sucky teachers et...

[Muses_nightmare]

I just remembered this one:

I took 1 year of college, and I had to take a math course for it, so I chose Statistics, something that wasn't supposed to be super complicated. No one in the class understood the lessons, because basically the professor would look at the book, and then explain the lesson in the most complicated way imaginable, and the whole class was left going WTF? I believe he was actually fired after a lot of terrible evaluations (not just by our class either, he was a computer science prof as well), I mean, our entire class gave him bad evaluations, because he refused to teach things properly. We got a replacement professor about halfway through the course, and everyone started doing 10X better than with the previous professor.

[PCGameGuy]

What is it with English teachers?

My grade 3 teacher Practically Killed my love of learning for nearly 15 years.

Long version short, I'm smart as a whip, sarcastic, with a fertile imagination, and a deep loathing of people that think I'm stupid because I'm built like a Beer barrel on legs.

That last part; the 'legs' is what got me in daily trouble with that teacher. Mr. A, at some point in time, had been in a car accident, and so was in a wheelchair; for whatever reason, he FORBADE anyone from walking in his class, except for one 15-minute Recess (Everyone else in school got 2 15 minute breaks, and a half-hour lunch). You can imagine how well that went over with parents when they found out that the pack of 25 or so 8-9 year old children were stuck in the same room for 4+ hours a day without bathroom breaks, etc.

Oh; and I ignored him when he asked me why I wasn't doing any work, after the first ten or so times that I had finished everything, and raised my hand for 10+ minutes (During a 'study' period) for him to check over my work. On several occasions I was held in class and forced to miss my bus, and my house is roughly 10 kilometres away from the school. And, just to add injury to insult, he once told me to stand at the front of the class and used me as an 'example' as to what not to be in school. Ie. someone that did not regurgitate 'yes sir, yes sir, three bags full sir' all the time.

This reminded me of my worst teacher ever experience. It was in 8th grade, end of junior high. I had an English teacher that was a huge man, 7 foot tall, rode a motorcycle, and had a real problem with shy quiet types I guess. All the girls in his class did well (sexist), all the guys did okay, with a few (loners, poor) singled out to do poorly every year. I did homework, and got D's and F's for various reasons. If my content was good, it was grammer and spelling. If my spelling was good, I missed the point in content. If I did a book report it wasn't long enough, or it was the wrong book.

Eventually, I failed 8th grade English, which for a straight A student to that point was devastating. My mother was livid, and took the position that it had to be my fault since that is what 'The Teacher' said. I even went to get his signature in my yearbook, and he stamped a little trophy on it and wrote '2nd' on it, with the comment 'Al beat you out of first.' Al was the kid who had the lowest grade (he was from a white trash family, had a slight learnng disability, and tended to use his size to bully people. Messed up kid, in hindsight), I was only second to worst.

That year, and specifically that teacher, soured me on education for years to come. I was sure that I'd end up repeating 8th grade, that is what the rules said if you failed one of the 'big three' (english, math, science). I was rather shocked to find myself a freshman in H.S. the next year. Thus disillusionment for the value of al my hard work for grades began, leading to the year I attended for less than two weeks total, a 0.8 GPA as a junior, and needing five years to get out of high school.

That summer though, he had a motorcycle accident, and lost both his legs. He ended up in a wheelchair a year later after surgery and a painful recovery, and was amazingly enough just as big of an ass at 3.5 feet as he was at 7. His wife left him, and took his kid, too. I later heard that he was pretty overbearing and tended to hit, and after the accident she finally felt safe enough to leave him.

Yeah, a bad teacher can screw you up for a long time. :P

[XCashier]

Count me among those who got picked on, yet the bullies were never punished. Indeed, I sometimes got punished myself for my own brands of standing up to them.

You too, huh? If I'd had a dollar for every time that happened to me, I could've afforded a private tutor and avoided the bullies.

