So this is what I learned after a couple of months during my Junior Year.
Stress is one of the leading causes to students underperforming in their classes. Especially in a college environment as most of the information that I research had suggested. Continually it causes for the brain to go into different states of mind when overwhelmed by stress and more specially academic stress. Although everyone thinks different, one can feel overwhelmed and angered by the fact that they are overly stress or can become upset and saddened by the fact that they as a student are underperforming. Because of this a student can dramatically do worse on an assignment even if they know the informations.
As well as excessive stress that builds up (especially academic stress over the course of 4 years) can cause for major mental illnesses to be developed such as anxiety especially performance anxiety in any competitive atmosphere (including a classroom) and even depression. By becoming overwhelmed over time by ones studies and academics, any student can change their mindset when it comes to school and can underperform much more easier.
Lastly in my research that year I found several articles that discussed of groups that did things similar to what I wanted to accomplish at Chinquapin.One of these articles discussed of a group where students from London took a 30 minute break during one period in the middle of their day. The teacher and a supervisor allowed the students to rest their heads, draw, walk outside and even listen to music. These are simple remedies to do for most people I’d say bust especial teen students. And what the teacher found was that the students were much more attentive and relaxed about learning and being in a classroom environment afterwards. Not only this but there was an increase in average test scores for classes that occurred after the students had their “break”.
With a simple mental break or rest, a student's academic performance can increase drastically. Not only does the brain get more time to process and remember information during this mental break leading to better comprehension of New material but also stress levels decreased drastically as the students were allowed time to relax. Therefore their academic stress was relieved which lead to better performance. This is something that I wanted to offer the students at Chinquapin as I felt that the idea of giving the students a chance to relax their brains would help their academics overall.
Comments