We all have painful school memories, but usually it's because of other kids. When a teacher turns on a student, there's little recourse because authority figures have all the power. At least school is a place you can leave behind; unless you're a teacher, that is. We asked students from around the world to share their stories of the worst thing a teacher ever did to them. Thankfully, some of these teachers got sent to the principal's office--or worse, expelled.
40. Not a teachable moment.
Technically it was the vice principal, but the day my brother died, apparently he thought it would be a good idea to walk in on story time (the teacher was reading to the class), set me on his lap and tell me in front of everyone that my brother had committed suicide.
39. Teachers these days.
When I was in 2nd grade, my mom died. When I was in 3rd grade, the evil witch of a teacher held me back from recess one day for something. While it was just us in the room, she asked if I went to church. I said no. She then told me that because I didn't go to church I wouldn't go to heaven and would never see my mom again.
38. Public humiliation is not a teaching tool.
So when I was in kindergarten I didn’t make it to the bathroom in time and wet myself. Went to the nurses office got new clothes but instead of panties I had to wear a pull up, not a big deal. I guess it was a school policy for kids my age I don’t really know.
When I get back to my class my teacher loudly says, “Oh good, the baby is finally back” or something like that. She also knew about the policy and asked if I was wearing a diaper so every other student could hear. I was 5 and felt a ton of shame and humiliated.
I started crying and trying to get out of school a lot because of it. My teacher often referred to me as a baby for the rest of the year. Also she would constantly ask if I needed to potty or if I was wearing a diaper, like I was a toddler or something.
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37. What a great education.
When I was in kindergarten my family was always in a rush in the morning so I would eat breakfast in the car on the way to school. My mom would put my drink in a sipping cup to avoid spills. Apparently the teacher somehow saw me drinking from the sipping cup even though I would always leave it in the car before getting off to go to school.
One day first thing in the morning the teacher starts drawing a baby bottle on the board and starts talking how only babies drink from bottles and then in front of the class asked me if I was a baby because she saw me drinking from a bottle and how I should stop drinking out of a bottle.
This made me obviously not want to go back to school and that made the teacher dislike me even more since now I was a student being uncooperative because he felt uncomfortable at school.
Photo by samer daboul from Pexels
36. Master thief.
My English teacher brought me in to tell me my paper was flagged by the software for being plagiarized from over 180 other student papers from around the country. Not websites, not public articles, student papers from other schools. Longest chain of "plagiarized" words was 6.
I laughed because I thought she was pointing out how ridiculously sensitive the software was. She was offended that I laughed at her. I asked her if she really believed that I tracked down almost 200 students to steal 3 word phrases from them and stitch them together into a paper, which would take 50x the effort that it actually took to write it. Not in those exact words.
I really thought I wrote a great paper. Got an A but I think it was because she felt dumb.
35. Every school has secrets.
The girls in our elementary school were given sex-ed class before the boys. The basic puberty stuff, your body is starting to change, you might develop breasts, sweating, all that stuff. They made a huuuuuuuge stupid deal about keeping it quiet. It's the girls' little secret. Don't go spreading it around school. (It only occurs to me now that that... is kinda dangerous in the wider scope of things.)
Anyway, my best friend was a boy and naturally, I skipped right off to tell him why suddenly half the class had an assembly all by themselves. My teacher heard about it, got me alone, grabbed me by both arms AND SHOOK ME. "Keep your mouth. Shut."
She was my favorite teacher up til then. Totally a great thing to teach a kid.
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34. Every point counts.
My 4th grade teacher had a reputation for making one boy in her class an unpopular scapegoat each year. Lucky me. In previous years I'd been just another kid in the playground, but within two months the other kids wouldn't play with me during recess. One day I refused to go outside for recess. She asked why, and I foolishly told her that the other kids didn't like me. When they came back in, she marched me to the front of the class, and asked for a show of hands, who didn't like me. Fourth grade kids (mostly) did what fourth grade kids do.