Yeah, I had my share of teachers who were straight out of a Pink Floyd song. For some reason, they were mostly math teachers. I kept doing poorly in math until my junior year, when I took Geometry and finally got a decent teacher. Basically, he treated his students with decency and we returned the favor. Amazing how that'll improve the learning ability of the kids.

[Amethyst Hunter]

Hey AH you would have liked me at 13, i never messed with girls. i always wondered why i was popular with girls at that age, I guess I was one of the few guys who didn't treat them like crap.

I don't know...by that point I was pretty well antisocial because so many people were giving me crap, and I figured that it wasn't worth the effort. So I kept to myself for years. (Still do, to some extent)

Misanthropical - your teacher is a werebitch from hell who needs a serious guillotining. What. An. ASSHOLE.

Something interesting I've noticed over the years with people who were relentlessly picked on and/or told they were "stupid" by so-called 'teachers' - quite a few of those kids go on to become highly skilled in a particular field (sometimes even the very same field that they were told they had no future in!), and have a general level of smarts that's higher than that of their peers.

Maybe we should all take over the world...!

[Jack Doe]

Wow, I was going to post a bunch of my stories here, but y'alls teachers take the cake(s). Only one I'll mention. During my senior year, we had to take 2 required classes, Government and Economics. Both were taught by Dr. S. Imagine Tommy Chong (including the stoner burnout behavior,) but make him bald and about 50 pounds overweight. That's Dr. S. And heaven forbid if you called him Mr. S. "Damnit, I worked ten years to earn my doctorate. You will use my correct title!"

Anyway, these were throwaway classes and it didn't matter if you passed or failed, as it had a 0.0 weight toward your GPA. So, things could get really, really lively. One chapter he devoted a week to was Communism, and by devoted I mean he sang the praises of the Soviet way of life as if it were nirvana and such. One guy in my class, Andrew, asked "If Communism is so great, did the Soviet Union fall?" Dr S. hemmed, hawed, and put it out for class discussion. My response (that got me sent to the principals office) "Because the Soviets were a bunch of chickenshit pinkos who didn't understand money and were afraid that Regan would nuke them back to the stone age." His face turned three shades of red and I swear he had a mini-stroke. When we went to the principals office, he had me repeat my answer. Dr. R's response? "Well, that's true, but I'd prefer you call them 'cowardly,' not chickenshit. You shouldn't use coarse language." It was totally awesome.

(Note: I was no longer allowed to answer questions aloud in class.)

[iradney]

I was lucky. ALL my English teachers were made of pure awesome. They allowed me to do other homework, read or snooze during class, because they knew I would always get an A/B grade. One teacher in high school always managed to finish her curriculum with us about a week before term ended, so she would play Mr Bean and Black Adder videos for us
Another teacher would burst into song quite randomly, and was very entertaining! We also didn't do prepared orals, but he organized debates, and your Oral marks came from that.

However. My worst teacher ever had to be my accounting teacher in 9th grade. He was also a cricket teacher, and that was obviously all he cared about. My accounting grades were HORRIBLE. HORRIBLE!!! He also spent alot of time in the class ragging on me and my BFF, as we were both doctor's daughters. He kept asking us why we were in public school, and not private as "our daddies were rolling in money :eyeroll:". Thankfully in 10th grade, I got a different accounting teacher and my grades went from an E to a C. However, to this day, I still do not know the difference between a debit and a credit, thanks to this idiot.

[MCSledgehammer]

I was pretty lucky, too. Though some of it may have been that I was generally a tough old bag from the age of 7 on...

Lessee, I had a fourth grade teacher who who randomly burst into tears if we weren't behaving perfectly. For fourth graders, if you can make it through a day without fire, you're good. He expected *perfect* silence, smiling *all* the time, and you had to laugh at his jokes or he'd cry. Yes, he.

Middle school was good except for the occasional overbearing tirade from the newly divorced Language Arts teacher, and was made totally better by the science teacher who let us blow things up.

