Working with anxious students

Anxiety in the classroom rarely looks like anxiety. It looks like avoidance, freezing, or acting out. The move is not to fix — it is to co-regulate.

Three anchors that work: a quiet choice (“would you like to start with the first or the last question?”); a body cue (“feet, then breath, then the pencil”); a naming move (“that looked heavy — is that anxiety showing up?”). The last one requires a shared emotion vocabulary in the class.

Loop the family in without alarming them; see talking emotions at home. If patterns persist, refer — but keep the classroom anchor consistent, that is the child's daily medicine.