Anxiety is the most prevalent disorder in children and youth. A lot of this is at the beginning of the year. Especially if the school is larger in size, students may be put in classes with different peers each year. As a result, they have to go through the process of building relationships and friendships all over again. Something more on the academics side, a lot of the testing processes can be anxiety provoking. We have learned in our assessment class, the affect of constructed response testing – short answers, essays, etc. – on student performance as this form of testing increases anxiety levels in many students.

I learned a lot about how to deal with this anxiety as well. Some of the strategies that stood out for me were directions, expectations and cool down passes. As an educator, providing not just anxious students – but everyone in general – with structure is crucial to maximal learning. That is, outlining clear, transparent directions and expectations will help not just help the students but also the teacher. I feel like sometimes we as adults just assume children know what we are thinking or what we are expecting but really the children require direct instructions. For example, in our assessment class we learned that even when giving a test with true and false answers, we must say how we want the students to answer – write true or false, write t or f, circle t or f, etc. The idea of a cool down pass was something I felt like I could use in my own classroom. I have a student that leaves the classroom almost whenever she feels like. Maybe having this pass, will make her more accountable for her behaviour. Sort of like when she feels like leaving, she has to remember to take the pass. As a result, she might be more likely to realize what she is actually doing. And if the pass has some form of instruction like “please come back when you are ready,” she will be more motivated to return.

The presentation about homework was very eye-opening. I was really surprised to know that the topic of homework has been big in education for a long time now. It is nothing new. So, what really bothers me is the fact that for all this time, we have continued this practice even though there is so much research highlighting the negative effects. I agree that any work given outside of class instructional time should be worthwhile for the student – learning how to interact with their family, talking about their culture, exploring different life skills. And anything that is given for homework should always be debriefed in class the next day so students see the purpose behind their work.

I was so surprised by the idea of flipped classrooms as I have never heard of these before. This is something I would want to try in my own teaching at some point. But I can already imagine that it would be a gradual development. Maybe starting with one small lesson that has very direct teachings. Or it could even begin with giving students notes about a certain topic and then they come to class to work on related work. I really like how this approach allows more time for completing work in the presence of the teacher. However, I do not feel I would want to completely change all my teachings into this approach, because that would just be like an overload homework again for students.

Dealing with grief in the classroom can be one of the most emotionally difficult times for everyone involved. I know this from my personal experience. As educators, we need to learn how to help students or even colleagues go through tough times like death. When I was in school, I experienced some losses that were affecting my school performance and I can say that a lot of the teachers in my school were great support and really helped me cope. We do need to walk with the grieving individual and not try to guide them through it. As educators, we need to be able to positively deal with our own emotions – in a sense being a positive role model.