Aaand my sophomore English teacher thought he was soooooo scary and intimidating, being taller than us and all. To be fair, he was rather tall, but dude- I'm 5'0". Everybody is taller than me. Not scary. He'd do this weird staring thing, where he'd pick out someone he thought wasn't sufficiently cowed, and *stared* at them the entire class period. We're talking 45 minutes of solid, unblinking eye contact, all while moving about the room and lecturing normally. Again, this did not work with me, as I have been known to win staring contests with stuffed animals. He never did quit, though... Last day of class, and *staring*. Weird.

Oh! And the gym teacher! I took a bowling class one year, as I am not the most exertion inclined person to ever walk the face of the planet, and needed the credit. This woman was CRAZY. Hands down, in need of heavy sedatives and a jacket that makes you hug yourself CRAZY. Thursdays was league day at the bowling alley we went to, so we stayed in a classroom instead and learned how to do bowling scores by hand. Let's just say she wasn't a math teacher for a reason. Fairly simple concepts, made horribly difficult by the explanation.

We were getting a quiz back from her, and she was "terribly disappointed". And ranty. So she lets slip with the line, "Well, I guess we won't be getting any brain surgeons out of THIS class!"

And my hero, unknown to me to this day, mutters VERY loudly, from somewhere off to the left: "As opposed to what, GYM TEACHERS?" I don't know who it was, but he is the long lost love of my life. We would frolick through meadows and pwn the stupid together.

All in all though, I had a couple of truly awesome teachers. If I end up even HALF as smart as my Latin/Philosophy/IB World History teacher who played concert level clarinet and worked in an aircraft hanger pouring Kevlar resin on the weekends (and thusly had terribly dreamy forearms, at least to my horomone-addled high school self), I'll die happy.

Gah, this somehow got much longer than I expected. Sorry guys!

[Arucard]

Man, this thread is bringing back memories and making me want to do violence.

My time in primary school was NOT a happy time. Even in kindergarten there were problems, and I've never been able to keep more than a couple of friends. I was also a favoured target for bullies.

Going from what my mother tells me, I was very innocent and trusting, and while I could be a mischievous little sh*t at times, I didn't really have any comprehension that what I was doing was wrong, or why it was wrong.

Anyway, I was the kind of person who tried to get along with everyone. I didn't judge them, and I couldn't really understand that people could be mean, or why they'd act mean. Today of course, I understand that the majority of humanity are arseholes, but I still don't get the why. I'm always conscious of whether something I do might hurt someone, and if I make them feel bad for whatever reason, I always feel awful about it.

There's one particular example that my mum keeps liking to bring up, in that in kindergarten, there was a boy with Downs Syndrome, that all the other kids would mock or avoid, but I didn't see anything different about him, and so used to play with him a lot. She said she was at a birthday party once for one of the kids, and his mother came up to her almost in tears, thanking her for raising such a wonderful son, and that she was so grateful that her boy had a friend. It was apparently really hard for her to deal with, since the father left her after they discovered their son was disabled, because he didn't want to have to deal with it. Even late in primary school, year 5-6 or so, I was one of the few kids who'd help out in the class for kids with special needs.

The whole point of this is to explain that me = easy target for bullying, since I wouldn't stand up for myself, because I didn't like the thought of hurting someone else, even if they were making me feel bad.

Now, there were reasons the teachers found me a bit of a handful. I had ADD, which went undiagnosed until year 5, with the usual problems that entailed. Very bright, able to do the work I was given quickly, smarter than most in my class (My IQ test when I was having my ADD diagnosed in year 5, seeing a child psychologist, was up around 150), but very easily distracted. The work wasn't challenging, or we were going slow to pander to the kids who couldn’t grasp things, and I'd get bored and start acting up.

I was also a bit of a slow developer until I got to school. I was in speech therapy from when I was 2.5 to 4 years old. Also had some problems with other things.

First, some little things I remember from my time at school (both primary and high school), then we'll get onto the two big issues.

