Are You a Scaredy Squirrel?

Teachers, what is your Monday Motivation?  What gets you out of bed and out the door at the beginning of the week.  We like to focus on the positives that motivate us.  A passion for teaching, improving students' lives, and providing skills and opportunities for our students are some of the many reasons we are motivated to teach.  Let's be honest, we are also motivated by fears and anxieties.  We all have bills to pay and lives to maintain as well as that of our families and those fears are motivators too.  What motivates our students on Monday morning?  What gets them out the door and into the school?  Sadly, many of our students have other things that get in the way of any motivation to attend school.
When you go to school do you think of the fears and anxieties your students experience regarding school and how it impacts their ability to learn?  Test anxiety, math anxiety, and social anxiety are just a few of the many issues that impact our students' learning style.  Many students shut down and learning stops.  I am amazed how some of my toughest older students who daily face challenges in their day that would devastate me don't even blink an eye about their situation.  The violence, death and drugs are their "normal" and yet when faced with a difficult math problems they quit and refuse to try.  They feel threatened when school presents academic challenges and they hide from facing the possibility of failure in their noncompliant behavior or refusal to work.
What can we do for our students who lose all motivation because of anxiety and fears in school?  Talking to students, building relationships, and helping them to strengthen their confidence are all effective techniques to help them overcome their fears.  There is always that one who is so badly scarred by past failures they refuse to respond to your best efforts.  So with this question in mind I had a sudden insight during my bedtime story reading with my son.

Like many parents, we have had a nightly bedtime story at our house since day one.  Now that my son is 8 years old it is sometimes silent reading and sometimes read out loud at bedtime.  The other night he elected to read Scaredy Squirrel by Melanie Watt.   If you haven't read the book, Scaredy Squirrel is a somewhat neurotic squirrel who is so fearful of the the world and its imagined dangers he refuses to leave the safety of his tree.  He fears a variety of dangers some realistic(poison ivy) and some are very impossible dangers(sharks).  Scaredy squirrel had a packed emergency kit, structured daily schedule and an emergency exit plan.  As my son read the story I was struck by the parallel to life, particularly school life. Actually, it reminded me of myself at times and fears I didn't want to face yet life forced me out of my "tree".
 I thought back to my search for other techniques to reach students who did not want to discuss the impact their fears had on making progress in school.  I realized how books could be a strategy to reach these students.  A simple read out loud with stories like Scaredy Squirrel could start the conversation so many found difficult.
As an adult I found myself relating to the struggles Scaredy faced with his fears and the limitations it placed on his life.  I was reminded of many people I knew as we read about his rigid schedule and rules he placed in his life to create a feeling of security.  Yes, it is a story for younger children and yet it could be a powerful tool with older students who can analyze and explore the similarities between Scaredy Squirrel and themselves.  In the story's end Scaredy Squirrel  accidently falls out of his tree only to discover that "nothing horrible happened to him in the unknown world."  A simple but powerful analogy for students to discuss and relate to life. 
I have used some children's books in a similar way with 8th graders in the past and found it to be successful.  There are always a few who scoff at being read a picture book however after the first couple of pages they are quiet and engaged as the magic of the story and its illustrations sweep them up.
Scaredy Squirrel can just be a starting point for a literature study of books related to struggles and facing fears.  There are many excellent books at a variety of grade levels that relate to this issue.  Within the safety of a book children can explore and face their fears.  They can see they are not the only one with these feelings and they can read about triumphs in the battle to overcome their anxieties instead of staying stagnant in the security of not approaching the "unknown".  Powerful discussions can take place in the analysis of the story's plot and details.
As a special education teacher who works with students from 1st to 8th grade with a wide variety of labels I wondered how this analytical discussion could be approached with younger students. This was the inspiration for my newest TPT product.  I developed materials that would help younger ones explore these topics as they worked on a Scaredy Squirrel theme in math, reading, and writing activities.  The writing and reading work focuses on story details and explores the fears Scaredy Squirrel faced.  If you are interested please check it out at: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Literacy-and-Math-Fun-with-Scaredy-Squirrel-2025556.

Hope you find this to be an interesting and effective approach for some of your challenging students.  An analysis of Scaredy Squirrel could easily be incorporated into literature and writing time.  Building strong positive relationships with our students are critical to the learning process and discussion on this topic is one step in that multifaceted relationship.