Hello and welcome to the What in the World is Dyscalculia podcast presented by Educalc
Learning and I am your host Dr. Honora Wall and I'm talking to you today and recording
this podcast from a special education educator conference in Wisconsin.
It's a really great conference.
I have pages of notes from both this conference and my last one in Iowa of things that I need
to get into this podcast so I need to get some episodes recorded but I wanted to be
Dyscalculia adjacent today and talk a little bit about anxiety, specifically generalized
anxiety disorder and where we have comorbidity with Dyscalculia and one of the reasons why
I'm doing this I just had such an exciting experience at the conference.
I was going to an afternoon session about working with students who have anxiety, especially
generalized anxiety disorder and usually at these conferences your breakout rooms have
about 15 maybe 30 people at a really well attended session.
You can have as few as 8 people and still have a robust conversation in a session.
So that's what I was expecting going into the anxiety room.
I'm not kidding when I tell you there were 80 people in chairs and another 20 sitting
on the floor along the side wall or standing in the back.
It was jam packed and the presenter was great.
I did not stay for the whole session because I could practically write my own session about
generalized anxiety disorder from working with students and family members and I have
a well rounded set of experiences and knowledge about generalized anxiety disorder.
But I was so excited to see how many other people were in the room and really digging
into the ways anxiety literally physically chemically blocks learning blocks recall blocks moving
information from short term to long term memory blocks the coding in a neurological sense
between information and where we store information in the brain.
Really the implications for educators are huge and it's so misunderstood and becoming
so common there's such an increase in people who are diagnosed with a generalized anxiety
disorder or who have such high anxiety that it impacts their daily life.
So I was very encouraged to see more people really getting into this and talking about
the impact in an educational framework.
Of course the quality of life impact is also huge and for students school makes up most
of their quality of life takes up their whole day.
So it's a really important conversation.
So how does this intersect with our math learning disability.
Well first of all you can be comorbid which just means you have more than one diagnosis
so you could be diagnosed with both dyscalculia and a generalized anxiety disorder or anything
else or you could just have dyscalculia but have anxiety around math and math performance
but not have this to the severity and consistency of a generalized anxiety disorder.
Now for students in the classroom tomato tomato if you're very anxious if you're having
test or performance anxiety or specifically math anxiety or if you just have anxiety all
the time with a generalized anxiety disorder your experience is pretty much the same.
It's misery it's impactful it's hard to focus it's hard to retain information you feel like
you're under attack physically that's how it feels a lot of time in the mind.
So we can have both we can have a lot of overlap they do not come from the same place so you
can have a generalized anxiety disorder and not have any other diagnosis.
You can also have dyscalculia and not have a long term chronic anxiety condition but
you can develop anxiety over time through having a lot of negative experiences and that's
very common with students who have dyscalculia they have years and years and years of trying
of working hard of doing extra homework pushing through tears at night lots of tutors begging
for help and not getting anywhere and that can create a very anxious response regardless
of any other diagnosis.
So whichever diagnosis you may or may not have understanding anxiety is a big part of
working with people who have dyscalculia and if that is you it's a big part of understanding
yourself as a learner and understanding how you can better support yourself in those anxiety
producing circumstances which math class certainly falls in that category for most people.
So then the question is what can you do and that's a huge question to answer.
There are a lot of resources out there I encourage you to do a lot of googling and searching
and reading more about anxiety.
I can only scratch the surface in this podcast but I do want to let you know that anxiety
is a physical response.
There are chemical interactions that happen in the brain and in the body the release
of cortisol which is very dangerous the release of a lot of the negative chemicals that have
their place but at an overwhelming amount can be damaging.
Cortisol is a big one, adrenaline is a big one if you keep having that adrenaline rush
from a fight, flight or freeze response then your body has to absorb all of those chemicals
back in later.
It's very important to have some kind of an outlet whether that is journaling, therapy
would be great, meditation, yoga practice, playing some other kind of sport that works
best for you, a hobby that helps you relax so that you can have some down time so that
your heart rate can slow down, your blood pressure can go down and you can release some of those
chemicals that have built up from the anxiety response.