<slightly gross bit>
This is one I' don't remember, but my mum clearly does. When I was in kindergarten, I think around 3-4 years old, I still wasn't properly able to wipe myself clean after taking a dump. So once I'd gone to the toilet, and called out to the teacher to see if my bum was clean, as this was what I did at home.

The teacher went nuts, screaming at me in front of everyone, then making me sit in the corner for the rest of the day. My mum apparently went there and reamed her a new one, before moving me to a new kindergarten.
</slightly gross bit>

Year 4, I was in a class when the teacher vanished for an hour or so. The kids at my table decided to make bows out of their rulers and rubber bands, and shoot pencils into the ceiling. this annoyed me, so I told the teacher, and she gave the entire table a detention for vandalism, including me. Lesson taught: Never report wrongdoings, for you will be punished for witnessing them.

Year 9, Japanese. Kids were being rowdy, I was quietly doing my work. Teacher threatened the whole class with staying during lunch if they didn't quiet down. I knew where it was headed already, and this annoyed me because a) I was being quiet, and b) I'd ordered my lunch, which would then sit at the canteen getting cold. So when the girls at the front started squealing again, and the whole class was kept back, I complained to her about the injustice of it. She asked if I'd like to take it up with the deputy principle, and I said I would, so went down there to present my case. He wasn't in his office, so I went back up and told her this.

The next day I got called to his office, where he reamed me out for not waiting for him when I'd been sent down there as punishment, didn't listen to me when I tried to explain I volunteered to go down to discuss something with him, and he gave me 2 detentions. he was the kind of person where any argument of any kind from you would only result in increasing punishment, so you just had to shut up and take it. I still get angry when I think about that one.

Now for the two big issues. First, the handling of my ADD in general. My teacher in year 5 finally, after much prodding and poking from my parents, admitted I did have a problem, which allowed them to take the first steps in figuring out what it was. After it was figured out, I started taking medication for it (the minimum dose of Ritalin was all I needed to make a HUGE difference. Pretty much one in the morning, one at lunch, and half a one at the end of school if I had homework to worry about).

The medication was kept in the library, where an old bag was responsible for it. This is the old bag who refused to let me check out normal sized novels like Robin Hood, saying they were too hard, at a time when I was regularly checking out books as thick as Robert Jordan novels (though not actually his novels) from public libraries. I was reading things like Stephen King's IT at that point. This old bag also, despite instructions, like to try to second-guess how much Ritalin I needed. Thankfully, I knew exactly what I needed, and refused to take anything other than what my parents told me to.

One incident in year 6 that sticks out in my mind is when I went before lunch to get it, the librarian wasn't there, so I went back to class, passing my old year 5 teacher on the way, and she was going to the library herself. Later, I got called to take it, and when I said I went, but the librarian wasn't there, my year 5 teacher called me a liar to my face, because she went to the library early, and never saw me come in.

Now, to the final, big story.

Like I said before, I wasn't exactly popular. To be honest, in year 6, I had zero friends, merely some people who would kind of tolerate my presence, but would rather they didn't have to. So when we went on a school camp, no one wanted me in their room. I was told they'd find a bed for me. It turned out there were exactly x-1 beds for x students in the motel. If you can guess who the student without a bed was, you don't get a cookie.

So my bed consisted of a thin mattress on the concrete floor, with a pillow, and nothing else. In winter. In a part of the state known to be colder than the city by several degrees.

My mum had sent me with a mohair blanket just in case I needed a little extra on top of the bedding she assumed they'd give me.

Funnily enough, the middle of the first night I woke up cold, coughing, generally miserable. the next day when I complained about this, one of the students was kind enough to give me a spare quilt from their bed, but the damage was done, and I ended up with a nice chest infection after I got home.

I didn't really think too much about this, and just took it in my stride, and when my mum picked me up from school after the camp, I mentioned the bed issue just as part of my whole story about the camp. She, being my mother of course, thought that this was unacceptable (she was right), and called the school to ask what had happened.

