Student Stress
Understanding "Stress Dynamics" may help school personnel to more effectively identifie student on coming stress.
Leonard, do you find that the other students knew about the withdrawn student's plans? If so, is there some way we can create a way for them to share that information without feeling like a snitch?
Sometimes students leave without any warning. A student can be doing really well in class and still feel the stress of trying to do better and show no signs of it. I hear about it after asking other students what happened to our team member.If the student had shown some sighs of the problems I may have been able to hepl them overcome the issue.
I am too a firm beleiver of helping a student that is stressing out about situations that is removing him/her from the class. I will always take the time out to hear what a student has to say because I have had tremendous success with students when they step back and let someone give a honest opinion on a situation. It gives them something to ponder not stress on! I make it a work in progress.
Gordon, do you have the detailed guidelines you reference? If not, what's the next step to getting them?
As instructors we need to be given detailed Guidelines to follow, instruction on how to interact and support students that are about to leave, and be informed of the resources that are available to students and who to refer them to.
And don't forget the other resources available at the institution, Alphia. Instructors don't have to take on too much when other help is available.
I totally agree, understanding the nature and cause of the students' stress level will ultimately help us to use stress dynamics to alleviate the problem and teach them ways to overcome the problem. Although sometimes for us as instructors we tend to take on too much as it applies to our students, we too need to control the stress in order to function.
Indeed understanding stress dynamics can be a powerful tool, Henry. The question is how to communicate the concept to school personnel. Any thoughts?