I broke down that night and told my Mom what had happened and what had been going on al along. She marched into school the next day, got a meeting that included the principal, and tore the teacher a new one. I was still stuck in that class, but the teacher moved on to a new victim. Funny thing how self esteem influences academic performance. My school used to give us a Stanford Binet IQ Test every year. My score dropped ten points from third to fourth grade, then rose twenty points in fifth grade when I had a nurturing teacher.
33. To good to be true.
Got accused of plagiarism over a paper I wrote (and didn't plagiarize) that I was really excited about because of how well I thought I did on it. Enthusiasm fully destroyed. Teacher returned the paper with "are these your own words??? Come see me!" scribbled across the top and when I went he asked where I had copied from. I went and printed out all my notes and previous drafts and edits to show him it was all original and in the end he "compromised" by giving me like a C instead of an F because I guess he couldn't just admit he was wrong. Still sort of bitter about that. I was really into music and music history at the time and after that I kind of found other interests.
Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash
32. Out of control.
One time I was having my time of the month and I asked the teacher to go to the bathroom multiple times, she refused to let me go. Eventually I stained my uniform and the chair I was so embarrassed that I started crying, when my mother found out she made the school fire that moron, thankfully.
31. Red all over.
When I was in high school I got a lot of nose bleeds. Like a lot. So I got one in the middle of class and I asked the teacher for a tissue, she said she didn’t have any so I asked to go to the toilet to get one then she said no. Soon I asked again when blood what dripping from my hands and she yelled at me for ‘repeating myself’ which is apparently bad. Soon a puddle of blood was on the table then I got sent to isolation for ‘disrupting the class’. I was then suspended for ‘acting inappropriate during class’. She was then fired for ignoring a student's health risk. I gotta say when you get a nose bleed like that, you really see how much blood is inside of you.
Image by rawpixel from Pixabay
30. Just another, bigger bully.
I was bullied really bad. Kids kept drawing awful ugly photos and leaving them on my desk with profanity towards my appearance. I had enough one day after dealing with a lot of abuse at home and the bullying at school and when I saw another broke down crying and brought it to my teacher.
She just grabbed it looked and asked if I wanted it back. Did nothing to help, wouldn’t listen to me about the constant bullying and did absolutely nothing. I was in 7th grade and still remember it to this day. It was a small town school and as sad as it is, that's just the way it was. I hope I can be a better teacher when I'm finished school.
29. What a monster.
We were discussing Jean Vanier and L'arche. For context, Jean Vanier decided to invite two intellectually disabled men to live with him and started setting up homes for them so they wouldn't be in asylums. The teacher looked right at me (I'm disabled) and said: "oh yeah, Vanier created those homes so you people wouldn't be bothering people because the handicapped don't function in society." My friend I left just to talk it out.
He got fired a few years later because he did not have his licence up to date. Cherry on top: his wife was the vice principal.
28. Books do not have genders.
During quiet reading time teacher brought me to front of the class because I was reading a book for girls, and he asked me ‘why are you reading a giiirrrrrrls book? Are you a GIRL?’ Then made me chose a book for ‘boys’ to read. I was maybe 10 or 11? The book was Matilda by the way.
Image by klimkin from Pixabay
27. Little criminals.
I was in the 4th grade. Found a dry erase marker on the playground. I wrote my initials on the tire swing. Classmate rats me out. I get yelled at for like 20 minutes straight about vandalism of school property. She starts going off about how it's the first step to becoming a criminal. Being a little kid, this scared the crap out of me. It was probably another two years before I believed that I wasn't going to become a criminal as an adult.
26. Weird hill to die on.
Teacher told me I was a liar to the whole class as she didn't believe my grandmother was a world war II evacuee. She refused to believe me as she assumed my mum was younger than she looked at the time, and therefore my grandmother was younger as well. She thought my mum was in her late 20s when in reality she was in her early 40s at the time.