To cut a long story short, the principal called me from my class, to stand in the class next door, where the year 7 SRC (Student Representative Council) was meeting, to ream me up one side and down the other, accusing me of making up a story to my parents, lying to another teacher etc, and saying I needed to apologise to him. He also wrote this in a letter to my parents demanding an apology.

I went home in tears, because it was all a lie, I didn't understand what he was going on about, and why he'd humiliated me.

My parents then donned armour and went into battle. The end result was the principal nearly losing his job, and having to give my parents a public apology at the district superintendent’s office, in front of all the staff there.

There is a silver lining to that one, though. Because of this arsewipe, my parents pulled my out of there to send me to a private school. they were intending to send me from year 8-12 anyway, but they put me in a year early, in year 7. The $7000 or so they had to find was not insignificant, but they couldn't leave me where I was.

What this meant was, when I took the scholarship test for that school, because I was already a student there, I didn't have to go through an interview process (which I would have sucked at), and instead was judged purely by the academic results of the test, which I excelled at. This meant I got a full academic scholarship that I might not have gotten otherwise, saving them around $10000/year. I also learned a lot of self confidence there, my academic skills were nurtured, rather than ignored, I scored top marks in state-wide academic competitions, and got sent to a camp for gifted students in the science area. (The camp took 7 students from each school, split over each area of science, math, english etc.)

End result, greatly increased confidence when I started high school, which made it much easier to make and keep friends, I got along with people a lot better, it was just a completely new start for me. If not for that year in primary school there, I could have ended up like my brother, an academic introvert picked on throughout high school, nearly 30 now and never had a date. Oh, there was still plenty of bullying, but I was able to stick up for myself and not let it affect me like it did him.

And that ends my rambling. Have a good one.

[Misanthropical]

Here are some stories from when my big guy was in elementary school.

His Kindergarten teacher told me he was very disruptive and had me hide in a closet to watch him, without him knowing I was there. I saw a bit of fidgeting, but nothing disruptive.

We had a meeting with principal, teachers and counselors. I had just given birth less than a month before, so my hormones were still in over drive.

The teacher hands me a report saying he is WEIRD underlined three times. She told us he was weird because he would sometimes have trouble buttoning his pants up after using the rest room and asked for help.

I did the same thing in grade school and none of the teachers ever indicated that it was weird to help me button my pants, nor did they ever tell my mother it was weird.

My husband asked her where she got her qualifications to determine if someone was weird. She got a look.

She didn't have a single positive thing to say about the big guy, even though the big guy liked her and would draw pictures for her.

My thought was "THAT BITCH DID NOT PUT MY SON DOWN INCLUDING THE WAY HE WALS!" I stand up, which my husband sees out of the corner of his eye and knows he has to get me out of the room right now or I was going to bitch slap our son's teacher.

THAT'S RIGHT, MRS. JOHNSON! IF MY HUSBAND HADN'T OF BEEN THERE I WOULD HAVE DONE MY DAMMEST TO RIP YOUR BRAIDS OFF OF YOUR HEAD! I STILL MIGHT IF I RUN INTO YOU AGAIN!

Anyway, the principal puts a monitor in there to monitor the teacher's interaction with my son. Funny how when that happened all I got were glowing reviews of my son.

The principal from above left and they brought in the meanest bitch they could find. Only, she wasn't mean to the parents only the children.

My son got frustrated by his teachers singling him out for messing up even if it was someone else who did it and the teachers told everyone and their brother that my son has ADHD. The teachers didn't give two shits that my son was bullied. Hell, they took part in it. I was pissed as hell. I went up there and ripped into everyone single teacher who took part, the counselor and the principal. After that I'm told that I was referred to as "That Bitch" and new people starting in the school were warned about me, so when I would walk in a total stranger would say "Hello Mrs. Misanthropical"

Another time, my son was frustrated and started to cry, so his teacher yanking on his arm the whole way took the "big baby" to the principal who proceeded to scream into face along with his teacher until he had a melt down and crawled under the couch. They couldn't get him out, so they call me to come get him. I told them I live over 2 miles away and had no way to get there.

