My inquiry question involves delving into how teachers can help build self-confidence within children who easily get frustrated or anxious with classroom work. One article that I have found discusses how and why children get frustrated when they are presented with a task that they feel is beyond their skill level. The article explains that when students feel trapped in situations where they feel that they have little or no control, they go into the “fight, flight, or freeze” mode. By putting these situations into a survival perspective, it can be easy to understand that much of the negative behaviours is due to the protective, fear-avoiding mechanism of students who do not want to experience shame and embarrassment. It’s often the result of the student’s anxious thinking such as, “I’m horrible at this! If I try this I’m going to look dumb.” Teachers often misread these behaviours as being oppositional or defiant.

The article gives some great strategies on how teachers can help these students cope in these situations. One strategy that I want to highlight is to have students rate the difficulty of a task before and after completing it. The student may first rate the activity as being very difficult before beginning the task because of their anxiety. With the help from the teacher and other peers, the student will hopefully rate the task at a lower number after completing the task, as they will have a more accurate perception. This will help to build the student’s self-confidence as they will be able to see that the task could be accomplished with less difficulty than they had presumed.

Article: Minahan, J., & Schultz, J.J. (2014;2015). Interventions can salve unseen anxiety barriers. Phi Delta Kappan, 96(4), 46-50. Doi: 10.1177/0031721714561446