Why My Kid Asked If His Math 8 Teacher Was a Cannibal: What It Reveals About Hidden Math Anxiety
The dishwasher was halfway through its cycle, and I was matching ankle socks by the under-cabinet light when Javi slammed his backpack on the kitchen table and said, “I think Mr. Hale is a cannibal.”
I held up a sock with a nickel-sized hole in the toe for a beat before I answered. “Your Math 8 teacher is a cannibal.”
“Yep.” He pried open the half-eaten bag of cheddar Goldfish we keep by the toaster and shoved a handful in his mouth. “He said so himself. Last class.”
I laughed first, I’ll admit. Thirteen-year-olds say a lot of unhinged stuff between bus drop-off and dinner, most of it tied to TikTok trends or inside jokes I’ll never parse. But when I looked over, he wasn’t grinning. He was picking at the edge of his crumpled exit ticket like he could tear the whole thing into confetti, and his knuckles were tight around the cracker bag. I set the sock down, pulled out the chair across from him, and asked him to start from the beginning.
That was three weeks into the school year, and I’d already noticed small shifts I’d written off as normal 8th grade growing pains. Javi had pulled a solid B in 7th grade pre-algebra, done his homework sprawled on the couch while he watched skate compilations, never complained much about going to math class. By the second week of Math 8, he was “forgetting” his workbook in his locker at least twice a week. He’d ask for a bathroom break three or four times in the 40 minutes we set aside for homework, and he’d started shoving his graded quizzes into the bottom of his backpack instead of sticking them on the fridge like he did with art projects and history tests. I’d gotten an automated email about his D on the first linear equations quiz two days before the cannibal comment, and I’d already ordered a $26 extra practice workbook from Amazon, ready to tell him he just needed to hunker down and study more.
The story came out in bits and pieces. Mr. Hale, a second-year teacher who also coaches cross country, liked to call on students at random instead of waiting for hands to go up. If you got the answer wrong, you had to stay standing at the front board while he walked through the steps in front of the whole class, and he’d mutter things like “this is last year’s work, guys” when no one volunteered to answer. Javi had messed up a distribution problem two weeks prior, frozen up halfway through writing it on the board, and two kids in the back had snickered. Mr. Hale hadn’t said anything to them, just moved on to the next student. Then, the day of the cannibal comment, half the class had failed the exit ticket. He’d leaned against the desk, scanned the room, and said, “I swear, I’m going to eat you alive if half of you don’t get this down by Friday’s quiz.”
“Mia said he probably actually hates all of us who aren’t in honors,” Javi mumbled, pushing the exit ticket across the table to me. “So. Cannibal makes sense.”
It was dark, dumb 8th grade humor, but it wasn’t really a joke. I’ve thought about that line a lot since then, because we talk so much about kids “having anxiety” like it’s something they’ll name out loud, like they’ll sit up straight at dinner and say “I’m experiencing persistent performance fear tied to math class.” Most of the time, especially in middle school, that’s not how it comes out. It comes out as absurd accusations, as mysterious stomach aches that only hit on third period days, as forgotten workbooks and dramatic claims that the teacher has it out for you. Admitting you’re confused, that your brain goes blank when everyone’s watching, that you’re scared you’re just “bad at math” forever, feels way more vulnerable than calling your teacher a cannibal. The joke is a shield. If you’re laughing about it, you don’t have to admit how much it scares you.
I didn’t do anything big that night. I didn’t fire off an angry email to the principal or make Javi sit through an hour of extra problems to “catch up.” I apologized for laughing, first, and said, “That comment sounds way scarier when you already feel like you’re one wrong answer away from being called out. I get why that stuck.” I sent the extra practice workbook back when it arrived two days later, and we cut math homework review from 45 minutes of grinding through every problem to 10 minutes a night, just two problems of the type he was working on that day. We take a break halfway through to throw crumpled paper at the cat, and I don’t mark anything wrong. We just talk through how he gets from the question to the answer, even if he takes a wrong turn first.
I waited a day to email Mr. Hale, too, so I didn’t sound like I was accusing him of anything. I kept it short and specific, no lines about how his class was damaging my kid’s relationship to math. I wrote: “Javi’s been feeling really nervous about being called on unexpectedly in class lately. He can work through problems fine at home, but he goes completely blank when he’s put on the spot. Would it be okay if he gives you a small signal when he’s ready to share an answer, instead of being called cold?” He wrote back in 18 minutes, said he had no idea any kids were that uncomfortable. He’d started random cold calls because his teacher prep program told him it kept kids from checking out, and the “eat you alive” line was just dumb tough-guy banter he’d picked up from his own high school coach. He was happy to work with Javi, and said he’d dial the jokes back entirely.
Last week, Javi came home and reported that Mr. Hale brought chocolate chip cookies for the class after their quiz, and told everyone he was a “reformed cannibal” who only ate wrong answers now, not 8th graders. Javi rolled his eyes when he told the story, but he smiled when he said it. He pulled a B- on that quiz, and he stayed after class last Tuesday to ask a question about slope instead of raising his hand in front of everyone, which Mr. Hale had said he could do any time.
It’s not fixed, not by a long shot. He still shoves his math workbook in his locker once a week or so, and he still says his brain goes fuzzy before quizzes. We still do our 10 minutes of problems most nights, and some nights he still gets frustrated and crumples the paper up and says he’s never going to get it. Last week he asked if we could switch to doing problems on the whiteboard on the back of his bedroom door instead of the kitchen table, because it feels less like homework that way, so we did that.
But I still think about that cannibal line, how close I came to just telling him not to be dramatic and moving on with the laundry. Most of the time, when kids say something that sounds ridiculous about school, they’re not lying or making things up out of nowhere. They’re just handing you the feeling wrapped up in the silliest packaging they can find. You don’t have to solve the whole thing in one night. You just have to pause long enough to unwrap it.
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