A student chosen for the description is an 11-years-old boy with a generalized anxiety disorder with whom I was previously working. Even though the majority of students demonstrated occasional anxiety or bad mood, the boy’s condition implied a highly excessive fear and nervousness. In general, his state involved excessive and persistent worry and tension that were accompanied by distinctive physical symptoms, including muscle tension, elevated heart rate, trembling, sweating, fatigue, concentration difficulties, and infrequent panic attacks (Stein & Sareen, 2015). Although this student had certain issues in communication with his classmates and other peers, social phobia was not diagnosed.
The student’s anxiety disorder had a highly negative impact on his academic progress in school. The major issues were connected with the boy’s lack of attention concentration as it is impossible to stay concentrated when his mind was distracted by anxiety. Moreover, the student’s excessive tension made the school environment substantially uncomfortable for him and affected his learning skills and memory. The boy had permanent difficulties with the completion of classwork and homework and missed classes without any other reasonable excuse to accept his disability.
In general, all interventions that I applied to support the student were connected with additional time and activities provided for him to distract his attention or help him to concentrate. For instance, I changed ordinary classroom activities to calming ones such as listening to music or reading whenever I saw the boy’s physical symptoms of his anxiety disorder. In addition, I used comfortable small group activities when applicable to minimize the risk of the excessive fear’s occurrence, awarded the boy’s efforts and successes, and taught him several breathing exercises to reduce the level of stress.
Reference
Stein, M. B., & Sareen, J. (2015). Generalized anxiety disorder. The New England Journal of Medicine, 373(21), 2059-2068. Web.