So what do these brain dead fucks do? They called the police to come get him and take him home. Yes, two burly officers wrestled him into the car. My son was scared to death he was being arrested and would never see me again.

These two huge officers bring him home and get out of the car and see tiny little me standing there, while they are soaked in sweat from the fight. They asked me if I was sure I could handle him. I told them I'm his mother and since I don't scream into his face, it would be fine.

My big guy was terrified of the police for the longest time and still is to some extent. He freaked right out when he saw me in my security uniform and hid from me. That made me even more pissed off at that damn school.

The school called and told me my son had punched a kid so hard his eye swelled shut and the parents are thinking of suing. I asked what happened on the bus that my son would hit the child. They told me the boy had punched my son in the back of the head more than once, so my son turned around and punched him back. They told me that my son was a lot bigger than the other kid, so he shouldn't have fought back. I told them my son is NO ONE'S PUNCHING BAG and this kid thought he could go out of his way to hurt a child with a disability because at some point his idiot parents told him it was okay to hurt other people just because you can and they thought he could get away with it, because of his small size.

I told her to tell those other parents to go ahead and sue, we will contact the ACLU to counter sue for the fact that their child thought nothing of trying to hurt a child with a disability, then I would have them sue the bus company and last but not least the school itself. The teacher told me my husband is more reasonable in these matters and she would call him and slammed the phone down. Guess what my husband said? THE EXACT SAME THING!

I never heard another word about being sued by the dumbshit's parents.

My big guy would get put in a corner facing the corner for fidgeting while doing his classroom work. My son recently told me that teachers would walk by laughing and asking him why he was kissing the wall.

There are a lot more stories, those bitches put my son, me and my husband through hell. It came to stop when they realized that my big guy's tiny mom was no push over and was actually one scary evil bitch. So, they finally transferred him to a different school who deal with children with disabilities. I asked them why they told me the school he was leaving told me to my face that they could deal with a child with a disability when they didn't have the first clue? They didn't know.

I told them I had all the documentation from their stunts and I just may sue, so after that they kissed my ass every time they saw me. They couldn't hide the fear in their eyes when they saw me though. Yes, they had to deal with my even after that, since my daughter went to that school. They told the teachers to treat her like the President's daughter, because they didn't want to have to deal with me again.

[Anakah]

I was playing tag on playground set, it had a slide, a couple of poles and what not. Well, I was getting ready to go down the pole but I slipped and fell down falling flat on my stomach. I crawled underneath the thing and onto my back, so I wouldn't be trampled by others.

Now, I remember all the kids, teachers and proctors (aids or whatever) gathered around me. Eventually the bell rang and it only left the teachers around me. I couldn't get up and I remember having sand on my face. I had intense pain in my shoulder and my stomach hurt. So being eight, of course I was crying.

The suck? The principal made me get up and WALK to the nurse's office room instead of calling 9-11 like he should have. They called my parents and said I was fine but still come and get me.

I went to the emergency room and proceeded to wait for those endless hours until my dad started to scream at the people. It turned out I was bleeding internally because I had rupturned my spleen.

Back then nobody was sue happy but I bet now they'd sure as hell have called an ambulance. I fell from a really high distance and still have stomach problems.

[Amethyst Hunter]

The school called and told me my son had punched a kid so hard his eye swelled shut and the parents are thinking of suing. I asked what happened on the bus that my son would hit the child. They told me the boy had punched my son in the back of the head more than once, so my son turned around and punched him back. They told me that my son was a lot bigger than the other kid, so he shouldn't have fought back. I told them my son is NO ONE'S PUNCHING BAG

This is why my brother and I have self-esteem problems to this very fucking day - because we had it drilled into us by the adults around us that God forbid we fight back against the fucking evil bullies giving us hell. We were lucky if the bullies got into trouble instead of us, because sure as shit if we reported a problem it was OUR asses hung out to dry instead of the bullies'. So what if they hit us first, taunted us relentlessly? We must've done something to provoke it, right? Right? After all, everybody loves the popular kids and the jocks, no way any of them would ever pick on fellow peers! Unless of course, you're a weirdo and then you deserve it because you're not Fitting In like a good little sheeple should.

