Transform Anxiety

 More than ever, anxiety is overtaking the students we work with. Renee Jain and Shefali Tsabary wrote Superpowered: Transform Anxiety into Courage, Confidence, and Resilience as a kind of student workbook for understanding anxiety and working with it to keep it from derailing progress. This is a book for kids, but it describes a series of activities and understandings that could be used with students to help them better understand and deal with anxiety. It is more wordy than a workbook, but includes many "write on" pages for young people to actively engage in the process.

The first thing they describe is how anxiety is a learned and developed behavior. For the most part, toddlers don't have anxiety. (The authors never address separation anxiety of small children, just the ability of little ones to fall down and try again.) They go on to say that anxiety/worry/stress are normal parts of life that are actually beneficial. The elevate levels of concern to help be do their best and be safe. The book does a nice job of walking through this concept as the beginning of transforming debilitation to function.

The book goes on to explain how to change mindsets back to being 

present- in the moment, not overly focused on the past or the future, the what ifs and shoulds

original- not a people pleaser but a person confident in who they are

whole- curb perfectionism (perfect is an illusion/ not real), and belonging to a group

energized- avoiding being fried by seeing the meaning of life and activities and using that to motivate progress

resilient- change from a fixed to growth mindset, able to use failure as an opportunity to grow.

They describe these skills as the superpowers everyone possesses, but may be hidden or underdeveloped.

The biggest challenge is that the idea that if you read the book you will be good by the end. Changing how you perceive anxiety is hard. The authors do recommend using professionals to help, but gloss over the commitment to change and the backsliding that inevitably occurs. Reconceptualizing anxiety is hard. This approach borders on cognitive behavior therapy, but would need help to make it truly there. That said, the best therapy for anxiety disorders is cognitive behavior therapy, an approach that takes time and professional guidance. Individuals can do some of this work alone to make progress. Medication may be required for people to take the first steps, but medication does not teach new thought patterns or break habits that have been perceived as helpful, even if they are not. (Flipping the light switch three times before you enter a room might make sure the light will come on, but is unnecessary.) In order to truly address anxiety disorders, new coping behaviors need to be taught and learned. If someone could do it on their own, they would have.

A great book written for young people. 

Strategies to boost cognitive engagement

 Rebecca Stobaugh's book, 50 Strategies to Boost Cognitive Engagement: Creating a Thinking Culture in the Classroom, addresses increasing the cognitive load for student's in the classroom. She begins her book with a description of Bloom's revised taxonomy (Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyze, Evaluate, create). Her descriptions do involve some fuzziness; for example, compare and contrast is seen in understand, apply and analyze levels. That said, they do provide an organizing format for her text.

For years I have contented that it is essential to have knowledge at each level. You cannot think at higher levels if you do not know what you are thinking about. She agrees when she says, "Although this [remember] is a low-level thinking process, memorizing information is important for higher -level thinking" (p. 12). Having spent the last year working in NY toward their gateway tests (regents exams) in history, I can attest to this. The state moved to completely stimulus based assessments. Student read a passage/chart/map, etc and answer questions about it. The problem is that if you go into the test without a hefty amount of background information, you will not be able to be successful on the test. For example,  June's first stimulus on the Global test shows a 1750 map of Eurasia and Africa indicating the location of major European trading stations. The first question: What was a contributing factor to the historical development shown on this map? means that students need to know what was going on at that time period and why. Memorization is clearly essential to answering the question. If we cannot have students understand the background, they are merely guessing on the question.

One thing that the author repeats throughout the book is that students should be the center of the instruction. In a student centered program, students ask questions. In fact, she quotes Ostroff, "Whoever asks the questions holds the power" (p. 27). I think this is an interesting idea. If we want students to be the directors of their education, they need the power and thus must ask the questions. The problem that emerges is that although we might want students to take on this level of responsibility, many are not ready to do so. We saw this extensively during the pandemic lock down periods where for many students, remote learning was non-learning. How do we capture their interests and have them take charge of learning material and skills that we need them to learn? This is at odds with our current educational structure.

Throughout the book the author includes the given 50 strategies with a general description of a task, steps to complete the strategy and additional examples. The chapters on analyzing and evaluating include the most strategies. The Create chapter includes mostly brainstorming strategies. A cardstock insert in the center of the book includes questions organized by thinking level. It is perforated and can be removed from the book. 

One type of strategy that appears at both the understand and analyze level is, in essence a word sort. Students group terms/images/ideas into categories. To take it to the higher level, students must create the categories themselves. What she fails to really focus on is that word sorts require a knowledge of the terms, at least on a surface level. Students cannot look up 20 terms and them form meaningful categories with them. Discussion around why they are grouped as they are is where the engagement comes in. Having used sorts before, I know that they can be powerful tools to enhance learning. The challenge of time  remains a constant concern. Higher level work takes more time so more things need to be eliminated from the curriculum. We seem uncomfortable with doing this so teachers remain enmeshed in the age old controversy- what to cut and what to emphasize.

While some great ideas are presented and a valuable guide, this book requires teachers to put great thought into the implementation.