25. Bet those are worth a lot now.
In 4th grade I collected Yu-Gi-Oh cards and I had gotten the (at the time) new Three Egyptian God cards. Well I was caught playing with them during class and my teacher took them from me and threw them out. I was devastated after all the packs opened and cards traded to acquire them. I never forgave her.
The teacher was an older southern lady in her 60s so she was definitely in that mindset that she had 100% say in whatever she did with our personal belongings. Pretty sure if corporal punishment was still allowed I would’ve gotten the paddle on several occasions. I wasn’t the only one who lost cards that day. Buddy who sat next to me had his Black Magician of Black Chaos and Blue Eyes Ultimate taken from him.
Cauldrons and Cupcakes
24. That's not very musical.
My senior year of high school, my mental health took a steep dive. I was dealing with a lot of instability at home, one of my closest friends had become a relentless antagonistic bully to me, and the only thing that made me feel better was playing bass guitar in the jazz band class. Or it was, until our band teacher left. The replacement was just terrible. I think she tried, but she was not good. My bully ran that class and the new teacher encouraged it. My bass guitar skills "weren't good enough" so I ended up being banished to play triangle and jingle bells. It's a small miracle I didn't kill myself throughout that year, because Lord knows I wanted to.
I'll never forget the day she asked us our opinions on a specific piece we were playing (which was objectively horrible). She called on me and I said that I didn't like it. She then yelled at me for being negative and "being the worst member of the band" until I cried (fortunately, that was not long). She made me play songs faster and harder until I permanently scarred the tendons in both of my wrists, and whenever my bully decided to lash out at me, she would watch and laugh. Later I heard she got reassigned to teach younger grades, so I hope she's stepping on Legos for the rest of her life.
23. Artistic ambition.
6th grade. I was 11. Hadn't been diagnosed with ADD (now ADHD) yet. The only way I could pay attention in class was if I doodled in the margins of my notes, and bounced my legs. My history teacher noticed I did this, and if he caught me he'd rip the page out of my notebook, show it to the class, and marvel at what a bad student and unintelligent person I was, to everyone. Joke's on him though, because now I'm an artist.
Photo by Pragyan Bezbaruah from Pexels
22. This is classic.
I had a teacher in classics who went out of his way to terrorize the class. His first words to us were, "I suspect as many as half of you cannot read." He then administered a test, which two-thirds of the class failed. He was not shy about voicing his rather gleeful displeasure. (I did well enough to avoid his wrath, and, annoyingly, get singled out for praise.)
He would routinely throw questions at students who weren't paying rigorous attention -- in a three-hour class on Friday morning -- and then berate them for not knowing the answers. His comments on papers were beyond trenchant: "Are you illiterate?" "Do you imagine this makes sense?" "This is childish." etc.
21. When the teacher becomes the student.
I had a teacher in 8th grade who obviously didn’t like me. She was awful. I was kind of having a hard time fitting in and getting emotionally bullied. Then my parents got a divorce, and I admit I was off at times and it probably showed that I took it out on other students.
So before class started, I was goofing off with other children and she turned at me and said, “you realize nobody likes you right?” I was taken back and just kind of reinforced what I already knew, that I didn’t and probably would never fit in.
Pixabay
20. Don't be discouraged.
I early enrolled while still in high school and had a professor who really made me love politics and law, so I decided that’s what I wanted to focus my academic career on. I did well in all of my courses and was setting myself up to start my bachelors with political science pre-law as my major. All was going well until one professor... an older man who hated me from day one. He saw this young blonde chick in his class (which let's be real, was an easy and basic pre-req at a community college) and decided I wasn’t worth his time. He would constantly answer any of my questions condescendingly, and in an effort make me feel dumb, he would call on me to answer questions on material he hadn’t taught yet. Finally at the end of the semester he handed back my final paper and decided to have “a talk” with me after the rest of the class left. He told me that maybe politics/law wasn’t the thing for me, and that maybe I should look into doing something different. Jokes on him though, I ended up completing my major, and working as main staff on a major campaign during 2012. Then after all that fun, I decided I didn’t want to go to law school and I now work for the government and make a mint.
