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Module 3 Activity 1: Frustration, Anxiety and Tension (FAT) City Video

Lavoie, the Director of the Eagle Hills School OUTREACH in Connecticut,

hosted a workshop to a group of audience who were educators, counselors, social

workers, rehabilitation specialists, parents, and students. In the workshop, he used role

play method in which he played a teacher role, and audience played students’ roles, to

simulate the learning processes of the students with disabilities (LD). He also adopted a

series of materials with which the audience could experience the difficulties that were

similar to what the students with learning disabilities (LD) suffered in their learning

process. It was a vivid lesson. I not only felt and understood the difficulties of students

with LD, their emotional anxiety due to these difficulties, but also how to correct and

enhance teaching skills to accommodate the students with LD. I like the following four

segments in the video, Anxiety, Processing, Risk Taking and Reading & Decoding out

of the twelve segments. A discussion about these four segments are in the following.

Anxiety

In the Anxiety segment, Lavoie simulated an educator teaching in a classroom

who shot questions to each student in a fast way to demand answers in the same

speed. A lot of people in the audience felt the anxiety and at the end, what answers he

got were a roll of six “I don’t know.” This is a good simulation of what can happen in a

classroom. With this speed of teaching, not only the students with LD will have anxiety,

but even the non-disabled students will suffer from it.

Some research shows that students with LD may experience increased level of

anxiety compared to their peers without LD (GreatSchools Staff, 2009). It is a common

sense that one generates anxiety when not being able to accomplish something that

others can. A psychologist calls this “anxiety of not being able to keep up”(GreatSchools

Staff, 2009). This anxiety builds up from elementary school and continues in middle

school and high school. Very often students with anxiety have the symptoms of

agitation, restlessness, poor focus, and a series of other disturbances (Matheis, L.).

In a survey (Jacob, K, Carroll, J. & Cho, J., 2013) to 117 outstanding teachers

from 36 states of the nation, 40% teachers strongly agree and 40% teachers agree that

students’ good performance on the state’s or the disctrict’s standard tests made them

feel more successful. This value influences teachers’ teaching approaches. Many

teachers feel the pressure to fill students with content and place the content with top

priority. Teachers often hope students grasp the content as fast as possible. However, a

lot of teachers may not realize that this incites and increases anxiety in students with

LD. Even though some educators realize this, they may not change their many years

formed teaching style because of their priority of teaching, time and other

inconveniences.

This segment gave us the true feeling that students with LD experiences in a

stressful learning environment. While we emphasize teaching results, it is important to

create a safe learning environment with differentiated teaching instruction and modified

instructions for students with LD.

Processing

Lavoie made a simulation, like the one in the segment of Anxiety. This time, he

took Stephanie who had LD as an example. When he asked the student sitting next to

Stephanie what the title of the book was, the student answered, Huckleberry Finn. Very

quickly after it, he asked Stephanie who was the author of the book. Instead of the

author’s name, Mark Twain, Stephanie answered, Huckleberry Finn. This just

demonstrated that Stephanie’s thinking was still on the last question. She was not quick

enough to switch her mindset to the next question. And Lavoie pointed out that students

with LD normally need twice as long time as a non-disabled student in processing the

information. In addition, the fast-paced teaching created anxiety in Stephanie. This

simulation and the interpretation of the result enhanced our understanding why we need

to slow down our teaching that we already learned from the first segment. Lavoie points

out that students with LD do not like surprise. So, instead of calling their names in the

class suddenly, we can use strategies to avoid the “surprise” of name calling. One

strategy Lavoie used was to use a movement to signal Stephanie when he was about to

call her. In addition, he only calls on her when he knows that Stephanie is ready to give

the answer to the class.

Good teachers have the skill of pacing. A good pace is not a fast pace. Instead, it

is the rate for delivery different parts of the lesson that makes students feel like they are

moving along (resources.finalsites.net). While we seek to keep good packing, it is

imperative to leave plenty of time for the students with LD to process the learning. In

addition, building a signaling system for these students give them a safeguard to avoid

anxiety caused by “surprises”.

