This week on TeachLab, Justin is joined by Jessica Minahan, a behavior analyst, special educator, author, and school consultant. They discuss how COVID-19 is affecting students with anxiety, how it manifests through behavior, and some simple strategies that teachers can use during remote learning to help students feel a bit more in control during these challenging times.

“...there are a couple of things to keep in mind as you're planning curriculum and planning different things is we're going to see a spike up in fears around sickness and death, particularly those two themes. So for example, if you're going to read a book where the mom dies, we want to be extra thoughtful about that right now. We want to make sure that we think that through and that's something administrators and teachers can be doing together.”

How students have been responding to recent changes
Behaviors of showing anxiety
Establishing adequate check-ins for students to communicate their feelings
Handling behavior and stress in remote learning
Cheat sheet of responses for handling student panic in the absence of support staff
Helping students develop a sense of control over their own lives
Youth cultural change around germs and disease post-quarantine
Being thoughtful about discussing the pandemic

Note to the audience:

The Teaching Systems Lab and the TeachLab team would like to thank all of our audience for their patronage as we attempt to shift our production and content in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic. We think it is of the utmost importance to continue distributing as much content as we can, and as widely as we can, to assist those who are in need of information in these difficult times. We are working to improve the quality of our content with these new constraints and get back to a more regular scheduling. Thank you for your patience.

Resources and Links

Read Jessica’s Educational Leadership: Special Report “Maintaining Connections, Reducing Anxiety While School Is Closed”

Learn more about Jessica Minahan’s work

Find Jessica’s book “The Behavioral Code” on Amazon

Learn more about emWave biofeedback

Learn more about the mote voice commenting for Google Docs

Check out Do Something!

Transcript

https://teachlabpodcast.simplecast.com/episodes/jessica-minahan/transcript

Join our course on edX!

Becoming a More Equitable Educator: Mindsets and Practices

Produced and edited Garrett Beazley