That's really, really important.
Sorry if someone is sneezing in the hallway but hopefully they walk on.
So hopefully that gave a little humor if you can find humor as a way to help you diffuse
your anxiety response that's helpful too.
But that's important not just to make you feel better.
I think it's important enough to feel better.
We're supposed to have an enjoyable life experience but that should stand on its own.
And outside of just that it's important that you manage those emotions and that chemical
response because the build up over time can have some very serious health consequences
if you're not managing your anxiety response.
Also it gets in the way of, like I said, memory, recall, learning information, being present
in a situation so that you can understand what's happening, so that you can understand
new content, so that you are getting the information, putting it into notes, being able to find
it later, doing independent work on your own.
If you're in the middle of an anxiety response, a heightened anxiety situation, none of those
things are going to happen.
And if you are an educator listening to the podcast then you definitely want to be aware
of how you can reduce anxiety in your classroom.
A lot of it is tone of voice, a lot of it is not putting people on the spot, not making
people feel badly about whether or not they remember the answer to the question you're
asking.
There are so many ways we can do quick check ins with students to make sure they're paying
attention, to make sure they understand the lesson.
And it doesn't have to be accusatory, it doesn't have to be negative, it could be something
like, okay I need to answer this question.
Jim, grab your calculator, put this in the calculator, tell me what you got.
Sally, I want you to go to the notes we took yesterday, see if you have this definition
in your notes.
If you can find it, read it to me, if not, let's take a minute and make sure we add it
into your notes.
You've met the objective of checking in with your students, you've met the objective of
having them engage in the lesson, but you didn't put them on the spot, you didn't expose
anyone and in that way you can really manage someone's experience in the class.
There are a lot of other things to know about anxiety when we look at assessments.
You might want to make sure that students who seem to have an anxiety response or who
you know have an anxiety disorder, let them have notes, let them have a worked example.
Spend a few minutes before you give a test, just welcoming everyone to the class, doing
a few little deep breaths, kind of acclimating.
Remember everyone, today's test is going to be about this topic, you're going to watch
for this, that's the common mistake, you want to avoid that.
Remember we're going to have word problems at the end and they're all going to be about
this, this and this.
That way you've set the tone, you kind of let everyone settle in and you'd be amazed
how much that can help reduce an anxiety response for people.
Now of course if your student or you yourself is in the middle of a heightened anxiety response,
hopefully you have a plan in place where you can leave the room.
You can go to a nurse's office, you can go to the counselor's office, you can just go
outside of the situation and have a place to decompress for a minute and remove yourself
from the situation.
That's very important in managing an anxiety response.
So these are just very surface level things that are easy for anyone to implement in any
situation but have a huge impact for students and for students as people, not just students
as learners.
This podcast we usually direct things to educators so of course we're also thinking about their
education, what are they getting from our class and they're not going to get anything
if we're not helping to manage their stress and helping them to recognize, hopefully avoid
or at least manage or recover from an anxious experience.
I'll put some more information about this on the educalclearning.com website in the
next few weeks and on our non-profit website, the DTRI.org so that we can get some more
information out.
I'm going to run back in the room and get the speaker's information and I will share
that also.
If you're on Facebook, find us on Facebook, educaulclearning has a Facebook page and
we've started a public group, the teachers discalculia support group.
Please join us, that's really for educators to share resources, ideas, success stories
and to talk with other teachers about students who have discalculia and how we can help.
If you have any questions or comments for me, please email me, honora at educalclearning.com
that's H-O-N-O-R-A or find our website, find me on Facebook.
We're in the process of putting together some TikTok videos so we're entering a brave new
world of social media and I would love to have you be a part of that journey and let
me know what kind of questions you have so that I can help you answer them in the best
way possible.
This is Dr. Honora Wall and I appreciate you being a part of this conversation.
Thank you for listening to What in the World is Discalculia and I will speak with you again
soon.