Flickr
19. The best intentions.
I had some mental health issues developing and spent a lot of time out of class with the well-being staff. When someone asked where I was one day the teacher, who I previously looked up to and had confided in, decided to tell everyone that I was doing terribly and needed help. When I confronted him and asked why he violated my privacy, he said he thought it would help so people would be gentle (I do believe he had good intentions) but it did not help.
18. Nothing weird about that.
I have social anxiety, and was nervous about having to play a song that "described my life" for my high school senior english class. My teacher grabbed a cape and like a hat or something from a closet then stood on my desk and danced around while announcing to the class I was nervous and she was trying to show me there was nothing to be nervous about. Called a whole lot of attention to me and my anxiety in such a weird way. Probably sounds stupid to most people but I did not appreciate that at all totally did the opposite of calming my nerves.
17. That's my stapler.
I had a religion teacher in high school named Mr. Nguyen, who was working on becoming a Jesuit priest and was a really cool guy. He always had a smile on his face and did his best to make class a fun experience for everyone.
There was a kid in my class who was a really annoying brat, but Mr. Nguyen was always really patient with him, until one day he pushed him too far. I forgot exactly what the kid said, but it definitely crossed the line. Mr. Nguyen slammed his fists on his desk and shouted, "Why can't you EVER shut up!" He then picked up his stapler and chucked it at the kid, missing his head by a few inches and leaving a huge dent in the wall and then stormed out into the hallway.
Even though I wasn't the one that got the stapler chucked at him, that was still something crazy to experience. I had never seen a teacher blow up like that and I definitely never expected it from him.
16. Program deleted.
One teacher accused me of stealing artwork I imagined and created myself. She failed me for the quarter. But the worst was probably my Computer teacher, who shamed me into withdrawing from the one programming class the school offered after the first day of it because he didn't think I was capable of learning how to program and that other kids more capable couldn't take it because I was filling a spot.
15. Saxophone is serious.
I got into a shouting match with my band director before a marching band competition in another state. He had anger issues and the fight was over him calling me out in front of everyone for messing up my saxophone solo the week before. There was no one else around to see or hear the shouting. He never said so much as a word to me for the remainder of my time in high school and I was perfectly fine with it.
Photo by Craig Adderley from Pexels
14. Petty punishment.
One school I went to was awful. I had a teacher who yelled at me regularly. One of the worst ones was when I didn't have a worksheet (which I knew was in my locker) so she freaked out about my messy desk, pulled it into the hallway and dumped it on the floor.
The gym teacher was equally as bad if not worse. This school was very athletic and students' treatment was based on athletic ability. I am not at all athletic, never have been. We had to run around the football field and baseball diamond at the start of every gym class. If you slowed down, even to catch your breath, you had to go around again. I spent many gym classes just walking the field because I can't run that far so why bother.
Pixabay
13. Learn Spanish or else.
I had a teacher bring a knife to school and then he threatened me with it as a “joke.” He didn’t get any reprimand to my knowledge and I hated going to class for the rest of the year. I wasn’t removed from the class since it was the only advanced Spanish class. If there hadn’t been witnesses, I would have thought I’d dreamed it.
Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay
12. Ew.
Starting in sophomore year of high school every Valentine’s Day, I would get a secret admirer card in my locker. Being an idiot high school girl I was super flattered and my friends and I would wring our brains to figure out who it was. Finally come senior year I get another sweet admirer card, except this year it is sent to my home address and, instead of being handwritten, is typed out and pasted onto the card, with the lyrics from one of my teacher's favorite Bob Dylan songs “simple twist of fate.” So turns out my secret admirer all throughout high school was in fact one of my teachers. On top of the secret admirer cards, the day after I graduated he started texting me telling me to “get ready” for “pillow talk.” No thanks buddy.