Risk Taking

In this simulation, Lavoie continued to use fast pace, direct and commanding

tone to shoot questions to each student. He moved so fast that he did not even think

about offering comments to any replies. The only way that student knew it was correct

or wrong was that he would repeat the question to the next student if the answer was

wrong. Finally, when he asked if there was any volunteer, the audience was silent. It is

a good simulation of an indifferent teacher who seems to care about only the content.

As he explained to the audience, students do not feel secure enough to take the risk to

volunteer: if the student is correct, he/she will get nothing in comment, and if he/she is

incorrect, he/she can be very likely embarrassed.

Risk is how we learn. We learn through mistakes and failures. Winfrey Oprah put

the risk-taking this way, “Do the one thing you think you cannot do. Fail at it. Try again.

Do better the second time. The only people who never tumble are those who never

mount the high wire. This is your moment. Own it.” Students learn through asking

questions, thinking, comparing, and multiple mental activities. Only actively involved in

learning process can they process the content and acquire understanding. However,

most students are worried about ignorance revealing (Sharma, S.), especially students

with LD who often have “not able to keep up” type of anxiety. Risk-taking is highly

advocated in educational world. To encourage risk-taking, a safe, comfortable, and

mistake-tolerating environment is the key. The responsibility of creating such an

environment falls on the shoulders of teachers. Strategies for teachers include sharing

and discussing mistakes, no judging, allowing retakes, and many others (Ingram, L.G.,

2017).
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Reading and Decoding

In the segment of Reading and Decoding, Lavoie first used an example of a

watch which is a watch no matter whatever orientation you place it. However, this

occurs to some students with LD when the watch is a letter “p”, i.e., the student regards

all the following letters, “d”, “q”, and “b” are the same as “p” because the only difference

between these four letters is orientation. In the following action, Lavoie asked the

audience to read an article with all the “p” purposely replaced with one of the four

letters, the audience read just like a student with LD. Isn’t this a marvelous example to

demonstrate the difficulties encountered by the students with LD? Now I truly

understand why these students read slower and blurred. What they need is time,

patience, teaching strategies that are based on research results. Teachers should know

that reiteration and urgent push do not help and only make students’ anxiety increase,

and the situation worse.

In summary, the video provided an immersion experience, like that of the

students with LD. The four segments in the above explained to us that students with LD

normally need twice as long time as regular students to process the same learning

information. Because of this, they are often worried about being mocked by peers and

tend to feel increased level of anxiety if an educator ignores these students and provide

no accommodations. Providing a safe learning environment with modifications of

instructions and accommodation strategies, as well as give opportunities for risk-taking

are imperative for students’ success.

References

Friend, M. & Bursuck, W. D. (2019) Including Students with Special Needs: A Practical

Guide for Classroom Teachers (8th Ed.). New York, NY: Pearson

GreatSchoolStaff (2009) Anxiety Among Kids with LD: Three Clinical Psychologists

Discuss Causes and Symptoms. Retrieved on July 16, 2020 from

https://www.greatschools.org/gk/articles/kids-anxiety-causes-symptoms/

Matheis, L. (N.D.) Identifying Signs of Anxiety in Children. Retrieved on July 16, 2020

From https://www.anxiety.org/causes-and-symptoms-of-anxiety-in-children

Jacob, A., Carroll, K., & Cho, J. (2013) Perspectives of Irreplaceable Teachers: What

America’s Best Teachers Think About Teaching. Retrieved on July 16, 2020

from https://tntp.org/assets/documents/TNTP_Perspectives_2013.pdf

Improving Pacing: The Rhythm of the Classroom. Retrieved on July 16, 2020

https://resources.finalsite.net/images/v1525455825/davisk12utus/y4p1feoy3hp4

mgtwzyri/Pacing-LeaderNotes-final.pdf

Sharma, S. (2015) Promoting Risk Taking in Mathematics Classrooms: The importance

of Creating a Safe Learning Environment. The Mathematics Enthusiast, Vol. 12,

No. 1. Retrieved on July 16, 2020 from

https://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/bitstream/handle/10289/9550/Promoting

%20Risk%20Taking%20in%20Mathematics%20Classrooms_%20The%20import

ance%20o.pdf.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y

Ingram, L.G. (2017) A Classroom Full of Risk-Takers. Retrieved on July 16, 2020 from

https://www.edutopia.org/article/classroom-full-risk-takers