Responding to Anxiety in the Classroom

How does students’ anxiety affect your classroom? About 6% of children in the United States are diagnosed with an anxiety disorder (Bitsko et al., 2018). This percentage is likely an underestimate, however, of student anxiety in your classroom; clinically significant anxiety often goes undiagnosed (Cunningham & Suldo, 2014). Anxiety affects classroom learning in multiple ways.

Anxiety is associated with underachievement (Cunningham & Suldo, 2014). Similarly, in our interviews, we often hear that students’ emotions can interfere with providing challenge.
Teachers may have unintentionally negative responses to anxiety in the classroom; students who are anxious may be more likely to be viewed by their teachers as part of a teacher-student relationship marked by conflict (Zee & Roorda, 2018).
Anxiety may interfere with peer relationships (Lawrence et al., 2017).

The educational, social, and negative mental health effects of anxiety may be on-going through adulthood (Lawrence et al., 2017).

Given that both you and your students may be experiencing heightened stress in the face of the pandemic (Rousseau & Miconi, 2020), managing emotions has become even more essential. Unfortunately, many children have limited coping skills (Cunningham & Suldo, 2014). There are a number of evidenced-based interventions that your school may already implement or consider implementing. Tier 1 programs targeting students’ mental health needs considered most effective are typically manualized to support intervention fidelity, implemented over a number of weeks or months, and require some training for the implementer (Rodger et al., 2019). It is still possible, however, to respond to students’ mental health needs in the absence of a packaged intervention.

There are four basic steps to this process, as detailed below:

Consult with the school mental health professionals in your school.
Teach students emotion words.
Teach students coping strategies.
Model how you deal with challenging emotions and scenarios.

First, make use of the school mental health staff in your building. School counselors, school social workers, and school psychologists are trained to help target students’ social-emotional well-being through whole-school and whole-class supports. Consulting with a school mental health professional may provide you with useful ideas or tips for fostering a healthy social-emotional climate in your own classroom. They may even be able to provide and help implement lessons that go along with language already used throughout your school (such as those that emphasize your school’s code of conduct).

Second, regularly and intentionally teach emotion words. Emotional vocabulary may already be part of your reading units. For example, in the middle of Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale, if asked how the child feels you might add, “Yes, the child feels frustrated that her dad does not understand that her bunny is missing. We can tell because she is frowning and her eyebrows are closer together. Sometimes when people feel frustrated, their face feels hot.” If it is not, you may consider:

Asking students how a character feels or felt at a few points in the story.
Clarifying for students by adding on to their responses.
When adding on to responses, focus on what caused the emotion, what the emotion looks like, and what the emotion might feel like in our bodies. It is important not to skip this step because teaching coping skills is not useful unless students understand when to use them.

Third, regularly and intentionally teach coping skills. Coping skills may already be part of your classroom. Do you ask your class to take movement breaks or mindfulness breaks? If so, ensure your class understands when they might need to use that activity and similar ones on their own.

Tell students that everyone feels worried, angry, or sad sometimes, and that it can be hard to focus on our work when that happens.
One way we can make it easier to learn is to use different strategies that make us feel calmer when we feel ourselves becoming upset. For example, you might say “I like to take a mindfulness break when we first enter the classroom to help me focus on our class time together. This might be a helpful strategy for you to use when you notice you notice your mind is stuck on worries about something outside our classroom.”

It is essential that coping skills are taught and practiced when students are calm so that they can easily implement them when they are upset.

When teaching a new strategy:

Model the skill and have students do it with you a few times before transitioning to the next activity.
Practice each coping skill you teach over a few weeks until students are able to show you they can implement the skill independently.
Just like with academic skills, students may benefit from additional practice at home. You may decide to communicate with parents about the strategies and language you are using in the classroom so that they may support these practices as well.

