Anxiety, Dysregulation, and a Walk Down Memory Lane

This is the first in a series on Anxiety and Dysregulation. It was first published in the December 2022 HeartMind e-News. Read the second article in the series.

“Anxiety and dysregulation” – words educators hear far too frequently today. Our students are disruptive, ill-at-ease, and seemingly unwilling to settle down for… a long winter’s nap… or for school “business as usual.”

What’s to be done? There aren’t enough teachers, counselors, or therapists. So, to top off our dilemma, teachers are struggling with these issues at a time when they are overloaded and stressed out themselves. Sometimes teachers are handling larger class sizes, functioning without resource support services as resource teachers are forced to take on the role of subbing or other tasks.

It is not a happy time for education. As I stated in a presentation to a group of counselors last week, students have good reason to be anxious. It is not the best of times for not only students, but for adults, for families, for businesses. 

What’s To Be Done?  

What can be done? Let’s start with a focus on what you may have tried. If you have a moment, make your list – checking it twice, if you like. Likely you have already:

• Made referrals to outside agencies

• Turned to SEL programs

• Tried to keep on teaching, thinking that perhaps with time students will get back into the routine

In a small eBook I wrote with Dr. Melissa Hughes and others, we discuss the neuroscientific impact of trauma and the need for “psychological safety,” which starts with a sense of belonging. We describe it as “a belief that one is safe to take risks without being seen as ignorant, incompetent, negative or disruptive” (Hughes et al., p. 4). The term originated with Dr. Amy Edmonson (1999), a Harvard business school professor, as “a climate in which one feels one can be candid. It is a place where interpersonal risks feel doable, interpersonal risks, like speaking up with questions and concerns and half-baked ideas and even mistakes.”

With psychological safety, we are not afraid of isolation or rejection, we are confident, we have a sense of agency and curiosity, we have a sense of purpose, and we experience a growth mindset – a feeling that “we can do it.”

In our small book, we suggest five steps:

• Model active listening for students.

• Embrace mistakes.

• Help students learn to relate to each other.

• Invite student feedback and input.

• Focus on building relationships.

If you look at these steps, you will see what we did not say. Here are some things we didn’t recommend doing. You might consider these the don’ts. While they may have their time and place, when anxiety and dysregulation are high, they shouldn’t be the priorities.

• Don’t expand opportunities to practice for high-stakes assessments.

• Don’t track assignments completed and those yet to be done.

• Don’t implement rigid “zero-tolerance” policies.

You may have your own list of don’ts.

From Another Authority: Dr. Michael Matsuda, Superintendent of Union High School District in Anaheim, CA

Dr. Michael Matsuda, award winning Superintendent of Union High School District in Anaheim, CA, in his introduction to a book that we will be publish in February 2023, states:

For 30 plus years, I have strived to center my teaching and leadership around a few key principles of cultivating kindness, fostering student voice and purpose, embracing community, struggling for justice, and developing the real world skills of students... We need educational leadership to meet the challenges of this moment, and Leading with Vitality and Hope will equip you with critical tools for improving your leadership practice and guiding your team with hope and optimism (Mason et al., in press).

In a recent podcast, Dr. Matsuda described the need to move away from testing.

With rising rates of teenage anxiety, depression and isolation, more emphasis on metrics like the SAT and standardized tests is not the answer, and legislation that would make the SAT a required state test for all high school students is more of doing the wrong thing right. It is time to build an innovation ecosystem in education.

At Anaheim Union High schools, we are working to ensure that our students are prepared for the “new collar” world, gainfully employed and able to achieve an unlimited future.

Michael Fullan’s Take on Testing

Another well-known educational leader is chanting a similar mantra. World renowned educational leader Dr. Michael Fullan many years ago pegged the problem with testing – it was the wrong “driver” for our work in education. More recently, Diane Ravitch quoted Fullan saying:

The four new wrong drivers are not completely wrong. It is just that if left alone they take us in a negative direction. Let’s name them and give them nicknames (in parentheses).

1. Academics Obsession (selfish)

2. Machine Intelligence (careless)

3. Austerity (ruthless), and

4. Fragmentation (inertia)

They have been operating for 40 years and with ever-growing intensity. Together they are the ‘bloodless paradigm’, lacking care, empathy, and civic awareness – the things that make us humans. The new right drivers, by contrast, capture and propel the human spirit. Again these are offered with nicknames.

What does he propose instead?

1. Wellbeing and Learning (essence)

2. Social Intelligence (limitless)

3. Equality Investments (dignity), and

4. Systemness (wholeness)

They are the human paradigm and presently constitute a work in progress. We have barely begun to tap their potential.

Okay, so What About Memory Lane?

Here’s a brief recap of the points made so far:

• Psychological safety is foremost

• Our focus on tracking and testing may be misplaced

• Perhaps well-being, growth mindset, and being centered in our “humanness” may have value

Now, if you are 30 or under, the memory lane analogy may not work for you. However, for many leaders, you may just be able to think back to a time before No Child Left Behind and before computerized tracking and testing. If your memory doesn’t go back that far, you might be able to imagine life without these elements.

Our question to you is: how did teachers teach “back when”? I can remember times in the 90s for example, where there was a huge emphasis on experiential, hands-on, practical learning. At that time, I was teaching at Glasgow Middle School in Alexandria, Virginia. We used cooperative learning, block scheduling, and focused on student’s interests and strengths. Before the era of test-prep, we did our best to help students feel included and to build their confidence in their abilities to excel. We also concentrated on setting the mood for learning, for incorporating art and music.

During this time, we concentrated on making learning practical and relevant. And we also knew that school-wide discipline was helpful and that sometimes PBIS tokens and rewards helped kids stay engaged.

A Question and Recommendations 

So, our question to you, could these elements become the drivers and supports today? If we restructured classrooms to increase the fun factor and did what we could to build a school community, could that make a difference?

Our recommendations to you are to trust your instinct and go back to things that worked well before the hefty requirements for high-stakes testing. We realize that you may not be able to wave a magic wand and do away with high-stakes assessments. And we acknowledge that things were not perfect in the 90s. We have made considerable advances. So while you continue to turn to what works today, also turn to some fairly credible solutions that were implemented decades ago. And, while we are waiting for policy to catch up with practicalities, we urge you to follow our guidelines for SEL using heart centered learning and compassionate school practices (Mason et al., 2020; Mason et al., 2021), and also check out our resource on Anxiety: An Introductory Guide for School Counselors for Conducting Small Groups.

Read the second article in the series.

References

Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative science quarterly, 44(2), 350-383.

Grant, A. (2021, July 20). Is it safe to speak up at work. Worklife with Amy Grant. TED podcasts.

Mason, C., Patschke, M. D., & Simpson, K. (In Press). Leading with vitality and hope: Embracing equity, alleviating trauma, and healing school communities. Roman & Littlefield. 

Mason, C., Rivers Murphy, M., & Jackson, Y. (2020). Mindful school communities. The 5 Cs for nurturing heart centered learning. Solution Tree.

Matsuda, M. B. (2019, November 21). Schools must steer away from 'one size fits all' approach’. EdSource.

Volk, K. T., Staeheli, M., Asby, D., Mason, C., Wenzel, M. (2021). Compassionate school practices: Fostering children′s mental health and well-being. United States: SAGE Publications.