Fears are a normal part of growing up. They develop from the moment a child first experiences a danger he or she cannot fully understand or control. Fear can be displayed in numerous ways by students in the classroom. One common fear response is that student seems almost paralyzed by fear when talking in class. This response may induce physiological reactions. Additionally, procrastination and repeated absence from class can both originate as fear-based responses.
There’s an old joke: How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. The joke assumes that seemingly insurmountable problems can be resolved if broken down into parts. To many educators, helping highly fearful students successfully gain the upper hand on their emotions may appear challenging. Yet finding solutions and breaking them down into parts may result in breakthrough for the students who need it most.
Educate yourself about fear and its impact on students. Fear is a complex emotion and can take different shapes and forms in a classroom setting. Although it is not possible to recognize each cause, diagnosis, or symptom that correlates to fear-based behaviors, it is possible to understand the significance of these fears in a way that could be beneficial to students. This starts with reframing our interpretations of pertinent student behaviors. Understanding how students experience fear, what this may entail on a cognitive and biological level, and how it may ultimately impact their learning, we can become more sensitized to problematic behaviors and work towards making students feel more comfortable and confident. In so doing, we may actually be empowering ourselves to overcome our own fears of change or of reaching the limit of our gifts and talents as instructors.
Recognize that some student fears may be associated with factors outside the classroom. It is important to discriminate between fears that occur inside and outside of the classroom. Students who fail to turn in papers on time, miss classes, avoid discussions, or sleep during lessons may actually be wrestling with a number of challenges that originate outside of the institutions they attend. These individuals may be holding down multiple jobs, facing family challenges, or even spending excessive amounts of time driving to and from school; all of which may exacerbate fear-based responses. With this in mind, it is important not to make hasty assumptions about the roots of these fears. Creating a dialogue with the student who appears distressed or fearful can represent an important first step in addressing problem behaviors.
Educate your students about the anxiety they may be experiencing and provide guidance in learning to manage it. In order to manage or reduce their anxiety, students often need to be made aware of their fear responses and be given techniques for managing them. A number of studies have shown that instructional intervention can diminish student fears and improve academic performance. By helping students identify potential fear-based behaviors, we are implementing our own informal early alert system and tapping into an important ingredient for classroom success. Spending a few minutes helping students “see the elephant” of anxiety and offering and even demonstrating a few anxiety-management techniques will be class time well spent in building a stronger sense of self-efficacy in your students. Demonstrating such simple techniques as breathing exercises, guided imagery, expressive writing, or stretching or relaxation methods can help students reduce anxiety and be more cognitively available to learn.
Create a nurturing environment for your students. Providing a nurturing environment and positive attitude to all students can promote trust and positively impact students who are prone to fearfulness. A nurturing environment can also promote cultural sensitivity and discourage prejudicial or stereotyping behaviors by students. Because many cultures depend on a variety of visual cues during relational interactions, becoming aware of and responding to the nonverbal communication of students can also be a key factor in engendering a safe environment within the classroom. Being sensitive and respectful to these cues and nonverbal communication demonstrates inclusiveness essential to learner-centered teaching.
Be proactive in communicating with your students outside the classroom both as a group and individually. Utilizing email and other forms of communication with your students to clarify assignments or to offer general comments or words of encouragement can help to ease student fears about potential failure. Often if one student takes the time to ask you a question after class, there is a good possibility that at least a few others had the same concern, and without singling out that student, a general email addressing the concern may also reassure others in the class. Correspondences of this nature demonstrate to students that their instructor is caring and willing to go the extra mile for them.
Provide icebreakers and other activities to reduce stress and anxiety and repeat as needed in the semester. Do them in a way that takes the emphasis off individual achievement. When the first day of class comes, instructors can also promote positive communication through icebreaker activities—while doing double duty to address stress and anxiety. Initial class meetings also set the tone for constructive and learning-filled semesters. Yet icebreakers often showcase student abilities to be articulate and integrate information, and even with prompts as seemingly harmless as, “Tell me what you did over the summer,” students may become overanxious. As an alternative, provide students with an icebreaker in which they can share as much or little information as they wish.
Incorporate active learning strategies into your normal teaching routine in order to promote a stress-free environment. According to Light and Micari, active learning takes place when students feel safe and supported by instructors and fellow classmates. Group activities are emphasized because they provide a collaborative feel that often is missing in a normal classroom environment. Peer facilitators can be trained to offer help and provide a more “democratic” feel in which the instructor is not seen as the sole source of classroom wisdom. For example, students are “assigned a particular problem or question to research in groups, and develop a short presentation and share with the class either live or online through a blog or wiki.”
Be aware of campus resources to help students. Many universities and colleges have formalized early alert systems to help identify at-risk students and provide them with academic assistance and support services. Other interventions include “success coaches,” “success workshops,” “success skills programs,” and learning enrichment services providing tutoring and mentoring. Most universities and colleges also have counseling services and support groups for various needs, and some offer discipline-specific academic services, such as for math, statistics, or physics.

Question: What strategies can educators adopt to help overcome fear of students in class? Answer this question in about 150 words. (10 points)