Tackling negative thinking in the classroom

Helping anxious students change their negative thinking patterns can reduce stress and improve their engagement. 

Teachers often feel overwhelmed and underprepared to meet the increasing mental health and behavioral needs of their students in the post-pandemic classroom. It is no wonder as anxiety, which has historically been the most prevalent mental health disability, affecting up to 31.9% students in the United States, was compounded by the pandemic (Benton, Boyd, & Njoroge, 2021; Merikangas et al., 2010; Racine et al., 2021; Salari et al., 2020). However, few teachers receive any training in their teacher preparation programs in mental health and behavioral best practices (Ginsburg et al., 2019). By and large, teachers are left on their own to learn about the effects of anxiety on learning and behavior and to figure out how to address it in the moment.

Given that such a large percentage of students currently are suffering from anxiety, it is no longer realistic to send every struggling student to the care of the counselor or the psychologist. Teachers can learn targeted and easy-to-implement strategies to reduce the negative impact of anxiety on students, leading to improvements in their social-emotional, behavioral, and academic functioning (Ginsburg et al., 2019; Zee & Koomen, 2016).

Negative thinking impacts learning and behavior

Anxiety is characterized by rumination and negative or distracting thoughts (Kertz, Stevens, & Klein, 2017; Vytal et al., 2012) and is related to diminished performance across a wide range of school-related tasks (Moran, 2016). Negative thinking patterns — such as all-or-nothing thinking (“I don’t understand fractions. I stink at math!”) and catastrophic thinking (“If I fail my spelling test, I will never get into college!”) — can become intrusive and ongoing, taking a toll on a student’s mood, attention to tasks, working memory, and academic and behavioral performance (Putwain, Connors, & Symes, 2010; Vytal et al., 2012). Further, persistent negative thoughts and inaccurate perception often lead to unproductive behaviors such as avoidance, defiance, and disengagement (Leahy, 2002; Mahoney et al., 2016). However, most teachers have no formal training in how to help foster more accurate thoughts and perceptions in students, so this underlying cause of disengagement or other problematic behavior largely goes unaddressed, resulting in ongoing negative behavior patterns.

We’ve all known students who will shut down as soon as you give them an assignment. Negative and inaccurate thoughts and perceptions are a huge culprit in why the student can’t engage.

For example, we’ve all known students who will shut down as soon as you give them an assignment. Negative and inaccurate thoughts and perceptions are a huge culprit in why the student can’t engage. In fact, when students are anxious, they often misperceive a task in three ways: 1) their ability, 2) the difficulty of the task, and 3) the amount of time the task will take. If a student is thinking “I can’t do this” or “this is too hard,” or perceives that “this is going to take forever,” they may struggle to even begin a writing assignment. Typical classroom strategies, such as offering a graphic organizer, may not help these students because they don’t address the cause of the disengagement. Negative thoughts and inaccurate perception, which can be observed and measured (Berle et al., 2011; Mahoney et al., 2016), are largely contributing to commonplace problematic classroom situations. Yet, supporting students to think more accurately and positively is an educational blind spot and is often overlooked as a means to improve students’ engagement and foster appropriate behavior.

Skill-building is key

Most teachers are sympathetic by nature, but their intuitive efforts to help anxious students are often ineffective in changing students’ thoughts and perceptions. Typically, for example, teachers may use incentives to encourage them (“Come on, buddy, if you get this done now, then you won’t have so much homework!” or “Recess is in 10 minutes. Let’s finish this so you can go outside”). On occasion, this may get the student to re-engage. However, this sort of encouragement does not teach students how to silence the internal chatter of negative thinking, and they are  likely to shut down again the next time they receive a similar assignment.

Clearly, thought-changing and skill-building strategies would be more useful over the long term, leading to more skills and less problematic behavior as the school year progresses. The fact is that teachers come face-to-face with students’ anxieties every day; they are in a position to provide support, in addition to outside therapists and school counselors; and they can do so effectively if they understand certain basic principles and strategies. Eight easy-to-implement strategies are particularly helpful and allow students to think more accurately.

Changing student perspective

When students are anxious, it impairs their ability to accurately perceive other’s thoughts and feelings (Kuru et al., 2018). For example, if you had a large coffee stain on your shirt you might misperceive that anyone glancing in your direction is thinking about you and thinking negatively. This distortion in perspective-taking can lead to negative misperception of an event or interaction, such as “all my classmates think I am stupid because I said the wrong answer” and can lead to avoidant or inappropriate social interactions.

Additionally, anxious students are more prone to negativity bias, which means they overly focus on the small negative aspects of an event (Kuru et al., 2018). Imagine checking in with a student at 3 p.m. to ask how the day went, and she says, “Horrible!” However, she seems highly engaged and upbeat most of the time, and it’s hard to believe that her entire day was horrible. It’s more likely that she’s focusing so intently on the few negative moments she experienced that they eclipse everything else that occurred during the day, including many moments that were positive and others that were more or less neutral.

