Anxiety and Student Accountability

Anxiety and Student Accountability

With guest star: Procrastination

At a recent staff meeting, it was mentioned by one of our counselling staff that the instances of students missing school due to anxiety, depression, and gaming addiction. There isn't much I can do about gaming addiction, but the anxiety surrounding school I felt was at least partly the responsibility of the teacher. 

Being the consummate scientist (nerd?) that I am, my first step was to do research. My first search brought me to the personality-project.org's PDF on anxiety(1). Interestingly they made the link between Anxiety and procrastination. They state that procrastination is often a result from anxiety which I found fascinating.  Teaching in a computer lab, I have a huge number of students that procrastinate on a daily basis. Perhaps this is because they are anxious about the assignments I have given them? I didn't want to take this one source at face value, so more research was required.

What else causes anxiety? Neuroticism seemed to be the biggest culprit(2). Neuroticism is defined as an over sensitivity to stressors, as well as a higher reactivity to those same stressors. An example may be how an individual experiencing neuroticism would view a deadline vs someone who does not. Both individuals would likely have some level of anxiety around a deadline; however, the individual experiencing neuroticism would have a far larger stress response (release of adrenaline, cortisol etc.) from the same stressor (the deadline). The truly unfair aspect of this is this response can be "learned" or rather the response can be strengthened through repeated experiences just like any other kind of learning(3).

How does this relate to procrastination? It is a re-focusing of the mind. The individual shifts their attention from the "painful" stimuli (the due date), and onto less painful stimuli (snapchat, supersnake.io, etc.) , with the big bad stimuli gone, the mind can relax again (and possibly reward itself with a healthy dose of dopamine for a job well done(4))

Understanding why students procrastinate is one thing, preventing it in class is a bird of another feather. Without going into too much detail on anti-procrastination techniques, the biggest and easiest step seems to be just to start. Once an activity is started (no matter how small the step), it has been shown that anxiety abates if individuals can simply start whatever it is they were anxious about. Something as simple as writing a title page can be enough.(5) The theory behind this technique is the stress of the upcoming task is no longer there when the task is no longer upcoming. It seems odd that the stress of an event approaching would be greater than the actual event itself, but that is the paradoxical nature of anxiety.

What can I do to help students develop OUT of their habits rather than deepen them? Mindfulness seems to be the ticket. Students procrastinate, they know they procrastinate, but rarely can they state WHY they procrastinate. When asked recently, the vast majority of one of my classes stated "It is just who I am, I procrastinate because I am a procrastinator." Boy, was that ever a long conversation after that little informal poll! Mindfulness can help students become more aware of their behaviour, and then eventually the causes behind their behaviour. The argument goes something like this.

1. Many of the issues we see in the classroom (and in life) come from dysfunctional self-regulation. (6)
2. Functional self-regulation requires functional emotional-regulation
3. Mindfulness increases individuals emotional-regulation abilities(7)
   QED
4. Mindfulness can help with issues in the classroom (ta-da!)

One source I have found useful is the "Get Things Done" model developed by David Allen. You can summarise the steps thusly:

Step 1: Mindfulness exerciseStep 2: Capture your ideas- get them down on "paper"Step 3: Clarify- Focus on the ideas that are important and flush them outStep 4: Organise- Which are things I can do now, which soon, which laterStep 5: Do it!

Nothing there is particularly surprising, but I have noticed a significant decrease in "time wasting" activities by my students on the days that I ask them to do this. Below I have an example of how I used this with a grade 8 class.

• Start: Re-Introduce students to mindfulness, state that the purpose is to focus on their personal emotional state, and the things that are on their mind. I provide an example of my own how I wasn't aware that an upcoming family dinner was on my mind so much (and distracting me), until I took to the time to "be still" and relax a bit.
  
• 3 min mindfulness exercise (youtube has a million of them[133,000 to be exact])
  
• Introduce the purpose of the days lesson- problem solving skills - prototype development - ask the students to write down what code they think the will have to put into the sphero (robot) to make it move around a question mark (they have already done it with a square) (3 min)
  
• Ask students to collaborate with their group and make a master copy of their draft code (including why they excluded some ideas and included others)
  
• Show students the project criteria (they have to film their trials, communicate their thinking and their learning in the video) ask them to make a plan on how they are going to get me a final video (listing digital literacy skills they might employ and predicted problems )
  
• I check their plan to make sure it is reasonable (if not, then they get sent back to the drawing board with more direction)
  
• Students film themselves programming and testing the robots, writing down anything that would not be clear through film. 

I don't think I had to tell a single student to stay off their cellphone in this class (compared to previous classes doing similar things where I would have to tell a different student every 4-5 min to stop using their cellphone inappropriately) I have yet to try this type of lesson with Sr. Grades, so stay tuned for more examples in the future. 

What do you think? Questions? Do you have experience with procrastination/mindfulness? Where do you think the problems come from?

References: (it's my blog and I'll cite how I want to ! ) 

1. Procrastination and Anxiety (Dopamine) - Personality-project.orghttps://www.personality-project.org/revelle/syllabi/301/301.anxiety.pdf - taken from:Source: http://www.sh.lsuhsc.edu/fammed/OutpatientManual/Anxiety.htm taken from 5. Gliatto, Michael F. Generalized Anxiety Disorder. Am Fam Physician. 2000;62:1591-600, 1602
   
2. Anxiety and Neuoticisim - https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2016/01/neuroticism-predicts-anxiety-depression-disorders
   
   
3. Anxiety and the relationship to neural connections- "The Neuropsychology of Anxiety" 2nd Edition by Jeffery Alan Gray and Neil McNaughton- Accessed Dec 13 2016- Page 171 - https://books.google.ca/books?hl=en&lr=&id=_M4owh-vs-8C&oi=fnd&pg=PR15&dq=are+reactions+strengthened+through+habituation+neural+networks+anxiety&ots=KVOzLqKYn7&sig=JsHjpz4DLAQCWbRx7vqhfMrpT7c#v=onepage&q&f=false
   
4. Dopamine and Procrastination Neurogistics- "Procrastination- Is Dopamine to Blame?" by Emily Roberts
   
5. Tools to treat procrastination - "Procrastination the Time Robber" by Dr. Thomas A. Richards http://anxietynetwork.com/content/procrastination-time-robber
   
6. Importance of Self-Regulation in the classroom- "Motivational and self-regulated learning components of classroom academic performance".
   Pintrich, Paul R.; de Groot, Elisabeth V.
   Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol 82(1), Mar 1990, 33-40. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.82.1.33
   Special Section: Motivation and efficacy in education: Research and new directions.
   
   
7. Mindfulness' efect on behaviour- "Feasibility and Preliminary Outcomes of a School-Based Mindfulness Intervention for Urban Youth" Mendelson, T., Greenberg, M.T., Dariotis, J.K. et al. J Abnorm Child Psychol (2010) 38: 985. doi:10.1007/s10802-010-9418-x
   
8. Getting things done- http://gettingthingsdone.com/  and http://lifehacker.com/productivity-101-a-primer-to-the-getting-things-done-1551880955