What My Worst Teacher Taught Me About Supporting Anxious Kids In School
I was standing at the green chalkboard in 7th grade pre-algebra, chalk dust stuck to my corduroy jeans, and I couldn’t remember how to solve a simple two-step equation. I’d studied my flashcards for 45 minutes the night before, quizzed by my mom at the kitchen table after dishes, but the second Ms. Hale called my name to come up to the board, my throat went tight and my mind wiped clean.
She didn’t yell, which is what makes the memory stick more than if she had. She just leaned back against her desk, crossed her arms over her starched button-down, and said, slow enough for every kid in the room to hear, “Did you even bother to do your homework last night, Lila? I can’t keep stopping the whole class for people who don’t prepare.” A few kids snickered, I stared at my scuffed sneakers, and I don’t remember walking back to my seat. I just remember never raising my hand in her class again.
I started skipping once a week, hanging out in the back of the library reading YA novels instead of sitting through algebra. I got a D that semester, and when my mom went in for a conference, Ms. Hale told her I was unmotivated, that I didn’t care enough about my grades to try. I believed her for almost 10 years, convinced I was just bad at math, until a college statistics professor let me work through my problems on scratch paper before sharing answers, and I realized I could do it just fine. I just couldn’t do it while 25 12-year-olds watched me fail.
Three years ago, my own 12-year-old son came home from 7th grade math, threw his backpack on the entryway bench, and said he hated his teacher. He wouldn’t say much at first, just that she called on kids even if they didn’t raise their hand, and snickered when they got it wrong. It took me 10 minutes of peeling an orange at the kitchen counter to get the full story: he’d frozen up when she called on him, she’d said “Pay attention next time” in front of the whole class, and all his friends had teased him about it on the way to lunch. That’s when Ms. Hale’s chalkboard came roaring back to me.
I’ve heard a lot of people talk about bad teachers as if they’re all just lazy or cruel, but that’s never fit my experience. Ms. Hale wasn’t a bad person. I ran into her at the grocery store 10 years after I graduated, and she told me she’d been going through a messy divorce that year, working extra summer school shifts to pay for her kid’s braces, and she was just exhausted all the time. She didn’t mean to humiliate me. She just didn’t stop to think that my silence wasn’t laziness—it was anxiety. That’s the thing no one talks about when we discuss bad teachers: the worst mistakes don’t come from malice, they come from unexamined assumptions.
When I went in for my conference with my son’s teacher, I didn’t go in ready to argue. I started by telling her that I’d had the same experience as a kid, that I still freeze up when I’m put on the spot in a crowded room. Then I asked for one specific thing: could she only call on my son if he raised his hand to volunteer? I didn’t ask her to change her whole curriculum, or give him extra credit for no reason, just that one small adjustment. She said she’d had no idea he was that anxious; she thought he just didn’t do his homework, just like I’d been labeled 25 years earlier. She agreed right away.
That’s the first thing I tell other parents when they ask what to do if their kid comes home hating a teacher. Don’t lead with “my kid says you’re mean.” Lead with a specific observation and a specific request. If your kid freezes when called on unexpectedly, ask that they only answer when they volunteer. If they need extra time to process questions, ask if they can write their answer down on a sticky note first before sharing. Small, concrete asks are way more likely to work than vague demands for better treatment, and they give the teacher a clear next step instead of putting them on the defensive.
For teachers, the lesson I took away is just as simple. Most of the time, when a kid isn’t participating, it’s not because they don’t care. It’s because they’re scared. A small change that takes 2 minutes to implement can fix that: keep a stack of green, yellow, and red paper cups on a shelf, and have kids set one on their desk at the start of class. Green means I’m ready to share, yellow means give me a minute, red means I don’t want to share today. When a kid says they don’t know the answer, instead of pushing them to figure it out in front of everyone, just say “No problem, I’ll come back to you” or “Want to ask a friend for help?” That’s it. It doesn’t require extra training or a big budget, just a little awareness that middle school is awkward enough without adding public embarrassment to the mix.
My son still doesn’t love math. He still complains about homework some nights, and his teacher still calls on other kids who don’t raise their hands, because old habits are hard to break. But he doesn’t skip class, he doesn’t come home crying anymore, and he pulled a B on his last midterm. I still don’t like thinking about that day at the chalkboard, but it’s given me something I never expected: a clear-eyed way to help my own kid when he runs into the same problem I did. There’s no perfect teacher, and there’s no perfect classroom. But small changes, based on seeing kids as more than just their grades or their participation, can make a world of difference. It’s not a neat fix, and it doesn’t undo old hurts, but it’s the best we can do.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » What My Worst Teacher Taught Me About Supporting Anxious Kids In School