Exam Stress

The best thing about final exams is that they don’t last long. Classes ended this week, and exams are now in full swing. Students who normally put a lot of effort into their personal grooming are showing up in sweats, with binders, flashcards and textbooks in tow, and that glazed look in their eyes that tells me they have not slept well, anything they have crammed into their brains overnight is probably less secure than it was before they started studying, and they’re living in the moment because they can’t even think about tomorrow’s exams yet. Ah, exam stress, it brings back fond memories of burying myself in the Engineering library with 3 days to learn an entire course. I have the fortunate perspective of an adult, who knows that exams will pass, summer will begin, and life will go on.  I can joke about exam stress because, as an adult, I don’t take exams too seriously, however,  I do  see the effect of this stress from the student perspective. The source of the stress doesn’t matter because the physiological effects are real. To some students, this effect is serious.

Yesterday, I was supervising an English exam. A short time after the intial quiet while the students read a story for analysis, three students started to become restless. One, nearly in tears, had to be escorted (quickly) to the washroom with nausea, the second couldn’t focus to read the story, and the third student couldn’t figure out what was going on with his brain- it was completely in a jumble, and he wanted to leave, immediately. All of these students have learning disabilities, and these types of reactions are typical of them, but the interesting commonality between them wasn’t just their level of test anxiety, it was their lack of awareness that they were experiencing stress. None of these students was able to acknowledge that their physical symptoms were being caused by stress, they were only focused on the physical symptoms they were feeling, and none of them knew how to cope. Now, technically, if these students were writing a standardized, or “Provincial” exam, I would be allowed to provide them with a computer, with spellchecker, and a maximum of double-time to complete their exam. Officially, they would be allowed to sit still with their thoughts for four hours. I’m not very good at following rules if the rules don’t make sense, especially if these rules might cause harm to children, so I helped out.

I swear, I did not facilitate any form of cheating, but what I did do was use this opportunity to teach these students the very important lesson of how to deal with stress. For all three students ( starting with the obvious first priority, the barfer) I helped them calm down. Taking a student down off a ledge, of sorts, doesn’t take much. The first student just needed to step out of the room for a minute. One at a time, I took the other two out of the room, talked them calmly through starting to plan a written response and helping them to deal with their anxiety by acknowledging it then moving on to the task at hand. I was insistent, but I pushed them nicely.  I doubt that any of them ended up with their best written work ever, but I know they each learned something. I’m sure of this, because today I also had to supervise this same group of students in a second exam. None of them freaked out. One student, the most extreme yesterday, needed a little guidance from another teacher, but he showed no signs of stress. The other two students wrote excellent papers on their own today.

IEPs for students who have learning disabilities are designed to be fair. Students are given allowances to help them with processing and fluent thinking, but there are no objective accommodations that can be consistently allowed that would fit nor match the needs of an anxious student. This type of support requires judgement and sensitivity on the part of a teacher. I need to find some way to address this discrepancy. I’m starting this conversation here.

Girls

When I describe Gamers, I mostly mean boys. I don’t worry about boys and their games. I expect that they’ll grow up and broaden their interests, or not, and they’ll end up living in their parents’ basement. This is the threat we hold over our boys when gaming becomes a singular focus for them. Boys can unplug though, and go and play some other kind of game outside. As long as they’re playing something, they’re happy. But girls, now that’s where I find challenge in teaching. I find most of my female students to be simply delightful. They love to talk to me, as an adult girl.  I really enjoy teaching girls because we speak the same language. Actually, we don’t even have to speak to understand each other. I usually find that the girls in my classes can see the bigger picture, and they know what it takes to learn. My concern for many girls though is their lack of self confidence. I see so many girls who are really great kids-they’re clever, ambitious, creative, and yet they see themselves in comparison to others, often sure that these “others” are better/more skilled than they are.

My greatest success with girls whose confidence is impairing their progress, is with one-on-one or partner work. While boys seem to thrive (in general) in the team approach to group work, I have found that girls who are vulnerable to self-inflicted criticism are most successful in a supportive setting. I once taught a math course for students who had weaker math skills. After a lot of experimentation with group dynamics, I found that I could set the boys up with working teams of 4-6 boys at a table. Some girls chose to join in, but most of them were happier working with one buddy. I reserved my individual attention for the girls (and a few boys)  who had nearly given up on math. Two to three minutes of uninterrupted individual instruction with these girls went much further than any group instruction. Then I would leave them to work alone , solving problems on their own, and returning to check in (while keeping order with the big tables who were racing each other to be the first done.) None of these boy or girl-only boundaries were fixed in this class, but I left the option open for students to choose. The majority of students who both chose and succeeded with individual or partner work, were girls.

