ANXIETY IN THE CLASSROOM
Today, as it was promised to one of my followers, I am posting this article about Anxiety in the classroom. Please read it and let me know your point of view in the comments. I would be interesting to know your case if you are an student or in your dayly as teacher. All the experiences can enrich our life.
Really nice article. I am not an expert but since my experience I have noticed that one of my second grader student is having trouble when handling with failure. If an activity is difficult to him he just decides not to do it, he stars crying and he just lies on the floor and disctracts other students from their activities. The tips hat I fount in the acrticole are very clear and I'm definetly using some of them with this case. Thank you.
ResponderBorrarThese tips are very useful; thanks for the information. Regarding this issue in the EFL classroom, students get more anxious when they feel that the English class is a formal context (Mohammed, 2017); since it is the only context they are fostered to speak English, they cannot lower anxiety levels. Therefore, teachers should encourage the students to participate more outside the classroom; also, the students should be encouraged to communicate with native speakers in different contexts, e.g. through social networking.
ResponderBorrarReference: Mohammed, J. (2017). Anxiety in English Language Learning. English Language Teaching; Vol. 10, No. 7. pp.1-7. Taken from: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1144344.pdf
The article itself is clear enough once that, as a teacher, you find some behavior in your students that is misleading the class towards treating discipline issues instead of focusing on teaching.
ResponderBorrarBesides of a teacher's responsibility these kind of disorders must be also treated by parents and professionals.
As it is stated by the anxiety and depression society of America, parents should ask the monitors and teachers in school to inform everything to them, so that they can also report the doctor what is happening to their kids.
Acknowledging the different types of anxiety is a first step to start working on it. However, this is not enough to help students to overcome and deal with these emotions, that most of the times, they cannot control. Therefore, I think teachers should start looking for the triggers of anxiety and create strategies to support kids during these moments. It is important to clarify that, as teachers, we cannot eliminate anxiety, but we can manage and stop reinforcing these fears. In case any of you is interested in dealing with anxiety in the classroom, here you have this article that mentions some of the things we should and should not do when trying to help a student with anxiety: https://childmind.org/article/what-to-do-and-not-do-when-children-are-anxious/
ResponderBorrarFinally, I would like to point out the relevance of family in these situations. We have to create relationships with parents in order to get to know our students and to create better strategies for them. However, we cannot forget that it is hard for us to work with the needs of each student as Colombian classrooms use to have more than 30 students. Nevertheless, it is important to do what is in our hands to help children to deal with and manage these type of feelings.