Pixabay
11. Too big to bully.
In high school I was maybe 6ft in grade 11. I was a varsity wrestler. A kid who was in grade 10, 5ft maybe, was a massive bully to everyone and used his size as a defensive mechanism from retaliation. One day I was eating lunch at a picnic table alone and he came behind me and started choking me. I stood up, pulled him over my shoulders and set him on the ground gently knowing there was staff all around. The principal saw this and gave me a suspension for 3 days and tried convincing the parents of the bully to press charges on me for beating on the smaller kids.
Thankfully the Dad knew his kid was a punk (I'm assuming) stood up for me with the "boy's will be boy's" line. I'm sure he knew the principal was full of crap, but it was traumatic in the sense I thought I would be punished for being a victim. My mom grounded me for a week. My Dad brought me home my favorite burger joint dinner every night and said he was proud of me for not being violent to troubled people.
10. Two days is too long.
In 2nd or 3rd grade I had a sub one day and there was a math question that was “300+2+60” we just had to add the numbers together, easy right? I added them together and obviously got 362, but this sub said that it was 326 because of the placement of the numbers in the question. She then proceeded to bring me to the front of the class and say I was dumb and didn’t deserve friends because I was too stupid to do math. She got fired two days later.
9. Welcome to the jungle.
My family moved from the north to Florida when I was going into the fifth grade. My teacher, for some reason, thought this shy, awkward, small town girl needed to be toughened up (basically hazed) by the class. I was so badly teased and isolated that I’ve blacked out my entire fifth grade from my memory.
My Mom, who actually worked at he school, said I came home crying every day. She was an underling and tried, but failed, to get me switched to another class. I ended up becoming “tougher” only after we moved away from that place. Parenting Pro Tip: The Keys are not a good place to raise children ladies and gentlemen.
Image by Mark Filter from Pixabay
8. Sugar high.
In grade school my teacher had me and two other students stay back during recess so another teacher could come in, drag our desks into the hall, tip them over and rifle through everything. I was so confused as to why this was happening and why that teacher was so maniacal. In the end we got to put our desks back and my teacher told me that someone stole the other teacher’s candy bars earlier that morning and they thought it was us because she put her bag down in the hall next to us when we were waiting to go to our first class. Low and behold that teacher found her candy bars and “rewarded” each of us with one candy bar. More like bribing us so we wouldn't tell. Looking back on it, it’s so weird and a bit scarring.
7. Band practice leads to a world of pain.
I had a Chorus teacher all through elementary school, let’s call her Mrs. C. She was honestly the most rude bossy person I had ever met, but the traumatic experience happened when I was in either 2nd or 3rd grade. It didn’t exactly happen to me but the way she reacted terrified me. Basically every year lower school all together do a performance together to honor people in the military/retired military. Anyways we were in a rehearsal and we were standing on those bleachers. These were HIGH bleachers. There was a kid on the top row who was fiddling around while we were practicing. There was a loose bar protecting the top row. He accidentally bumped into it, and the row fell. He fell off and hit his head, he started bleeding and everyone started screaming. We were evacuated into the Multi Purpose Room, where the teachers basically just brought them back to their class. Mrs. C. was there and told us, "It doesn’t matter he hit his head, he’s so dumb anyways." It really upset me how she, a teacher who is supposed to be nice, just brushed this kid's pain off so easily.
6. These are adults.
In third grade I had a teacher tie me up to my chair and tape my mouth shut. I was a super smart and hyper kid who had just been prescribed prednisone for my asthma. Which will make you crawl out of your skin. My original teacher died in the beginning of the year and we had 4 temps before Ms. Keeney. She was 25, had no degree and should not have been teaching. She screamed at me for fidgeting and tied me up. I started yelling so she taped my mouth shut. 28 kids laughed at me, one kid drew scissors from his desk and motioned to cut the chord. I remember making eye contact with him and shook my head no. After I told my parents I got switched out of the class and the teacher was fired. The other kids parents in the class threw the teacher a going away party because “that kid and his brothers were always trouble.”
Pixabay
5. Some rules are worth breaking.
The one and only detention I ever received occurred in third grade. I had a math teacher that had this stupid policy that every math test, after she had graded it, needed to be brought home and signed by our parents and returned to her within 2 days.
