School Leadership 2.0 — Leadership Brief

Topic: Supporting Anxious Students with Practical Classroom Strategies
For: Principals, Instructional Leaders, Counselors, and Teacher Teams
Source: MiddleWeb — Review of Help Anxious Kids in a Stressful World by David Campos & Kathleen McConnell Fad
https://www.middleweb.com/how-teachers-can-help-anxious-kids-in-class/

Why This Matters for School Leaders

Student anxiety is no longer an occasional concern — it is a daily instructional variable. Across grade levels, educators are seeing increased worry, avoidance, shutdown behaviors, perfectionism, and emotional overload. While counseling staff play a critical role, classroom teachers remain the frontline support system. This MiddleWeb review highlights a highly practical resource that translates anxiety support into ready-to-use classroom routines and tools teachers can implement immediately.

For school leaders, the key takeaway is clear: anxiety support is not an “add-on program.” It is an instructional capacity that can be built schoolwide through shared strategies, simple tools, and teacher modeling.

What the Book Offers Educators

Help Anxious Kids in a Stressful World is designed specifically for teachers and counselors, not clinicians. The strength of the resource lies in its usability. It converts mental-health-informed practices into structured classroom strategies that are easy to understand and apply.

The book begins by helping educators recognize how anxiety actually appears in classrooms. Rather than only visible nervousness, anxiety may show up as disengagement, irritability, avoidance, inconsistent performance, or resistance. This reframing helps teachers interpret behavior more accurately and respond more productively.

A standout feature for professional learning communities is the built-in reflection framework using “Here’s What → So What → Now What.” This structure supports book studies, faculty discussion groups, and leadership team learning cycles by prompting educators to connect reading directly to classroom action.

Strategy Design That Supports Implementation

The core of the resource is 25 classroom strategies organized for fast implementation. Each follows a consistent three-step format:

• Ready: Why the strategy matters

• Set: What teachers prepare in advance

• Go: Step-by-step classroom directions and student prompts

This predictable structure reduces hesitation and increases teacher follow-through — an important factor in successful schoolwide adoption.

A strategy index categorizes each practice by domain — physiological, behavioral, social-emotional, or academic/cognitive — allowing teachers to quickly select approaches aligned to student needs without reading the entire text first.

High-Impact Practices Highlighted

The review notes several strategies with broad classroom value:

• Structured gratitude routines that build emotional regulation

• Short movement-and-focus resets to reduce cognitive overload

• Visual cue cards for breathing and calming routines

• The “Worry Plan” protocol, which teaches students to name worries, identify coping steps, and select trusted adults for support

These practices are designed for individual, small-group, or whole-class use and include printable and digital materials. Because they are universal strategies, they support anxious students without singling them out — reducing stigma while strengthening classroom culture.

Leadership Implications

For administrators and instructional leaders, this resource supports three scalable moves:

1. Normalize anxiety-support practices schoolwide.
Position regulation strategies as learning tools for all students, not interventions for a few.

2. Use in faculty or PLC book studies.
The reflection structure and ready-to-use materials make this ideal for guided staff learning.

3. Model and protect teacher wellness.
The reviewer notes that teachers benefit from using the strategies themselves. Leaders can reinforce this by embedding regulation practices into meetings and PD sessions.

Bottom Line

This resource stands out because it turns awareness into action. It equips teachers with practical, repeatable routines that support anxious students while strengthening classroom climate for everyone. When schools make emotional regulation a shared instructional skill, not a specialized service, both teachers and students gain stability and confidence.

— School Leadership 2.0 Leadership Brief

Original Article

Source: MiddleWeb — Review of Help Anxious Kids in a Stressful World by David Campos & Kathleen McConnell Fad
https://www.middleweb.com/how-teachers-can-help-anxious-kids-in-class/

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Prepared with the assistance of AI software

OpenAI. (2025). ChatGPT (4) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com