Kennedy: Son's empathy helps ease 20th-century guy's anxiety about teaching 21st-century students

Mark Kennedy
Mark Kennedy

I don't wear stress well. It affects my posture, my skin tone, my mood.

Our 12-year-old son is gifted in empathy. He can tell if something is bothering me, and he attempts - with small kindnesses - to make it better.

On Monday night, I was huddled over the kitchen table making lecture notes for a class I was to teach the next day at a local college. I probably had a worried look on my face. It has been over a decade since I taught a writing class, and I was worried I'd have trouble shaking off the rust.

photo Mark Kennedy

The next thing I knew, our 12-year-old was standing beside me, his small hand gently rubbing in a circle between my shoulder blades.

"Are you OK, Daddy?" he said. He had a throw blanket draped over his shoulders and a concerned look on his face.

There's something almost unbearably sweet about a 12-year-old boy comforting his 60-year-old dad.

"Yeah, buddy, I'm OK. Just a little nervous," I said. "I haven't taught a college class since before you were born. I hope I remember how to do it."

"It'll be OK, Daddy," he said, patting me on the shoulder

"Thanks," I said. "Will you think about me tomorrow at about 11 a.m.?"

"Yep," he said. "I sure will."

With that, he wandered off toward the refrigerator to fill a bowl full of frozen grapes.

The next day, I told the class I'm teaching about the moment the night before with my son and got a predictable chorus of "awwwws."

I used the story as a way to tell the students that mild anxiety is a natural - and usually manageable - human emotion, even for aging baby boomers like me.

It's an interesting irony that people often misuse the word "anxious" when they mean "eager." One word does bleed into the other. Eager people are sometimes anxious, I guess, as both suggest elevated mental states.

I told the students that 40 years ago I was sitting where they were, deeply uncertain that I had the courage to be a journalist. At that time, I was way more anxious than eager.

We talked about ways to battle anxiety when confronting something new by just showing up and taking baby steps. I told them that I was probably the least likely kid in my journalism classes to have a successful career, and yet I persisted. Now, here I am, 40 years later, still telling stories in print and pounding the keyboard.

I told the students I was teaching the class to pass along some craft skills and also to get to know Millennials and members of the so-called Generation Z (those born after 2000).

"I want to know you 21st-century people," I said, jokingly. "I'm a 20th-century guy."

As a bonding exercise, I had the students interview each other and then introduce one another to the class.

As a result of these mini-interview, I know now that one student has a python, another is descended from Vikings and still another works at an antique guitar museum. Oh, and one student wears wild socks well, just because.

I love it.

I was most impressed that the students fell into easy conversations around the table. No screen zombies here. I wondered if my speech about anxiety had its intended ice-breaking effect.

I told the students that watching their interviews had lifted me. They seemed energetic and smart, I said. I like these 21st-century people, I decided.

After class, one of the students whispered to me. "I was really nervous before, but now I'm not."

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"Good," I whispered.

Another said, "You do exactly what I want to do some day."

"Thanks for telling me that," I said.

With these small affirmations, my anxieties melted away and I decided that teaching part-time again was a good decision and that my son was right: Everything is going to be OK.

I looked up and it was 11 o'clock. I wondered - in the moment - if my son was thinking of me.

Knowing him, he probably set a reminder alarm and said a prayer for his daddy.

Contact Mark Kennedy at mkennedy@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6645.

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