students in their classroom.
• Inability to trust: Anxiety makes its victims lose trust in themselves as well as the people around them. This makes them withdraw from society and confine themselves. Trust is the root of all collaborative endeavors, professional and personal. Without the ability to trust, students cannot interact with their teachers or other students. This hinders the flow of knowledge and the learning process.
• Physical health issues: Anxiety and the stress associated with it manifest as issues in physical health. Elevated heartbeat rates and muscle tension are common among victims of anxiety disorders. Over time, these could compromise cardiovascular health and/or result in neurological conditions such as stroke or paralysis.
• Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: OCD is an unhealthy way of coping with anxiety. Victims of this condition obsessively adhere to patterns and plans and set unrealistic expectations on themselves and others. They strive for perfectionism with the hope of success at all times. Most often, these patterns and expectations set by victims of OCD are exhausting to themselves and the people around them. 

How to Manage Students With Anxiety Issues

The best care a student with anxiety can get from their teacher is patience. Students with anxiety need constant reassurance and patience from people they look up to. These factors will help them let their guard down and focus more on their education. Educators can take the following steps to make their students feel at ease in their classrooms and learn effectively.

1. Eliminate Monotony

Monotony is something that makes an anxious student feel entrapped. Sitting in the same classroom for the entire duration of an academic year, listening to monotonous lectures, makes students feel stuck. For a student with anxiety, the effect of monotony is manifold. As an alternate approach, educators could try shifting their classes to open-air locations, where the entire class walks while learning from real-life examples around them, or use audio-visual aids to make their classes more interesting. Another interesting way is to introduce guest teachers who have experience-based lessons to teach these students. In these new settings, teachers should make students with anxiety feel comfortable by choosing a pace at which those students feel comfortable. A healthy change helps break monotonous cycles which hinder the learning process.

2. Use Teaching Aids

Students with anxiety issues tend to have short attention spans. Lectures based on written content will not hold their attention long enough for effective learning. Students with anxiety tend to learn better when they can relate to the concepts they ought to learn. This can be done by using tools or teaching aids. Teaching aids could be anything, a video from the internet explaining concepts in simple terms and using simple animations or even a 3D model that provides a better insight into more complex features or parts of a concept. 3D designing and printing are novel manufacturing methods being adopted by many schools in order to help students be more creative. Whatever the students visualize, they can bring it into life with much. There are various 3D modeling software that you can introduce to the kids, but we recommend SelfCAD as it’s much easier to use and the students can learn easily. Students with anxiety could utilize the interactive tutorials of SelfCAD too to learn how to design their own design and be able to create detailed 3D models that they can interact with while learning in-depth about the concepts they ought to learn.

3. Constructive Criticism

Students with anxiety tend to take negative criticism to heart; this only makes their condition worse. Teachers should employ constructive criticism techniques that help students identify their mistakes and inspire them to learn better. Correction and ridicule in front of their peers are not constructive. Students struggling with anxiety might feel encouraged if their teacher gives them individual attention and time to respectfully make them aware of their mistakes and learn from them. Criticism should never be demeaning.

4. Practice Grounding Techniques in Class

Grounding techniques are simple mindfulness activities that help students with anxiety return to reality or ground their thoughts when they are anxious. Grounding techniques involve activities that engage the five senses. Students can be guided into using their senses to identify things in their surroundings. Practicing these techniques regularly help students with anxiety to keep their minds calm and anchored in and return to safe conditions even if they face anxiety attacks.

4. Seek Training to Help Students with Anxiety

Helping students with anxiety is not for everyone. It takes effort and patience; these qualities need to be developed through training from experts. With the right kind of training, educators would provide the right kind of help to their students when they need it the most.

    5. Developing a healthy person-to-person connection with Students

Most students with anxiety would feel comfortable in the presence of a person who would listen to their worries without judging them or making them feel like they are a liability or a burden. This takes a lot of patience and understanding on the part of the educators. This can only be developed over time through healthy interactions. Once a healthy teacher-student bond is created, students feel comfortable approaching their teachers and presenting their concerns.

Conclusion

If you are a teacher and think your students have anxiety issues, the above strategies can really make them be more confident and improve their performance. Also, the other strategies mentioned in this article can also help other students too, even those with no anxiety issues. For example 3D modeling and 3D printing. 

If you think the students can benefit from 3D designing as a teaching-learning aid, check out SelfCAD. The basic features of SelfCAD are insightful and free of cost. Advanced features and tools can be accessed by subscribing to the SelfCAD Pro license for $14.99 or $11.99 per month if billed annually. For lifetime access to these tools, you could purchase the SelfCAD Perpetual license for a single payment of $599.00. This can’t be compared to the benefits the program comes with.

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