Tag: performance anxiety

  • Anxiety or Excitement?

    Anxiety or Excitement?

    I’ve been doing 50 Word Friday for a while. But I’ve just stumbled across a thing called Five Minute Friday that has me excited.

    My heart is racing!

    Yup. Racing.

    And it’s not from the coffee overload this morning.

    I have what’s called “test excitement” — which is the opposite of test anxiety. If you tell me to do something (for which I some level of mastery) and then say that it’s timed or a test, I just go nuts.

    I’m all about getting the best grade, beating everyone else or creating the best whatever in the allotted time.

    So this new challenge is right up my alley!

    Starting tomorrow (or late, late tonight) I’ll be using this online timer and Lisa-Jo Baker’s Five Minute Friday prompt to write something about math.

    Things might get a little crazy.

    In this challenge, you don’t proofread what you do. How exciting!

    And you only write for 5 minutes. So I’ll pick a photo before she gives the prompt.

    Which means that what you, sweet reader, will get out of this, is anyone’s guess.

    The one thing I’ll guarantee… it will be about math or math learning.

    Anxiety or Excitement?

    So what does this article have to do with math?

    In order to excel you have to be out of the state of anxiety and into excitement. This goes for excelling in learning as well.

    So try this little test with your children. Print this Anxiety or Excitement? sheet (or use a blank page) and have each of your children (and you) fill it out.

    In one column write out everything that makes you anxious. Include all the things you avoid because of this.

    In the other column, write down everything you love to do — anything you’re excited about doing and you want to do more.

    Then take a peek at what you and your children have written.

    What do you notice?

    Use those filled out sheets as a guide to turning anxiety into excitement — like if your child is anxious about math but loves fairies, convert all word problems into fairy problems. Like this:

    The fairy playground is about 50 twinkletoes wide by 120 twinkletoes long. There’s a border of pixie dust around the entire playground that’s 1800 square twinkletoes. How wide is that pixie dust border around their playground?

    Does it turn anxiety into excitement? Maybe not immediately.

    But perhaps if you let her draw it out — with glitter paint — it will start her down the right path!

    Stay tuned…

    If one of the things on your excitement list is writing or doing anything at midnight for five minutes, join me for the #FiveMinuteFriday party (aka #FMFParty)!

    I’d love to see what you write. And if you’d like to share your anxiety/excitement list with me, please do! Put it in the comments or post it on twitter/x.

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  • Math Anxiety – How to Empathize with Students

    Math Anxiety – How to Empathize with Students

    Have you ever experienced performance anxiety?

    If you don’t have math anxiety, remembering (or freshly experiencing) performance anxiety is a great way to understand what it’s about.

    This happened to me at the beginning of this semester.

    Anxious Wrinkled Forehead

    I try to memorize the names of all my students. I go through the roll and for each person, I say the name and then look at the student. I study where they are, who they are and their name. I say it a few times and try to get it solid in my memory.

    Doing this helps students with math anxiety relax a little. And students who are trying to stay in the shadows (so they can miss class, etc.) learn quickly that I’m going to connect with them, personally.

    Of course the act of memorizing names isn’t perfect. The second day of class I usually remember about 30% of the names. So I go through and try to match the names on the roll with different people – giving it my best shot.

    I often get it wrong.

    A few weeks ago, I mistakenly called one woman, “Sandra.” I was wrong. She said, “Awe, come on, now!”

    It was all in jest, I had no doubt. But the strong reaction to my mistake hit me. So when I was looking through the roll to find her correct name, I was nervous.

    I was experiencing performance anxiety.

    If I gave it a shot and chose the right name, I would look good. But if I picked incorrectly, I would likely get another round of jeers.

    Of course, I’m the instructor, so there isn’t that much risk. But there certainly was performance anxiety.

    Surprisingly, there was a lot of anxiety.

    I pointed this out to the students.

    Because the class is less of a content based course and more of a confidence building/math anxiety busting experience, I thought pointing this out might be enlightening.

    We talked about how they might have said things like, “That’s a good try, Bon. Unfortunately, Sandra’s not my name. Would you like to give it another try?”

    We talked about how that kind of encouragement compares with the “Awe, come on, now!” reaction that they gave before.

    And we talked about the parallels of those statements to the statements by math instructors to students – about math. And the parallel of my performance anxiety to the math anxiety many experience.

    Consider it yourself.

    The next time you try something and get it wrong, notice how you feel. Think about how your child might feel in a similar situation.

    And ponder how this feeling would manifest itself as math anxiety if this performance anxiety happens in a math class.

    Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments. And tell others about it…

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