1. Reframe with specifics

When a student says her day was horrible, ask her to explain exactly what happened to make it such a bad day. She may describe a significant disappointment (“I failed my math test” or “I had a fight with my best friend”) or something more serious, in which case the teacher should validate her feelings (“I’m sorry that happened”) and walk the student to the counselor’s office for a check-in. The counselor may then contact the parent.

However, she may describe events that sound trivial (“I spilled my water bottle in homeroom, and I couldn’t open my locker”), which suggests that negative thinking has led her to blow those mishaps out of proportion. In that case, keep in mind that those events were significant to her, and be careful not to minimize her feelings. But also try to suggest a factual lens through which she can look at what happened: “It sounds like the first few minutes of the day were frustrating. How did the other six hours go?” In another instance, if the student says, “the teacher hated my essay,” you can use facts to support a more accurate view. “Looks like she made three corrections on the first paragraph and only positive comments on the remaining five pages.”

The point here is to interrupt a negative thinking pattern (in this case, an all-or-nothing pattern, in which a couple of disappointing incidents have colored the entire day as “horrible”) by framing the events in a way that changes and limits their scale. It’s a strategy that the student can easily learn to use on her own, giving her a way to take a more balanced — and not so emotionally fraught and stressful — view of her experiences (Jordan, McGladdery, & Dyer, 2014).

2. Reframe with visuals

Another way to help an anxious student gain a new perspective is to reframe the situation in visual terms. For example, when the student says that it was a horrible day because she spilled her water bottle and couldn’t open her locker, you can draw a circle to represent the entire school day, then draw these two negative events as a pair of slices in the day’s pie chart.

Again, without minimizing the student’s experience or devaluing her feelings, and after talking through the events and hearing out the student’s account, you can point to the two small slices and say, “I’m sorry those two upsetting things happened today. It looks like the rest of the day went well” (gesturing to the remaining majority of the circle). The student can see for herself that the rest of the circle remains unmarked, visually representing the fact that most of the day went well.

3. Make accurate information noticeable

In addition to reframing negative events, you may be able to get the student to change their perception of the story using a strategy called narration (Minahan & Rappaport, 2012). For example, imagine you have a student who tends to be anxious about fitting in at recess and often dwells on the negative moments (such as the one minute he spent looking for somebody to play with) rather than the positives (such as the 15 minutes he spent playing, once he found a game to join). This will lead to a negatively biased memory of events: “I had no one to play with today at recess.” Balancing his hyperfocus from negative events to a more accurate account can be as simple as walking past and saying, “Wow, it looks like you two have been playing for 10 minutes straight.”

Think of it as narrating a movie as you watch it: You’re not looking to converse with the student but, rather, to articulate the accurate facts of the situation so that the student notices and encodes the positive information, too. Later in the day, he’ll think back on recess with more accuracy  and remember the good as well (“I played with Nathan!”) rather than just dwell on the bad (“I couldn’t find anybody to play with”).

Be proactive

If students start the day or begin an assignment with a negative perception of their own ability, the time the task will take, or the difficulty of the task, they may never be able to initiate a task and focus on their work. But teachers can take proactive steps to check for anxiety and head off negative perceptions and thoughts before they lead to disengagement and avoidance.

4. Conduct regular check-ins

A formal check-in and check-out sheet can give you a quick read on how everybody’s feeling, while encouraging students to tell you right away if they’d like to talk about anything that’s bothering them. This gives you the opportunity to schedule a few minutes early on to touch base with the student, which may prevent them from ruminating on negative thoughts throughout the day.

Similarly, you can post a wall chart that lists various levels of stress and anxiety. Students can start the day by putting a sticky note (with their name on the back for privacy) on the chart or in a jar on the teacher’s desk to indicate how they’re doing and/or privately request a check-in with a teacher or counselor (see, for example, the photo on page 27).

5. Give assignments that appear doable

The way in which you introduce and assign an academic task can do a lot to ward off anxieties and negative thoughts. For example, let’s say that your syllabus requires students to complete a complex social studies project, design and conduct a scientific experiment, or write an extended essay. If you simply ask a student to “get started,” he may become paralyzed by anxiety, focusing on the whole large assignment: “I have to write seven pages.” But he’s likely to be much less overwhelmed if you ask him to tackle a discrete, manageable part of the larger project.

By finding ways to reframe the initiation of a task into smaller (less intimidating) pieces, you can avoid triggering the negative thoughts that may cause students to shut down before they even begin. This can be as simple as telling the class, “As a first step in writing our essays, let’s see how far you get in 10 minutes, and then we’ll stop.” Or you can ask students to set a target for themselves — e.g., they can commit to writing a specific number of words before putting down their pencil and taking a deep breath. And here, too, it can be helpful to provide a visual. For instance, instead of showing an exemplar essay, you can post a document with only the first two sentences of an essay on the board paired with the direction “let’s get started,” giving students a concrete reminder that beginning a writing project is a small doable step, and shifting them away from an overwhelming focus of the whole length of the project.

