The panic zone does not always look like panic

Last time, I shared three bad judgement calls from my years in education. Moments when I saw perfectionism, avoidance or humour and responded to the visible behaviour without being curious enough about what might be happening underneath.

Unfortunately, those were not my only mistakes.

Another signal I have regularly missed is a learner pretending to understand. You explain something. They nod. You ask whether it makes sense. “Yes.” So you continue.

I have accepted that “yes” many times. Sometimes because I genuinely believed it. Sometimes, if I am completely honest, because I was pleased that my explanation had apparently worked. Only later did I discover that the learner had lost the thread much earlier.

They had kept the right document open, copied what someone else was doing or used enough subject-specific language to appear as though they understood. I interpreted their nodding as understanding. But sometimes it was self-protection.

Admitting that you have no idea what everyone is talking about can feel far more dangerous than quietly pretending to follow along. My mistake was not only believing the “yes”. It was asking a question to which “yes” was the safest answer.

“Do you understand?”

What I should have said was: “Show me what makes sense to you so far, and point to the first part where it becomes unclear.”

That does not try to catch someone out. It creates a safer way to show where their understanding ends.

I have also misjudged silence. A learner who had previously been restless, loud or constantly asking questions suddenly became quiet. And somewhere inside me, I felt relieved. Finally, they had settled down.

But quiet is not the same as engaged.

I have seen learners stop contributing, avoid eye contact and sit behind an almost empty screen without disturbing anyone. Because the visible behaviour had improved, I assumed the situation had improved too. Sometimes the opposite was true. They had not returned to their stretch zone. They had given up trying to find a way forwards.

And then I made the situation more difficult by asking a huge question: “What is wrong?”

A learner who cannot see their next step may not be able to explain the whole problem either. A smaller opening would have helped:

• “Do you need help understanding, deciding or starting?”

• “Would it help if I sat with you for a moment?”

Sometimes the first intervention is not an explanation or a new plan. Sometimes it is simply restoring enough connection and safety for someone to begin thinking again.

The final signal may be the one I have judged most harshly: resistance.

“This is stupid.”

“I’m not doing it.”

“I don’t care.”

There have been times when I heard those words and immediately focused on attitude, respect or responsibility. And of course, boundaries still matter. Being in the panic zone does not give someone permission to harm others or make learning impossible for the people around them.

But correcting the words does not automatically solve what caused them. Resistance can be a learner’s way of regaining control when they no longer feel competent, safe or able to succeed.

What looks like “I don’t care” may sometimes mean: “I care so much about failing that I would rather pretend this never mattered to me.”

I wish I had recognised that more often. Instead of beginning with “You cannot speak to me like that”, I could have protected the boundary and remained curious: “I can hear that you do not want to continue like this. What changed?”

That small addition matters. It separates the behaviour we cannot accept from the person we still want to understand.

These six signals have become part of the hotlist I use when observing learners:

• perfection paralysis;

• busy avoidance;

• badly timed humour;

• pretending to understand;

• going quiet;

• sudden resistance.

Not because they always indicate panic. They do not. They remind me that observation and interpretation are different things.

I can observe that someone is joking. I cannot observe that they do not care.

I can observe that someone has stopped working. I cannot observe that they are lazy.

I can observe that someone says they understand. I still need to find out whether they actually do.

Our role is not to keep every learner comfortable. Nor is it to leave them struggling alone. It is to recognise when productive struggle is turning into panic, and to organise the smallest intervention that helps them return to their stretch zone.

Without taking over, without removing their agency and without confusing what we see with what we think it means.

Which learner—or colleague—might actually be in the panic zone, while we are still calling it “behaviour”?

Stay curious,
Rob