During that school year, my mom got in a terrible car accident, in which she got hit head-on by a semi-truck. She almost died, was permanently crippled, and spent several months in the hospital. We had a math test a couple days after her accident. My step-dad spent the whole week in the hospital by my mom’s side, no doubt stressed out of his mind and not knowing if she would pull through. He didn’t want to bring my brother or me to the hospital, as he didn’t know if we could handle seeing my mom in that condition. My brother and I were left home alone all week, with neighbors occasionally checking in on us to drop off meals.
Anyway, I hadn’t seen either of my parents in days, and obviously couldn’t get either of them to sign my test. When I tried to explain the situation to my teacher, she cut me off and said she “didn’t allow excuses” or some similar line, and gave me detention the following day. Since I didn’t have anybody at home who could pick me up, I had to walk the 2 miles or so home from school after the detention.
A week or so later, when my brother told my step-dad about everything that had happened, he showed up to pick me up from school (which he’d never done before, as we took the bus to/from school) and absolutely tore the teacher a new one, almost bringing her to tears.
The teacher never apologized to me, or looked me in the eyes again, for that matter, and I forged signatures on every other test that year. Also, I had gotten 100% on the test that led to my detention.
Flickr
4. New pants problem.
In kindergarten, our teacher's rule about bathroom was to hold a "1" up. I did this for about 10 mins but she ignored me, even after seeing me once. My tiny bladder was finally starting to fill up and I went up to her and asked her. She said "What did I say about bathroom break?", I said "I followed the rule but you're not looking". She got really mad and said "come up here again and I will send you to the principals office". I was too young to understand that I probably would've been better off going to the principals office than staying, but it was scary for some reason. It felt like punishment.
I went back to my seat, raised my finger for another while. She KNEW I needed to go and still did not look up. Finally she let me go and I was trying to desperately to undo my pants, when I wet myself, the floor and eventually made it in the toilet. I cried cuz I felt I was going to get in trouble and I tried to clean up as much of the floor as I could with toilet paper.
When I came out, I went to the teacher and told her that I peed myself. The bathroom was in the classroom but it was in the back, the teacher's desk was in the front of the class. So the walk of shame from bathroom to teacher was very shameful. The teacher rolled her eyes and said "how old are you now? You couldn't hold it? Whats wrong with you? Go to the principal's office and get them to call your mother for pants." I went and asked to call my mother and I just remember the looks I got from the staff that heard me, when I told my mother everything that happened. Back then I thought it was disgust, but now looking back I'm pretty sure it was shock. I ended up being taken home rather than just given a new pair of pants.
3. Creative differences.
My son's first grade teacher handed out coloring sheets without directions, and my son colored his pig blue instead of pink. This wretched woman told my son that she was going to show his paper to every single class in school and that all of them were going to make fun of him for it. He told me that he was struggling not to cry in class.
On our walk home that day, I reminded him that artists like Picasso became well-known for not following the rules, when it came to art. I pointed out that one of his favorite books, Green Eggs and Ham, wouldn't exist without some rule-breaking for what was normal. The next day, he told his teacher before class started, "My mom said Dr. Seuss and Picasso didn't follow the rules all the time, either. So I'm going to color how I want." A few hours later, he was happily scribbling with crayons and she tried to mock him again. He looked up at her and said, "We've already been over this," and went back to what he was doing.
When I was in first grade, that sort of thing would have - and did, in fact - break me. I might not have done him any favors by essentially telling him to ignore his teacher, but I'm still so proud of him for refusing to let her bully him.
2. The black and white terror.
So back in 1st grade I was at this private school and despite not enjoying reading I actually loved school and had a ton of friends and it was great, got along with everyone.
