panic attacks and major oral presentations

[Anonymous]

When my DC was in middle school, all kids had option to give presentation in front class, or make a video recording, or just with teacher. No grade penalty for any choice. My anxious DC chose teacher option. I agree practice helps, but it takes time, and that’s a good place to start.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Teacher here. The bigger issue seems to be that the presentation is 25% of the grade for the quarter. Most kids get anxious about presenting. It is good to have oral presentations as part of a class but having one presentation carry so much weight does not seem like a good teaching practice for middle schoolers

I agree that it’s good for kids to have to do oral presentations. And with many assignments and activities there will be kids who lack the ability and they need to be pushed. For some it will be PE. For others math. For some art.

And I agree that an all or nothing is a tough approach. But OP doesn’t actually know the grading rubric. She thinks that based on something her daughter says the teacher implied it is all or nothing.

I think that OP needs to gather more information by talking with the teacher or looking at the online class resources, like parentvue. And also talk to the counselor.

But as a parent of a child with anxiety so severe that it resulted in frequent inpatient stays, what I have seen is this. You might be able to be excused from things in MS or even HS, but even accommodations in college aren’t going to get your kid out of assignments that trigger them. So if you can figure out how to get through it now and build on it, your child will be far better off. Some PPs had great ideas like practice in the mirror or an empty classroom.

[Anonymous]

Call a 504 meeting. Time to update the accommodations.

[Anonymous]

You need an IEP if you want her skipping assignments.

[Anonymous]

I don’t know a single QA analyst who has ever had to give a talk in front of hundreds of people.

Anonymous wrote:As someone who has extreme anxiety about public speaking (and has given hundreds of public speeches and really, embarrassingly and detrimentally botched a few), the solution I use now is anxiety meditation prior to the speaking. It doesn't take away all the anxiety, but does take away most of the extreme symptoms.
Like I said, I have practiced so many times and tried lots of therapy. It’s only gotten worse for me.
So I’d say, try again, with some further solutions in place. This may mean asking to present only in front of the teacher or adding an extra med. You do eventually have to find away around it in order to succeed in school and a career. Work now so this anxiety does not limit their success in those two areas.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You need an IEP if you want her skipping assignments.

Adapting isn’t skipping. Presenting directly to the teacher or an alternate assignment mastering the same learning objectives is a reasonable accommodation.

[Anonymous]

Agree that presenting to the teacher plus maybe one more person (a friend?) is the way to get the kid able to stand up and do it. That is totally reasonable. You don’t teach a kid to swim by throwing them into the end of a pool. Inflexibiltiy about the exact manner of presentation is NOT going to help your child it will scare them. They need to get confident in the shallow end of the pool so to speak.

[Anonymous]

Since she has the accommodation to submit assignments via email I would literally do that. Make a video and email it, as per the accommodation on file. And if she gets a zero you can fight that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Since she has the accommodation to submit assignments via email I would literally do that. Make a video and email it, as per the accommodation on file. And if she gets a zero you can fight that.

Set the kid up for failure and next time she won’t even try!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teacher here. The bigger issue seems to be that the presentation is 25% of the grade for the quarter. Most kids get anxious about presenting. It is good to have oral presentations as part of a class but having one presentation carry so much weight does not seem like a good teaching practice for middle schoolers

I agree that it’s good for kids to have to do oral presentations. And with many assignments and activities there will be kids who lack the ability and they need to be pushed. For some it will be PE. For others math. For some art.

And I agree that an all or nothing is a tough approach. But OP doesn’t actually know the grading rubric. She thinks that based on something her daughter says the teacher implied it is all or nothing.

I think that OP needs to gather more information by talking with the teacher or looking at the online class resources, like parentvue. And also talk to the counselor.

But as a parent of a child with anxiety so severe that it resulted in frequent inpatient stays, what I have seen is this. You might be able to be excused from things in MS or even HS, but even accommodations in college aren’t going to get your kid out of assignments that trigger them. So if you can figure out how to get through it now and build on it, your child will be far better off. Some PPs had great ideas like practice in the mirror or an empty classroom.

OP here. I do actually have the grading rubric - only 25% of the points are directly related to the actual speaking out loud part - and I have combed through all the class material on the student side of Canvas, AND asked the teacher. I said implied because they currently have a zero/assignment marked missing for the first day, and nothing the teacher said in her reply to me suggested that would change if the second time is a repeat of the first. I have since asked directly if they'll get a zero and am waiting for a response.

I am NOT asking to skip the assignment. We are in fact encouraging them to try again, but I am preparing for the likelihood of a repeat. To reiterate - my student was completely prepared, stepped up in front of the whole class, and could not get a word out, eventually crying in front of all their classmates. It's not a matter of "don't want to". I would LOVE an alternate method of submission.

[Anonymous]

Here are some accommodations that I think are reasonable:

1:1 presentation with teacher

if the teacher won’t go for that, presenting in front of teacher and a smaller audience of friendly peers (maybe 2-3)

Avoidance feeds anxiety and you want her to learn that she can do this, but there is also apparently not enough time to work towards this goal. So I think these accommodations represent a reasonable middle ground. Then add presentations as an IEP goal.

If you have no professional support, you can even work on this with her at home. Start with her practicing a speech in front of a mirror. Then have her present for only you. After she’s done that a few times, she can present for you and dad and siblings. Once she is comfortable with that arrangement, have her invite over extended family members or friends. This would be over more than a few days of course. But with gradual repeated exposure, her anxiety level will decrease. It might always be there but not at the same level. She will have to present throughout life so the goal is to build the skill. I have 2 kids with social anxiety and I had a horrible fear of public speaking but we have all learned to navigate the anxiety with repeated experiences.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think they should be able to do it 1-1 with the teacher as an accommodation.

I will say though that I'm an incredibly anxious person who used to stutter in front of a class. The only way I've progressed past my performance anxiety was just to do it over and over and over again. It got better in time. Even the best public speakers still have performance anxiety, they're just better at masking it.

Everyone we've talked to has discouraged this approach for our anxious child, including her private psychologist.

[Anonymous]

Let her try again, but make sure the teacher does not dock the grade because it's late.

[Anonymous]

OP, did you mean that the oral presentation is 25% of the final/semester grade or 25% of the assignment grade? The latter seems to be more reasonable.

As a teacher, I allow some students to present facing me during class period (with their backs to the class) or during lunch period (with a couple of students in the classroom doing homework). I also had a student who kindly volunteered to stand next to the anxious student in front of the classroom for moral support (smiled, gave her thumbs up and moved to the next slide).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think they should be able to do it 1-1 with the teacher as an accommodation.

I will say though that I'm an incredibly anxious person who used to stutter in front of a class. The only way I've progressed past my performance anxiety was just to do it over and over and over again. It got better in time. Even the best public speakers still have performance anxiety, they're just better at masking it.

Everyone we've talked to has discouraged this approach for our anxious child, including her private psychologist.

It depends on the child's baseline. You don't want to accommodate anxiety to the point that you reinforce the fear, but neither do you want to throw a child in the deep end who is scared of the shallow end. It's about building an exposure ladder and working up to the class presentation, not saying "get over your anxiety already."