If you could sit in a room with a teacher of your choice from your childhood and tell them anything, what would you say?

[BruhWhy]

I often think about running into my P.E teacher and letting her know that what she didn't know about me was that I was being neglected by my parents, and was ashamed about the way I looked and smelled... also ashamed and worried about the fact I didn't have period products, and that's why I made excuses and forged notes to get out of P.E - I wasn't lazy and stupid, she didn't need to shout at me in front of everyone and say these things, all she needed to do was ask and I'd have told her...

I'd also love to tell my lovely English teacher that him telling me that my essay was the best he'd read that year was the first compliment I'd ever gotten from a teacher, and I still think about the way that made me feel to this day

Thanks for all the waiata Māori you taught us and thanks for making your marae ours. We pākeha kids needed you to do that, to teach us not to fear tikanga Māori. Please know that your manaakitanga has formed our attitudes and careers in adulthood. Teachers like you in the 80s saved and revived te reo Māori.

I would say thank you to my maths teacher. I was deeply unhappy and self harming at school for years, for various reasons. I was unhappy and often crying. She was the only teacher in my entire school life who asked me if anything was wrong and said she was there if i needed anything. I never took her up on her offer, but I never forgot her kindness either.

My old maths teacher from Junior school. No, I’m not crap at maths, stop shouting at me you old boot! I was ‘sick’ because I didn’t want to be in another lesson of yours with you telling me I’m shit at maths and you bullying me.
Well, I worked in finance for a few years and I saw you in a supermarket with your sour face. You didn’t see me slink off in my Mercedes 🖕🏻
Who’s great at maths now!

I would tell the PE teacher to fuck off you sadistic bastard. Making fat kids run the Cross Country in gym knickers in January was never going to help us develop a love of fitness.

I'd tell my art teacher who bollocked me for not turning in every Thursday to fuck off too. She should have spoken to social services and they would have told her why I wasn't in every bloody Thursday.

My old English teacher committed suicide and I felt so sad. He was a good teacher.

I would thank him for 2 years of being the best teacher I've ever had. He was fair to all of us, encouraged us, treated me with care and respect and gave me an interest in the world and art. He was also fun and I always got the feeling he was genuinely fond and proud of us all.

When everything went wrong after that at least I could remember a time when I was liked and was happy. he was part of that.

Mr Talbot, I still remember nearly everything you taught me for O-level history. You were an exceptional teacher and the reason I ended up doing z history degree. Thank you.

Miss Farrow, thank you for getting me to understand set theory - you were the third teacher who tried and it felt amazing to understand it!

I'd love to go back and tell my kindergarten teacher she was the best ever, sadly she passed many years ago. I was very lucky that I still kept in touch with her as she got older and retired, she was a lively spirit until the end.

Mr Rhodes, you rocked. Your confidence in me at 26 was the foundation of my A levels, the degree no one thought I could pass, my PhD and my subsequent career.

You left teaching to do your PhD. Dr Rhodes, thank you. Everything else was falling apart, you didn’t know you were my life buoy.

Mrs. McLean, you were downright mean and unsupportive to a shy and sensitive kid who had moved towns and schools 3/4 of the way through Grade 2. I was petrified of you. You put a red line down my printing pages because my former tea her taught me a different was of starting a line.

Mrs. Brown, you were mean and nasty. You made us write lines when we missed answering a times tables question fast enough according to your stop watch. I was constantly frightened of you.

To both of you, I developed a stomach ulcer at age 8, I am quite sure because you both went out of your way to terrify your students rather than nurture them. Your approaches worked very badly on a sensitive kid who wanted to obey and do well.

My yr 3 teacher organised a surprise party for me when my family were moving abroad due to my dads work. Its such a memorable moment, and the only surprise party I've ever had in my life!

I would ask my headmistress, who was also Mother Superior, exactly how she thought she was reflecting her Christian values as a teacher and headmistress. She clearly thought we were a bunch of country bumpkins, worthless heathens for the most part. Frankly, she was a bitch.

Id probably tell most my primary school teachers that I wasn't lazy or misbehaving, I had adhd , asd and was living in a very difficult situation.

