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.

Another way to support teachers’ working conditions and workload is “tap in, tap out,” a self care strategy from Fall-Hamilton Elementary School in Nashville, Tennessee. In this technique, educators form a text message group to contact whoever is available to temporarily fill in for them whenever they need to take a moment to step out and regroup during class.

There is a great pair of keyboard shortcuts that will work together to make sure you’ve captured the important parts of your code in the editor:

1. Press Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + F10 to restart RStudio.
2. Press Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + S to rerun the current script.

I use this pattern hundreds of times a week.

All R statements where you create objects, assignment statements, have the same form:

object_name <- value

When reading that code say “object name gets value” in your head.