Effective Teaching for Anxious Learners

Aims to elevate learner anxiety from a pastoral concern to a pedagogical reality, enabling teachers in primary and secondary school settings to build a new perspective on and support anxious learners who may display challenging behaviours.

This book explores the relationship between anxiety and common classroom problems such as unhelpful behaviour, work avoidance and learning loss. It promotes the philosophy that it is a teacher's role to 'support not fix' learners with anxiety and other mental health concerns by adopting effective pedagogical strategies. Despite not being recognised as a learning difficulty, anxiety can be something that makes learning very difficultfor pupils. Learners with anxiety have the right to be seen, feel safe at school and have their needs supported. This book provides teachers with a toolkit to cultivate a professional mindset that recognises behaviour as communication and that anxious pupils have the capacity to learn. It also delves into the neuroscience of anxiety, with text backed up by pertinent theory..

Written by a practicing classroom teacher, this book is packed with illustrations, quotations and humour as well as opportunities for critical reflection and tried and tested strategies, advice and reassurance.

Introduction 

Chapter 1: Understanding anxiety

Chapter 2: Seen 

Chapter 3: Safe  

Chapter 4: Supported 

Chapter 5: Toolkit

Lilian Surgeson is a classroom teacher and currently works for an online alternative provision for learners who are unable to physically attend school - the vast majority due to anxiety. She teaches learners who communicate through text chat, many of whom have flourished outside of the traditional classroom environment. She has worked predominantly with challenging and vulnerable learners for over seven years in mainstream schools where she successfully raised the attainment of previously disruptive learners. She also has experience working with learners with SEMH and has been a teacher in residential children’s homes, where she worked with some of the most challenging children in the UK, re-engaging them in learning.