Chandler School

the necessity of emotional support in our schools through affinity groups and the need for culturally responsive professional development opportunities similar to ones offered at the NAIS People of Color Conference (PoCC).

In her book, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? Beverly Tatum outlines a familiar circumstance that many Black faculty face when working in PWIs. “Particularly in work settings, where people of color are isolated and often in the extreme minority, the opportunities to connect with peers of color are few and far between. White people are often unaware of how stressful such a situation can be.”

As confirmed in my research findings, affinity groups are one of the few places in PWIs where Black faculty and staff expressed a genuine sense of recognition and appreciation. Affinity groups provide teachers who share a common identity at our school the opportunity to meet, connect, and support each other. The Black affinity group gatherings at our school can range from informal check-ins to more structured and facilitated conversations about stress management and teaching practices. As important as these meetings are, they are unfortunately infrequent.    

One of the things we know about brains that have been pushed too far is that they can’t learn. They just can’t. They need an opportunity to calm, to feel safe, to find their way out of the lizard-brain response that is fight-flight-flock-freeze-appease.

High social complexity + low form predictability = stress reactive behaviors.

High social complexity (lack of clarity around the social expectations, cultural norms, and how to navigate the expected social realities of a situation) + low form predictability (confusion about what is going to happen moment to moment, day to day, week to week) = stress reactive behaviors (fight-flight-flock-freeze-appease or signs that the amygdala, the lizard brain, has taken control and the prefrontal cortex—the part that learns and plans and creates—isn’t fully engaged).

Anxiety severely limits –and often blocks– all logical and rational problem-solving regions of the brain. So, don’t expect to talk someone out of anxiety or rationalize with them. When students don’t respond to verbal coaching, they aren’t being difficult or defiant. The biology of their brain simply makes it impossible for them to think with reason. To help a student break out of an anxiety spell, get them moving! Aerobic activity is the fastest, most effective way to break the virtuous cycle of anxiety. Next, get them talking about the problem. Have them describe what the problem is, why it is bothering them, and how they feel about it using a feeling wheel. To get our SOAR® Feelings Wheel, sign up for our “How Do I Feel?” Curriculum Kit in the blue box on the right of this page. This process does many things, it: draws the problem up to higher regions of the brain, minimizes the sense of “threat,” gives students a great sense of empowerment over the situation, and helps them better identify potential solutions. Finally, build their skills. Build their skills for managing the anxiety and skills for managing the situation that triggered the anxiety. To learn more about skills for overcoming stress and anxiety, check out the SOAR Social-Emotional Learning Curriculum.

To help address test anxiety, researchers recommend setting aside a little time for simple writing or self-talk exercises before the test—they allow students to shore up their confidence, recall their test-taking strategies, and put the exam into perspective.

Students who study moderately should get roughly 70 to 80 percent of the questions correct. 

Don’t start a test with challenging questions; let students ease into a test. Asking difficult questions to probe for deep knowledge is important, but remember that confidence and mindset can dramatically affect outcomes—and therefore muddy the waters of your assessment. 

while we all experience anxiety, we seldom take the time to engage the emotion and give it the respect it deserves. Ignoring anxiety does not make it go away; it compounds until we fight, flee, or freeze – are we attending to these adaptive responses that tell us something is wrong? Even a persistent low level of anxiety has deleterious effects on our body and mind. If we do not respect anxiety, we virtually guarantee that we will not be performing at our best which can further drive rumination and further deleterious anxiety.

helps us see anxiety as a biological system that has evolved for our protection but is flexibly under our influence. Bringing together an array of up-to-date research, she integrates the neuropsychology of both top-down and bottom-up processes into a set of practices that allow us to take advantage of the neuroplasticity of the system: relaxing the body, calming the mind, redirecting and reappraising, monitoring responses, and learning to tolerate the uncomfortable.