Tips on How to Overcome Shyness in the Classroom

   How to help shy students in the classroom.

 Being in school is a pressure in itself. The children and adolescent graders have to cope with several stimuli but the most significant of all is peer acceptance.

A certain level or degree of shyness is normal in specific social situations. Shyness or being withdrawn only becomes alarming if it has already affected so much a person’s daily routines and has already physical and physiological manifestations.

These manifestations may be in the form of palpitations, shortness of breath, headaches and stomachaches.

Shyness can be a result of several environmental causes, specific experiences and temporary social problems. Most common source of shyness is speech impediment or conversational skills. These are possible especially if parents do not talk to their parents much or children do not receive positive responses when they converse with their parents.

It can also be the result of not interacting too often with peers. These students fear too much when they are being asked to answer questions inside the classroom.

School phobia is the condition often experienced by your budding kindergarteners or first graders. This is the first day of school hang ups by your kids because they are overwhelmed by their new surroundings outside of mommy’s reach.   We discussed this in depth in the previous chapter, but let’s explore it a bit more.

There are useful strategies to help these young, shy or withdrawn students to be out of their shells through active parent-teacher partnership, peer involvement, and psychological interventions.

Parent-Teacher Partnership

Parents and teachers can join forces to keep up with their young students and develop their self-confidence fully by continuous exposure and task delegations.

Here are some strategies for teachers:

• Suggest that the teacher re-arrange seating often so they make new friends and re-shuffle again until the student befriends all of his classmates.
  
• Encourage responses from them specifically during class recitations.
  
• Immediately next to encouraging is minimizing stress or embarrassment in front of the other students. If the student gave a wrong answer, do not embarrass him but instead praise the effort he gave and motivate him to try again.
  
• Give special tasks to especially shy students to make them feel important and make them responsible students.
  
• Engage in private conversations if necessary to monitor their progress and report them to the students’ parents.
  
• Make use of interest inventories so that you will be informed of your shy students’ likes and dislikes. You can use this as a basis for learning activities.
  
• Exhibit the good artwork or assignment of your shy students to develop their self-worth and confidence.
  
• Help them create a welcome greetings ritual to engage them in social interactions.
  
• Set social development goals, at least five, that they will have to do to develop their skills or let them undergo training in assertiveness, articulation and initiate peer interactions among your students.
  
• Give them specific roles in the classroom that will initiate interactions too among them as students.
  
• Discourage discrimination and teasing among your students and explain to them well how these acts can hamper in building good friendships and engage them in worthwhile peer contacts.
  
• Monitor students if they are daydreaming all the time.
  
• Use the buddy system wherein two students can act as partners and promote their friendship especially if the other student is popular.

As parents:

Be a good model to your children. Admit that you are not always confident and that at times during your early years, you acted bashful too.

Give children a good reason to be outgoing by explaining to them the benefits of being that way. Supply them with your own personal examples. Tell them that in becoming outgoing they will gain more friends, enjoy life more and school too.

Whenever your child is afraid to interact, show empathy. Share her feelings and apprehensions and how you too are sometimes afraid to interact.

Never label your child as “shy” because if he continuously hears that then he believes he is one and continues to act that way.

Make a reward chart of outgoing behavior. In that way, they will be encouraged and they will look forward to doing it as they see star stickers being added to the chart each time they fulfill one goal.

As a parent, become a model of outgoing behavior. Children oftentimes look up to you and imitate you as their parents.

Let your children be exposed to unfamiliar places and people.

Encourage your children to interact with others. Warning, never push your child because this can cause pressure on them. Opt for a more gradual improvement.

Within the earshot of your kids, praise others for their outgoing behavior. But be careful not to compare them.

Help your children to interact with other children through role playing and rehearsals.

Peer Involvement

It is best if the school has cross-age tutoring programs. In this way they can engage children to interact with other children and create the atmosphere of camaraderie and helping one another.
If the teacher can ask some peers or students to become confederates and help shy children cope and be confident.
Teachers, too, can create activities that require the formation of small group and cooperative learning activities.

Other psychological help:

According to experts, encourage shy children to join volunteer groups or recreational groups outside school.
Delegate them to messenger roles, those that require communication.

These suggestions for your children will help them overcome their shyness wherever they are – in the classroom or outside. It is just a matter of soliciting help from the right people and by not treating shyness as some sort of illness, negativity or the fault of the child.

Shyness as a trait can also turn out to be positive and should often be referred to as constructive like being “reserved or private.” Children may not be shy at all but only quiet and are just happy in being with themselves. Do not push them hard but instead encourage them to explore and enjoy the world.