The Anti-Inspiration and Teacher-Bullies and Trauma

[dawn_felagund]

I started to write up this as a comment by someone on a friend's LJ, but it was getting very personal very fast--and therefore a little weird to be putting someone I didn't know well in the position of having to reply to it--and I thought it'd be better here. I somehow ended up talking about kids being bullied by teachers, and this opened a

Comments

[brookeoflorien]

Anti-inspiration is a good word for it. I had some of the same type of teachers - and I wasn't even the most hated student in the school, I can remember students that were treated far worst (as in fights broken up by slamming the student into the concrete floor). I think it confused some of my college professors why I would go to their offices and snap at them for making jokes like "Well, we all know that you're in this major because you're not good at math" in front of their classes, because the answer would always be something about how they didn't mean me/it was true for some of my classmates/whatever, and I would just argue back that it's only a joke if nobody is crying

[engarian]

Anti-inspiration from teachers is, unfortunately, too common. I had several teachers in my own experience who despised me for a variety of reasons. The band teacher I had in High School finally tripped my trigger and my solid record of straight "A"'s in music brought my parents into the battle. Making an appointment with the school principal and the band teacher resulted in my "D" grade being corrected to an "A", but also in a mandate that I would no longer attend music classes taught by that teacher. I switched to choir

[shirebound]

Thank you for sharing this. From the bottom of my heart.

[dreamflower02]

PE teachers seem more susceptible to that sort of behavior than other teachers. I never had one who went to the lengths your teacher went to, but I was consistently put last on teams, and none of my PE teachers ever reprimanded the bullies who picked on me or some of the other less popular kids. Perhaps it's the whole competitive sports thing, where only the fit and skilled are considered worthy

[batchix]

I went through something similar as a kid. In 5th and 6th grade I had a teacher that was a horrible bully. In 5th grade she was my teacher for every. single. class. I found out later she was supposed to have been fired and I wasn't even supposed to have her- but the union pulled strings because her husband was a local politician(and super nice, go figure that one out). She did the same thing, where she would single out one or two of the unpopular kids and make their lives miserable. I got second place in the geography bee in 6th grade and she chewed me out for coming in second... even though no one else from our pod had lasted beyond the second round of questions. She came into class, grabbed me by the arm and bodily dragged me out of the room one day. I was terrified. I didn't know that my parents had opted out of the "allow the teacher to spank my child". I was sure she was going to hit me. No, I was supposed to get my picture taken for the paper for the Geography bee. It was supposed to be a reward. In the photo I look