One day my sister stayed home sick and my parents dropped me off and as I was walking in I said hi to the nun that taught the other 1st grade class. She said hi and I kept walking. As I was approaching the end of the hall she dropped her keys, I heard so I turned around and looked, in between her and I were 2 4th grade boys I recognized from my sisters class. They started to approach her to pick up her keys when she lost it and started screaming at me, that I was rude and awful and some other terrible things. The boys were confused, I was confused, they were closer, and going to help but she was furious that I didn't help her.
I got pulled out of class to talk to the principal that day, between her and the nun I really thought I did something horrible. I was punished and made to feel like I murdered this nun.
When my dad picked me up that day I just started to sob, and I didn't stop until we got home and my mom and dad and sister held me. I was having a full blown panic attack, my moral values were being questioned and I was horrified at myself. My parents were furious and they called my teacher demanding to know what happened, all she said was she was unsure and that I seemed to have a run-in with the nun.
My parents went in the next morning for answers and we got an apology from the principal but not from the nun. And I remember standing at the counter with my big sister, terrified and sad and this nun walks in and says being rude to me again, my sister is standing there horrified, the front office secretary is shocked and my mom ripped this nun a new one. The nun hadn't seen my parents there.
My parents went to the head father at this parish and read him the riot act, when he tried to defend the nun they went to our bishop, he clobbered the whole school.
But by then the damage was done, I was a target to the nun, everything I did she had a problem with. I stopped being myself at school, I became very insecure and quiet. My sister and those boys took it upon themselves to check on me as often as possible, and so they became targets too.
So at the end of the school year my parents pulled us and we went to a new school. I never got my confidence back.
Image by Prettysleepy2 from Pixabay
1. Treat them gently.
In the 8th grade I had a book report to do for 4 books all due on the same day that was way too overwhelming to do at the time. I had some serious domestic violence going on at home between my parents. Spent all my time taking care of my younger brother, cleaning up the house, cooking, and crying from all the stress. It was worth 20% of my grade and the day before it was due, I broke down and told my teacher everything; down to the time when my brother bled from his head from being hit by my dad, to the most recent attempted murder upon my mom. If I had even recieved a B, my dad would've beat the crap out of my mom for giving birth to a stupid kid.
He called child services, my parents recieved the call, and gave me the silent treatment for 3 days. They told him I lied just to get out of the assignment. The social worker told my teacher what my parents said and made the rest of my year a living hell.
He treated me with such pettiness after that and threatened to call my parents whenever I had either spoken too loud in class, or whenever I was unparticipative in gym. He called my parents for my "bad behaviour". Home life got significantly harder after that, and my parents told my entire family continuously how stupid I was for telling him. They laughed at me when I cried or got upset about it.
Years later after repressing everything I was diagnosed with severe PTSD from childhood trauma as a witness and victim of domestic violence, attempted murder thrice, and it took me 3 years in therapy to get over it - it was quick, but it was tough as it was during my university years and I ended up having to take an extra year of school to catch up mentally. I was ready to speak up about my struggles again when I couldnt function anymore as the traumatic flashbacks occured twice a week for hours at a time. I couldn't do a single thing except tremble and live in fear. I was 18 by the time I was ready to reach out for help.
I'm now 23, finishing up one more course to get complete my bachelors in business marketing. Unfortunately things did not get better with my parents. My mother is still with my dad, and after finding out I had a SO, their treatment was beyond ruthless. After one more incident, I left for good and have not had any contact since this October last year. Yes, it is still fresh and it wasn't my first time leaving but this is definitely the last time.
I was supposed to graduate at 21 but I've finally accepted that that is okay. The hardest part, though, was accepting that my relationship between my parents will never be healthy and leaving was the only thing I could do to save myself.
For all you teachers out there or for anyone working with adolescents, take the time to listen. Even if it's trivial, silly, stupid - you have the power to change their direction in life and give them the motivation to make the best out of themselves. I don't resent Mr. Gentle anymore, and making that phone call was all that he could've done. Just don't become a teacher if all you're going to do is undermine them. Your job is to guide them. Even if nothing could have been done by the authorities, he didn't need to hold whatever I said against me, truth or not. It doesn't matter.