There are, of course, so many factors affecting self esteem in students. I consider the knowledge and skills I have to offer all of my students to be far less important than helping them to develop confidence.  I wish that lack of confidence weren’t an issue for any child, but I know its root is beyond a teacher’s control . The best thing that schools can do is to avoid reinforcing self-doubt. For now, I’ll just continue to share my ideas and successes here. I think the best place for educational reform to begin, is in the classroom.

Gamers

Some of my students refer to themselves as gamers, not just serious gamers, but high-level advanced gamers. They have made a  personal commitment to their computer games, and they make no apologies about it (when they are talking to certain people.)  For some reason, they like to tell me about the amount of time they spend playing online. I have been trying to look at the gaming phenomenon in comparison to rock music, a generation ago.  I grew up surrounded by popular music, but I know that parents who were older than mine just hated everything about the music industry. They saw the time that their kids devoted to listening or playing music as being completed useless. They couldn’t see any purpose in the activities, and felt threatened by the entire culture surrounding it. Is the parallel sounding familiar? I know my students see gaming as something that belongs to them; adults don’t ‘get’ them. I know I don’t understand them, but I do understand the attachment they feel to an activity with which they so closely identify.

I used to play piano every day. I know how it feels when time evaporates while you are absorbed in something that engages your brain, your body, and your heart. I can’t imagine that a computer game might engage a player to this same level, but I try to accept this possibility and the ramifications of this. When I am engaged in music, whether listening to it or playing it,  time is irrelevant. Csikszentmihalyi uses the term “flow” to describe this feeling. In teaching, the ultimate goal is to provide opportunities for this level of engagement.  Whereas video games are seen as addictive, or an escape from reality, activities such as my piano practice are still socially acceptable, though no less addictive. I have been thinking about the elements of gaming that are engaging these students, hoping to find ways to include the positive aspects of them in my own curriculum design.

Gaming is never passive. Gamers are problem solvers,  often playing in teams, working together on a quest. It is collaborative group work, solving questions that have some personal meaning to them. The competitive aspect attracts players, not because they might win in the end (there really is no end to the games, as far as I know) but because they want to beat another team, to get better. Individual success is not as satisfying as a team win and increasing status. I have seen the difference in engagement when my students work in teams. Not all students enjoy teamwork, but often those who struggle on their own are completely involved when they get to work with other students. They enjoy talking to (and over) their teammates, and thrive on the pace of the activity. Speed is also an issue. The action in gaming is constantly incoming, challenging the players. Nothing is simplified. Players will push themselves until they succeed, while the bar is continually raised. Gamers are intelligent, active thinkers. If teachers can approach lesson design, keeping in mind some of these elements of video games, we may just be able to interest our Gamers in school.

Reading

I apologize for my recent blogging absence- I have been reading. There are times, as a teacher, when reading becomes all-consuming, and for me this month has been filled with reading my students’ work (aka, marking!) I actually love this kind of reading. It starts as a short conversation when I ask my students to show me what they know, then the floodgates open, and the writing starts piling up on my desk. There are a lot of kids who are just desperate to be heard. They need a place to voice their ideas, without interruption, and in writing for school, on any topic, they get an audience. And yet, some students still feel so threatened by writing. It’s a shame we have to confine most writing assignments to being something “for marks.” The limits that are imposed by getting the right answer or trying to sound knowledgeable are the hardest to break. The challenge I pose to my students in their writing is to tell me what they think, not what they have read. Reading, and adding in the ideas of others can come later, but if I can convince my students that their ideas are valid, and that I want to hear them, then, that is when I start to see growth in their writing.

One of the most freeing experiences in my own writing happened in my first graduate course, when we were given permission to write our papers in the first person. In fact, we were told that personal authoethnographical writing had more validity than standard, objective research. This concept was incredibly difficult for me to accept. I had learned, and I had been teaching for years, that an author’s opinion was not valid information for any credible journal. Apprehensively, I tested the waters of writing in the first person, and I found that the depth of my own thinking expanded, as I read other authors, reflected upon their ideas, and made connections to my own world. Now, I’m completely sold on the value of writing as thinking, using the personal perspective.

I use this approach in teaching my students to think about the material they read, and I’m starting to see much more thoughtful writing coming from them. I have 14 and 15 year-olds asking important questions, questions that make me think too. So , I have no complaints about the number of hours I have spent reading my students’ writing this month. This time, for me, is the culmination of a year of learning, and it’s probably the greatest reward I can have for the work I have done.