Miss Long, my PE teacher. I hated PE, but thank you for noticing I was upset, getting me to say why, feeding me biscuits and “making” me tidy the sports equipment at lunchtime to get me out the way of the girls who were relentlessly bullying me. You were the first person I told. And it did get better. Although I still don’t like hockey, sorry about that!

High school English teacher, it was not ok to take your shoes off while teaching. Especially when you were bare foot. The boys took sneaky photos on their phones and put them on MySpace. Otherwise you weren't at all a bad teacher and we generally liked you. The shoe thing was just weird!

I'd tell my year 2 teacher from 1977/8 what a fantastic teacher she was. I remember so much I learned that year. She must have put her heart and soul into teaching to make it so varied and creative that it stood out so much in my memory. Still remember books she read to us. The little wooden horse, The Lion the witch and the wardrobe. Songs we sang, scripture, poems, writing. Trip to London zoo and the library. Dinosaur and Holland projects

Dear Miss Quinn
Thank you for taking me aside after lunch one day when I was in 1st year (secondary school) to ask if everything was ok at home as I wasn't doing well at school. Sorry I couldn't tell you what was going on. I wasn't hiding it, I just didn't understand that the things going on in my house were unusual.
I'm still grateful you asked.

Mrs Cowan. (Who hated me because my mother was chair of governors and had opposed her appointment as deputy head). It’s unacceptable to send a 10 year old out of the class for reading quietly. I know I was supposed to be doing maths. But I’d already finished all of the maths books in the school. It was your job to set me some maths to do - in a pre-internet era there was literally no way I could have done this myself. And you were bloody lucky that I quietly entertained myself rather than disrupting your class. Oh, and I know you disapproved of me going to the out of catchment grammar school. But it was the making of me.

I wasn't "retarded" (they used that language for LD) I was severely short sighted which was why I misspelled words of the board & wandered round the classroom (trying to get closer to the board because you sat me at the back)
& by the way as a very mature student I got a 2/1

Mr Roe. Thank you for being surprised that I wasn’t aiming at uni and making me change my mind. I had a blast.

Oh, and I never believed the rumours about you either.

To my maths teacher, i I would say, you shouldn’t have told me I would never be good at maths. It took me until I was nearly 40 to realise you were wrong. I just needed to develop the confidence to say when I didn’t understand things because after being shown different ways to understand, I now have a B in GCSE maths.

So many to thank. Mr Lock from primary who took me from "clay class" taught me to read and reach my potential. He taught me what my parents had failed to.

Mrs Ryan from secondary who taught me that you needn't be embarrassed to love learning. That being kind was the best thing you can be. That taught me that chemistry is fucking kick ass!

Thank you Margaret my college tutor for teaching me feminism. Gently and kindly and with such grace.

Mr Jones - when I was 8 and you told me I wasn’t trying hard enough to sing whilst we were rehearsing the school production in front of the whole school, I remember the embarrassment still of everyone looking at me. I was singing - but my mum had complained about an indoor shoe policy and I think that was your revenge. Headteacher of same school shouted at those who had packed lunches as he felt we should be having school dinner, made me shake and cry I was so scared.

Secondary school - to Mrs S why didn’t you find out why one of the girls in our class came in with dirty clothes, and hadn’t washed regularly instead of picking on her for having dirty fingernails- where was the safeguarding?

Mrs W you were the most fantastic dedicated teacher and I got my best O level grade in your subject - thank you!

Thank you for believing in me and thank you for trying to reach out when you saw how much I was struggling. I know I brushed you off, but your attempt has stayed with me ever since and just the fact that you made it helped so much.

To the art teacher who told me I "thought I was special" because of my disability. No. I didn't do my homework because I hated your subject. Nothing to do with my disability. Your comments about it said nothing about me and everything about your shitty assumptions.

Giving me a detention for not doing the homework would have been infinitely preferable to having you shout at me about my disability for ten minutes - and if you really were treating me like any other student, that's what you'd have done. You're just a nasty person.

I'd tell them that I was deeply depressed with crippling anxiety, I hated school and I hated being at home. I needed help.