I still wish to this day that I had snapped and gone completely batshit on some of these pieces of shit. I wish that I had given in to my urges and beat, ripped, tore, clawed, and *stabbed* the everliving fuckshit out of them. It used to be a regular daydream for me to fantasize about torturing and killing some of them in horrific ways, and I was doing that (the daydreaming, that is, heh) long before the Columbine shooters were out of their first baby trenchcoat Gapwear.

I don't like to feel these urges, even though they sometimes do feel good in that rabid-psycho-rush kind of way. I would prefer to think of myself as a better person than that. But they are my feelings, and I refuse to apologize for my feelings. I have ZERO tolerance or sympathy for bullies of any age or stripe.

Must...lower...blood...pressure...now... *goes to stare at pictures of shiny fuzzy happy things*

[AnqeiicDemise]

In third grade, my teacher would rip the pencil out of my left hand, shove it my right and hold my left arm behind my back, because she didn't know how to teach someone to write left handed.

I had that done to me in kindergarden. Fucked me up something serious as I'd just sit there and cry as I couldn't understand WHY I was being picked on to such a degree. I mean, I'd sit there and just struggle to no end to try to form a proper letter but simply couldn't because my hand shook too much.

And I was too scared to say anything to my parents.

It didn't help that my *own* grandmother would force me to sit on my left hand while I ate. I was only allowed to use my left hand to hold my fork when I had to cut up meat or hold a piece of bread while I spread jam/butter/what have you on it. (Grandma believed south paws worked for the devil and thus was hell bent on keeping me on following nature's way.)

I eventually learned to write with my right hand but it was hard. The beauty of it is that when I sprained my wrist in third grade, I had *no* problem picking up the writing with my left. Now I can interchange between both hands for all sorts of things -- writing, brushing my teeth, putting on make up, buffing my nails. Its awesome.

But I cannot forget those days where I'd be taken to the front of the class and was simply humiliated because my 'O's look like (i) am writing with my dirty toes.'

BAH!

[zzapp the witch]

Meh, getting my hair lit on fire and being called an ugly c word was a daily occurence with me. I just picked two incidents though, I won't make your eyes fall out with the novel.

Eighth grade English/Literature. Mrs. Ellis. I wrote a really awesome short story, as per the assignment. Never got it back like the other kids did theirs. Few weeks later, Mrs. Ellis stands Melinda in the front of the class, with Melinda holding a certificate. She won an award, the teacher tells us, for the short story she wrote. Yay, oh yay! That's so cool! $500 you say? Wow, what a cool reward for a 14 year old to win! Please Melinda, read us your story that won such an awesome award! Holy crap, its going to be published, too! That's even cooler!

I'm sure by now you guys can figure out where this is headed. Mrs Ellis watched me the whole time Melinda read my story to the class, word for word, exactly as I had written it, with a twitchy, silent smirk in the corner of her mouth. Watching with glee as all that was left of my childhood trust and self-confidence was shattered.

That teacher ENJOYED watching me be destroyed. And I still don't know what I did to her to deserve that.

(And Melinda had to cheat to even graduate from High School, she was co-valevictorian, exact same scores as her best friend, who, to this day, can't read).

The other is my High School principal who had this great idea to make more money for the school: Change Senior's transcripts so that it looks like they don't have enough to graduate, and hold them back for another year! Too bad for you Mr. Principal, I have a printout from the previous year showing that I'm not short 10 credits. How in the hell did you think that you could just make 10 credits disappear like that? Well, you can make me disappear, that's for sure.

