The "Easy" Teacher and the Paradox of Motivation and Anxiety

Every Thursday, I receive an email newsletter from Peps McCrae, called "Evidence Snacks." If you aren't enrolled, go do it now. They are short, and they are fantastic.  The one a week ago was about motivation, a complex subject that benefits all teachers and students.  There's a part that has stuck with me because it's a bit of a paradox. As a physics enthusiast, I love a good paradox. Here's the summary. If you are familiar with Growth Mindset, it will sound familiar.  If a student engages in a task and is successful, they will motivated only if they "attribute their success to their own effort, ability, and approach."  If they attribute that success to anything external (the test was easy, the teacher likes me, or luck), they have no reason to feel more motivated because those factors are not within their control. I know you aren't seeing the paradox yet because it wasn't in the email; it was in my mind. His newsletter was about motivation, and this post is largely going to be about anxiety, but the two are related, so let me walk you through my thought process. Teachers and schools are currently dealing with an anxiety crisis in students. If you look at the data on reported anxiety levels, it remains pretty flat up until 2012-2015, depending on age group, when it makes an upward shift. The graph then increases in slope in 2020 due largely to pandemic concerns.  What happened in the time between those years? The smart phone became ubiquitous.  It was invented earlier, but for a while, it was only in the hands of wealthier adults, mostly businessmen (remember calling the Blackberry a "crackberry" and people wondering whether President Obama would be allowed to use his?). Around 2012, we started putting them in the hands of 16 year olds so they could call their parents if they were in a car accident or had an emergency. Each year after that, the age started getting lower and lower and the anxiety in younger kids (sadly, not shown in this graph) started climbing. Schools can't really address the source of the problem (24/7 access to social media and constant distraction) because we don't control when students are given these things. We can make rules restricting their usage at the school, but that is only minimally helpful to the anxiety problem if they are on them the rest of the hours of the day and losing sleep as a result.  So, we look for other ways to reduce their anxiety - things we can control at school.   Maybe if we didn't give them homework, they would have some down time, so school start setting stricter limits on the assignments teachers can give. Does it help? No. They have test anxiety because they didn't properly prepare for it with deliberate practice.  Also, they don't tend to use their down time as down time. They either schedule something else or hop on their phone, exacerbating the problem. Maybe we include breathing exercises in PE. It certainly doesn't hurt, but it's effects are rather temporary. It doesn't result in much meaningful reduction of anxiety after the few minutes they have done it. Feel free to do it, but don't expect massive results. Maybe we should make the tests easier, so they feel more successful. Here's where Peps' newsletter came to my mind and created a paradox. (Oooh, if it ever becomes a thing, we have to call it the Peps Paradox.) Making it easier will make them less motivated, especially if they know we have made it easier.  The best way to deal with anxiety isn't breathing exercises (again, I'm not saying not to do them); it isn't to have lots of free time (anxiety lives in our heads and we tend to ruminate on it when we aren't doing other things); it isn't even a trip to the spa (nice, but temporary help at best).   The best way to deal with anxiety is to reflect on the success you have had overcoming difficult things. It reminds you that you are stronger than you feel you are. When you have one of those weeks where it seems like there is a test in every class, reminding yourself that it didn't kill you trains your brain to fear it less the next time. It helps to reflect on what made you successful - you studied with good techniques, you spaced out your study time over several days instead of cramming. You paid attention in class instead of playing games on your computer. If, according to the studies cited in Peps' newsletter, a student attributes their success on a test to the test being easy, they will not feel good about their success, and they will have no ability to reflect on their strength. Thus, motivation will not be increased and anxiety will not be decreased.  Teachers, don't misread me.  I am not saying to go out and overwhelm the working memories of students in the name of rigor. I am not telling you to be mean to them.  I am saying that, if you believe lowering your standards will help them with their motivation or their anxiety, it will not. Don't fall into the trap of thinking you can help by being an "easy" teacher. Continue to hold the same standards you did before, but then walk students through the process of reflecting on the fact that they CAN and DID do hard things.