According to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, anxiety is on the rise among adolescents. By 2020, 5.6 million young people in the US had been diagnosed with anxiety. And nothing can trigger anxiety like testing day. Peak certification testing season is fast approaching, so we wanted to empower our educators with tactics to decrease your students' testing anxiety. Our fabulous CERTIFIED Ambassador, Damiano Mastandrea, gives some fabulous suggestions.

Damiano Mastrandrea is a Career and Technical Education Director at the Brooklyn STEAM Center. He manages the CTE portfolio of the school to ensure that they are highly relevant and rigorous. He also strategizes various career readiness approaches through workplace immersion programs supported by data-driven decisions. Damiano is a big believer in changing education as a system that works for everyone instead of the selected few and pursuing education to all corners. His passion for education has led him to earn three college degrees including a doctorate, as well last 26 industry certifications, in which a good portion of them are through Certiport.

In this episode, we talk with Damiano about the basics of testing anxiety. He offers valuable strategies to help alleviate testing anxiety before, during, and after their certification exam. We also discuss how you can talk to your students about their mental health, and how to create a calm and supportive environment that shows them they can succeed.

Interested in more mental health resources and education? Check out our episode 25: Social-Emotional Learning in the CTE Classroom with Dr. Damien Sweeney.

Learn more about Damiano and our other CERTIFIED Ambassadors here: https://certiport.pearsonvue.com/Blog/2022/May/Meet-the-CERTIFIED-Ambassadors.

Looking to brainstorm ideas with other educators? Join our CERTIFIED Educator Community to discuss testing anxiety, lesson preparation, and much more: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/8958289/.