Disprove negative perceptions with evidence

Another effective way to help students reduce their negative thinking about an assignment is to show them empirical evidence that contradicts their anxious perceptions (Minahan & Schultz, 2014). For example, students will often say, “I stink at writing,” even if they’re quite competent and struggle with just a couple of skills, such as writing a good opening line or coming up with vivid examples. But it can be simple to gather and present them with data showing that their perceptions are inaccurate and helping them recognize their own pattern of all-or-nothing thinking. (For examples of the tools described below, see Minahan, 2014.)

6. Ask students to monitor their own progress

One useful way to show students evidence of their own competence and disprove all or nothing thoughts (e.g., “I stink at all writing”) is to ask them to monitor their own work. For example, if students will be writing an essay, give them a three-column self-monitoring chart to follow that includes a column listing various parts of the writing process to be completed (e.g., coming up with an idea, outlining the piece, writing an introduction, proofreading) and a middle column listing strategies that might help them if they struggle with any of these steps (e.g., looking at pictures in a magazine to get an idea for writing, looking back at a previously written paper to see how it’s organized). When students finish writing the essay, ask them to look at their chart and put check marks in the third column next to the strategies they actually needed to use. Typically, students will check strategies in no more than one or two parts of writing. You can then point out that they don’t struggle with all parts of writing – they just needed strategies for one part (coming up with the idea), leading to more accurate self-perception.

Over time, this self-monitoring will help them understand that only some parts of the writing process tend to be challenging for them, and they can begin to replace anxious, all-or-nothing thoughts like “I stink at writing” with more specific (and manageable) ones like “I am a good writer but I often have trouble coming up with an idea.”

7. Ask students to rate their expectations and recollections

If you have particular students (or a whole class) who seem anxious about an assignment (i.e., once asked to start a task they immediately raise their hand and ask to go to the bathroom), ask them to begin by rating (on a scale of 1-5) how difficult they expect it to be. After they complete the assignment, ask them to rate it again on the same piece of paper in a second column so they can see the comparison. Repeat this without commenting or judging so there are five or more comparative “before/after” scores in one place.

Most students will give the assignment a lower difficulty rating after the assignment is over as they are no longer anxious, showing that it wasn’t as hard as they thought it would be. Once there are five or six examples of discrepant before and after ratings on a sheet, point out that there is a difference in their before and after ratings. Help them internalize the lesson by asking them to explain why they rate assignments as less difficult in retrospect, then promote a discussion about how anxiety impacts accurate thinking. Ideally, the next time the student becomes anxious about an assignment (shutting down, complaining it is difficult, or asking to go to the bathroom), you can show them the previous rating sheet, reminding them that their overwhelmed thoughts are not accurate.

This strategy can be also done with the whole class. You could ask the class to rate the difficulty of a test packet, and then when they have completed it, ask them to rate it again. You can normalize this concept by asking kids if their number went down and why that might be — answers may include “My first thought is not accurate” or “I shouldn’t listen to my first thought.”

8. Ask students to rate the parts of a task

Another way to disprove negative thoughts through rating is to give students a long list of discrete tasks that go into completing a stress-inducing activity — for writing an essay, for example, this might include sharpening a pencil, coming up with an idea, using punctuation, spelling words correctly, writing an introduction, and so on. Then have the student sort the small tasks into one of three columns based on their feelings about each part of the process: “I don’t like it,” “OK,” or “I like it.” The greater the number of tasks you put on the list, the more items students are likely to rate “OK” and “I like it.” (See Figure 1 for an example.)

The next time a student says, “I hate writing,” take out the sheet and encourage her to restate her comment: “Actually, you like most aspects of writing (while pointing to the long list of items in the “like” or “OK” columns), but you don’t like spelling and thinking of an idea. Let’s review your strategies for those.” Over time, she may change her language to a more accurate statement such as, “I’m a good writer, but I have trouble with spelling.” Once she has a more accurate view of her own ability, she’ll be more likely to engage in the task because “writing” itself is no longer vilified.

This approach can also be used with the whole class and in a variety of subjects. For example, in the beginning of the school year, a middle school teacher can have students list out many parts of doing math (e.g., order of operations, addition, multiplication) and sort them into the “I like it,” “OK,” and “I don’t like it” columns. Later in the year, before introducing an algebra unit (where students’ anticipatory anxiety may be high), the teacher can have students refer to their self-rating sheets: “If you like order of operations, multiplication, or addition, you are going to like algebra, because that’s all it is!”

Teachers can take many small steps, using fairly simple classroom strategies, to help students tackle their negative thinking patterns that may otherwise go unaddressed.

Small steps can make a big difference

As the number of students with anxiety increases, every anxious student ideally would receive coordinated and ongoing support from a whole team of adults, including mental health providers, school counselors, teachers, and family members. However, even on their own, teachers can take many small steps, using fairly simple classroom strategies, to help students tackle their negative thinking patterns that may otherwise go unaddressed. The more teachers can do to help anxious students learn to recognize and reduce their negative thoughts, the more likely they are to see those students reduce their unproductive, avoidant, and defiant behaviors, allowing them to develop a more positive self-concept and engage in academic, social, and extracurricular activities to the best of their abilities.

References

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This article appears in the November 2023 issue of Kappan, Vol. 105, No. 3, p. 24-30.