Senior stress

Hi everyone, 

This post is a little less about pedagogy and more about benefiting student wellbeing in the classroom. I wanted to start off with just an anecdote. 

About 10 minutes ago I observed something in my brother that I've seen in myself so many times, but this particular thing happened to me a lot when I was in year 11 and 12. My brother is in grade 12 this year. 

What happened was, he came into the living room room, balling his eyes out, convinced that he could not 'do' a part of his assignment. Even though myself and my parents, and he probably knew deep down that he was more than capable of. Like so many other grade 12 students he is so scared of the number that he will get at the end of the year. My brother has always been stressed about our academic work. I remember him being really little and getting so frustrated that when he was rubbing things out on the page he'd rip the page. I've also had similar experiences as a student both in school and at university. 

We can say to ourselves that "its one paragraph, in one assignment, in one subject, that gives us one number that defines our lives for one year". However, we think that if we muck up that one paragraph, it will mean that one mark from that one assignment could impact on our position in the class which will lower that one number so that we can't get into the one degree that we want. We put an enormous amount of pressure on ourselves, and it probably isn't healthy.

To my friends out there that are working in secondary, we will have students that are just like this, you've probably met them. And its not always obvious the ones that are stressed because they express it in different ways. 

I'm going to a big bold statement out there that I truly believe. I think we need to teach students that it is ok to fail. In fact, it is a good thing to fail. (I even dare to say the whole "students don't need a ribbon or a trophy for everything"). We need to teach our students to be resilient. 

I want to introduce everyone to a program called superbetter, I've used it occasionally when I have the time to go on and complete the activities. Its basically a game watch the video as well, but it teaches you that its ok not to do great in something, it encourages you to do better next time, it helps your realise the power within yourself, it teaches resilience. Its an example of how we could be using ICTs in our classrooms to not only teach content and academic skills, but also life skills in general. 

If I was to use this, I'd get each student to create an account. I'd get them all to add one another as allies and play together to increase their resilience as a group. It also means that, as an ally to them, I'm able to help them out with any issues that they are having. Of course the program is not perfect for the school environment - considering some schools don't allow students to use facebook, the idea of the teacher communicating with students online about their issues may not always go down well either.