Different strategies work for different students. One favorite for students the age of our LIFT classrooms is 5 finger breathing (Fisher, 2020). Point to the base of your thumb on your non-dominant hand and breathe in through your nose. Trace up the length of your thumb towards your index finger while breathing out. Trace down the other side of your thumb while breathing in. Repeat this process sequentially with each finger on your hand. As a challenge, see how slowly you can take each inhale and exhale. There’s a helpful visual for this activity you might project onto the White Board here or individual worksheets to provide students with here. Some students prefer modifying this exercise by tracing a shape (such as a star, or even their name tag) on their desk. If your class does not seem wild about that strategy, you can always try another one! See additional coping strategies you might teach below.

Once you have presented a few strategies and the majority of your students seem to understand when to use them, make note of any students who seem unresponsive to these strategies. Reach back out to the school mental health staff in your building to see how these students might be further supported through tiered services.

Fourth, model how you manage your own emotions. When you feel particularly stressed during the school day, label your own emotions and tell students what you are doing to help center yourself. It is important, however, not to dwell on your own emotions and concerns as to avoid overwhelming students. For example, you might say, “I am feeling a little worried and need to take a few deep breaths.” Then, show your class how you take a few deep breaths and invite them to do so with you. This simple act not only increases students’ emotional vocabulary and reinforces when to use coping skills, but it also shifts the energy in your classroom when you need it most. Thanks for supporting your students!

Try More Coping Strategies Here:

Further Reading and Listening:

References

Birnbaum, R., Witmer, S.E., & Carlson, J.S. (2017). Use of evidence-based survey methods to explore early elementary school teachers’ approaches to managing student anxiety. Journal of Educational and Developmental Psychology, 7, 123.

Bitsko, R. H., Holbrook, J. R., Ghandour, R. M., Blumberg, S. J., Visser, S. N., Perou, R., & Walkup, J. T. (2018). Epidemiology and impact of health care provider-diagnosed anxiety and depression among US children. Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, 39(5), 395–403. https://doi.org/10.1097/DBP.0000000000000571

Bothe, D., Grignon, J. & Olness, K. (2014). The effects of a stress management intervention in elementary school children. Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics, 35(1), 62-67. https://doi.org/10.1097/DBP.0000000000000016

Collins, S., Woolfson, L. M., & Durkin, K. (2014). Effects on coping skills and anxiety of a universal school-based mental health intervention delivered in Scottish primary schools. School Psychology International, 35(1), 85–100. https://doi.org/10.1177/0143034312469157

Cunningham, J.M., Suldo, S.M. Accuracy of teachers in identifying elementary school students who report at-risk levels of anxiety and depression. School Mental Health 6, 237–250 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12310-014-9125-9

Fisher S. (2020) Utilizing relationships as resources: Social and emotional learning and self-efficacy. In: Gallagher T., Ciampa K. (eds) Teaching Literacy in the Twenty-First Century Classroom. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47821-6_10

Killu, K., Marc, R., & Crundwell, A. (2016). Students with anxiety in the classroom: Educational accommodations and interventions. Beyond Behavior, 25(2), 30–40. https://doi.org/10.1177/107429561602500205

Lawrence, P. J., Rooke, S. M., & Creswell, C. (2017). Review: Prevention of anxiety among at-risk children and adolescents - a systematic review and meta-analysis. Child & Adolescent Mental Health, 22(3), 118–130. https://doi-org.ezproxy.lib.uconn.edu/10.1111/camh.12226

Rodger, S., Bourdage, R., Hancock, K., Hsiang, R. Masters, R., & Leschied, A. (2019). Supporting students: A GRADE analysis of the research on student wellness and classroom mental health support. Canadian Journal of School Psychology, 34(2), 133–171. https://doi.org/10.1177/0829573516684069

Rousseau, C., & Miconi, D. (2020). Protecting youth mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic: A challenging engagement and learning process. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 59(11), 1203–1207. https://doiorg.ezproxy.lib.uconn.edu/10.1016/j.jaac.2020.08.007

Zee, M., & Roorda, D. L. (2018). Student–teacher relationships in elementary school: The unique role of shyness, anxiety, and emotional problems. Learning and Individual Differences, 67, 156-166. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2018.08.006