When school anxiety goes beyond the newness, learning is stifled

<p>Becoming a grandparent brings a whole new set of joys and worries. My wife, Kathy, recently said that she worries more about the grandchildren than she did about our two boys.</p><p>One of the saddest things about being a grandparent occurs when something that should be a joy becomes a worry. This happened for many parents and grandparents this past month with the beginning of school.</p><p>Our oldest grandchild began pre-K school last month, and I found myself both excited for him and worried. As a teacher myself, I live with the belief that the human brain likes nothing more than problem-solving. Pre-K school is when, among other things, children are given some of their first challenges, their first problems to solve.</p><p>When I inherit those students 14 years later at they begin college, I present challenges that are much greater. But so is the satisfaction for the student.</p><p>I was smacked across the face with the worry side of grandparenting last spring when I spent a day in an area high school visiting classes as a guest speaker. Just when I was about to begin my talk with the first class of the day, an announcement from the principal came over the intercom. The principal wanted to remind students of the best steps to take if a shooter burst into the school.</p><p>It was the last bit of advice from the principal that terrified me then and still does. In so many words, the principal told the students that if all else fails, they should be prepared to “fight back” against the intruder.</p><p>My mind turned to my four-year-old grandson. How could he be expected to fight back in such a crisis? I then looked around the room of 16-year-olds in the high school class. How could they be expected to fight back?</p><p>Fear is an emotion that seems total. When we are afraid, it’s hard for other emotions or other capabilities of the brain to function well. That’s because fear activates the amygdala, the most primitive part of the human brain. Creativity, what we want every student to experience, can’t compete with fear. The human imagination, instead of dreaming up and playing with new ideas, is hijacked and frozen by fear.</p><p>Put simply, a student is unlikely to achieve at her highest capacity when, in the back of her mind, she is imagining someone breaking through the classroom door with weapons blazing.</p><p>That led me to try to set aside my own fears and imagine ways such tragedies could be prevented. One option we have as a society is to change our crazy gun laws, which give weapons of mass destruction into the hands of disturbed individuals. But that seems too reasonable to be considered.</p><p>A second option is to turn our schools into bunkers. We could bury classrooms underground with multiple doors of impenetrable steel and escape tunnels. Outside we could build watch towers surrounded by barbed-wire fences. The problem with this idea is that schools begin to look like prisons. Not a great atmosphere for creativity.</p><p>A third option shocked me when it first came to mind. It seemed so far-fetched at first that I initially dismissed it. No, I thought, we certainly can’t be so far gone as a society that my “off-the-wall” idea would ever become reality.</p><p>What’s that crazy idea? It suddenly dawned on me that someday, someone will make bullet-proof clothing for children! Can you picture it? Talk about giving “Under Armor” a whole new meaning.</p><p>My immediate reaction was to dismiss this third option as too extreme. Certainly, I thought, our society would change our gun laws before we’d strap our children into bullet-proof clothing. But that was before I talked to my son over the phone. “Ah, Dad,” he said. “You’re too late. A Brazilian company has already made bullet-proof backpacks for kids. It’s particularly for the American market.”</p><p>Not long ago, buying school supplies in August brought back pleasant memories for parents of their own school days. Didn’t we all look forward to a new box of crayons, to a protractor, new notebooks and a new set of No. 2 pencils?</p><p>Yes, we might have had fears of a new teacher and maybe even a new school. But we didn’t fear for our lives. And because of that, we could learn, we could use our imagination and we could be creative. Don’t we owe our children and grandchildren that same sense of safety?</p>