I went to the Community College, got my GED, THEN went back and got my Drop Slip (he wouldn't give it to me, I had to have my dad and the Superintendent call), THEN got to walk with honors (equivalent of Valevictorian) with the other graduates at the college.

I still have never published anything. Its all in notebooks, folders and binders upstairs in my closet. I go to reread them every now and then, the edges of the pages are getting soft.

[AnqeiicDemise]

I don't remember much from my teachers as to be quite frank, I got some tough ones that made me cry but I love them to death ... and the others were really sweet.

My BIL, however, is 7 and is suffering something awfull.

He had long hair up until six months ago. Some of the wonderful pranks his teachers pulled were:

*giving him dolls for presents-- as in barbie dolls or stuffed ones with frills.
*upon having the class do a tye die shirt event, they made sure he got one that was pink and purple.
* call him a fag.
* put bows in his hair.
* laugh at him at his expense.
* ask him if he wore make up at home or liked to wear dresses.
* when it came to boy-girl activities, they'd pair him up with another boy (i.e. square dancing)
* They made him play 'house' with the girls when all he wanted was to push trucks around with the boys.


And to this day, if you ask him if he wants to have long, beautiful hair, he'll yell at the top of his lungs "LONG HAIR IS FOR GIRLS!", then run off crying.

I wonder what his reaction will be when he sees his father come home with waist-long hair (his dad lives in Japan and comes over twice a year)... or when his brother starts growing out his hair again.

He also gets teased for being fat (which he isn't) and gets bullied a lot. He's nothing more than this sweet little boy with a heart of gold that likes to befriend everyone... and adults, even more so than kids, tease him.

** fyi, his new school only gives him problems with the 'fat' factor but its mainly because they don't witness the bullying itself and simply punish the boys for fighting.

[IT Grunt]

This is why my brother and I have self-esteem problems to this very fucking day - because we had it drilled into us by the adults around us that God forbid we fight back against the fucking evil bullies giving us hell. We were lucky if the bullies got into trouble instead of us, because sure as shit if we reported a problem it was OUR asses hung out to dry instead of the bullies'. So what if they hit us first, taunted us relentlessly? We must've done something to provoke it, right? Right? After all, everybody loves the popular kids and the jocks, no way any of them would ever pick on fellow peers! Unless of course, you're a weirdo and then you deserve it because you're not Fitting In like a good little sheeple should.

I had the exact same experience. In fact, my father's instructions to me were that if I ever got in a fight at school, even if I didn't start it, I'd get the same when I got home. As time passed, I in essence became a gentle giant, and everyone knew they could lay into me without fear that I'd use my God-given weapon to retaliate. (By the time I graduated HS, I was 6'6")

Therefore the only recourse I had left was to go to the teachers whenever someone was picking on me. A mild example, but an example none-the-less, was when my brother and I were experimenting with hair styles and styling mousse in middle school. So one kid (who ironically enough used to be my best friend before a counsellor told him to avoid me because I was the source of him getting picked on) came up to me before classes started and started stroking his hand over my head and saying 'Oooo.. slickster' in a mocking tone. Over and over and over. I told him to stop it and leave me alone several times to no avail. (It never worked.) Ignoring it did no good. (Another 'tried and true' strategy that was crap.) Well, as it so happened we were near the principals office, and the principal happened to be there, so I went in to tell him that this kid was harassing me. His response? "You two need to grow up and stop acting like 2 year olds. I don't have time to put up with this nonsense." Yes, I was a child for trying to reach out for help. The kid got this big victory grin on his face. I hate that principal with a passion to this day.

I had the same issues that have recurred in this thread when it came to teachers. Go to the teacher to complain, either get told to shut up and sit down, punished for being a tattle-tale, or told that I was acting like a child. That has a powerful impact on someone when you can't fight back, you can't get help, and therefore there is nothing to stop the bullying. Years of that will take its toll. Thus why I still refer to my time in school as my time in hell.