Why I Can’t Forget My 7th Grade Teacher: What I Learned About Supporting Anxious Kids
The scratch of chalk on blackboard faded out, and I pressed my palms harder into the sides of my 7th grade math quiz. My name was scrawled at the top, and the rest of the page was blank. I’d forgotten how to do long division. Not just forgotten the steps—my brain went completely static, like someone had pulled the plug on the whole thing. When Ms. Henderson walked by my desk, I pulled my arms over the paper like I was hiding a note.
She didn’t stop, didn’t call me out, didn’t ask what was wrong in front of the whole class. Ten seconds later she drifted back, bent down so her coffee-stained cardigan sleeve brushed my desk, and whispered, “Want to go sit in the hall by the drinking fountain for 10 minutes? You can bring the quiz, or leave it here. No rush.”
I grabbed the paper and left before she could change her mind. I leaned against the cinder block wall, drank lukewarm water from the fountain, and waited for my heart stop hammering against my ribs. After five minutes, I sat on the floor and worked through the problems one by one. I knew how to do it, I just couldn’t do it with everyone in the room staring, with the clock ticking down to when we had to turn our quizzes in. I went back in, finished with two minutes left, and got a B. Ms. Henderson handed me a sticky peppermint from the jar on her desk on the way back to my seat, and never mentioned the blank page again.
I was the model kid back then: straight A’s in every subject except math, always turned homework in on time, never talked in class. But I had crippling test anxiety, and in the mid-1990s, no one really knew what to do with that. My mom had me tested for learning disabilities, came back with nothing—just “performance anxiety.” Most teachers told her I wasn’t trying hard enough, or that I was using my anxiety to get out of work. Ms. Henderson was the first person who didn’t do that.
She let me keep a foam stress ball in my desk, when fidget toys weren’t a thing in classrooms and most teachers would have confiscated it as a distraction. When the principal walked through for an observation once and spotted it peeking out of my desk, she just shrugged and said “That’s a geometry manipulative, helps with hand eye coordination,” and he moved on. When we did group work and it was my turn to write the answer on the front board, she’d say “Can you walk me through what you got? My handwriting’s messier than yours today anyway.” She never made a big deal out of any of it. It was just how things worked for me.
I ran into her at the grocery store about five years ago, after I’d had my first kid. She was retired, still wearing the same style of cardigan, still had that same soft smile. I reminded her who I was, and she nodded immediately. “You were the kid who turned bright pink before every quiz,” she said. “Shook like a leaf when you had to go up to the board. I had the exact same thing with public speaking, still do. I just knew what it felt like when everyone’s waiting on you to get it right.”
That’s when I realized why she’s the teacher I still think about, almost 30 years later. It’s not because she “cured” my anxiety. I still get that same brain static sometimes, when I have to calculate a tip in front of friends or add up numbers out loud for a work meeting. It’s because she didn’t treat my anxiety like a behavior problem to fix, or a flaw I needed to get over right that second.
Now that I’m a parent to a 10-year-old who gets that same brain freeze when it’s his turn to read out loud in class, I see so many parents and teachers scrambling for big interventions: special programs, expensive evaluations, strict schedules to “build resilience.” But Ms. Henderson taught me that most of the time, what anxious kids need is small, low-fuss adjustments that don’t draw attention to their struggle.
We worked with my son’s teacher this year to set up a quiet signal no one else notices: if he tugs the collar of his shirt, that means he wants to pass on reading out loud, no questions asked. That’s one small change, and it took 30 seconds to plan. We got him a tiny fidget cube he keeps in his pocket, and the teacher agreed not to say anything about it as long as it doesn’t distract other kids. It’s not a big crutch that’s holding him back. Last month, he volunteered to read an entire paragraph out loud to the class, on his own. Because he knows if he freezes up, he can just tug his collar and it’s fine. No one’s going to shame him for it.
That’s the practical part no one talks about enough: you don’t have to fix a kid’s anxiety to help them. You don’t have to push them to face their fear before they’re ready to prove they can do it. You can just give them an unnoticeable out, a small tool to regulate, and trust that they’ll move forward when they’re able. Forcing kids to perform when they’re already dysregulated just teaches them that school (or the dinner table, or the soccer field) is a place where they’ll be put on the spot when they’re already hurting.
I still don’t love doing math in public, and my son still tugs his collar about once a week. We don’t have everything sorted out, and that’s okay. Ms. Henderson never gave me a big inspirational speech, never told me I could do anything I put my mind to. She just gave me 10 minutes in the hall and a sticky peppermint, and let me breathe. That’s the kind of thing you don’t forget. It’s also the kind of thing any parent or teacher can do tomorrow, no extra budget or special training required.
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