To still feel quite resentful about some of my teachers?

[Mistywintermornings]

I have name changed here.

Before I start, I recognise that this was a totally different era. I started school in 1986, did my GCSES in 1998 and A levels in 2000 so obviously it was a long time ago. And many of my teachers were lovely people and very kind, patient and encouraging.

But I did have some really bad ones. My y6 teacher was awful. When I look back, I realise how disturbing his behaviour actually was. I had a friend at the time who was very manipulative - she’d be unkind to me and bully me a bit, really, but if I tried to ‘escape’ and play with other girls, she’d cry and beg and scream. He wouldn’t let me move away from her in class, even though she kept getting me into trouble. But worse than that, he’d single me out repeatedly in class and tell me off for nothing and give me a lunch time detention and then he’d tell me off until I was crying and then cuddle me and touch me. I now realise it was a form of grooming but at the time I barely knew what periods were (my parents never told me anything about sex, not even the basics of puberty) so I had no idea that an adult might want to hurt a child. I believed I was a terrible person for getting into so much trouble so I was scared to tell my parents.

At secondary school my mum rang up to complain about one of my teachers and she should not have done that and I didn’t tell her to. But the teacher took it out on me. She made me sit completely alone at the front for the full year I had her (this was year 7) and she once blamed me for ripping a poster in the room. I was a very polite child at the time and I definitely tried to politely explain I hadnt done it and I remember her backing me into a corner and screaming right in my face (I remember she covered me in spit!) until I was crying and saying sorry, sorry over and over just to get her to stop.

They were only two bad eggs but they both really massively affected my time at school. I had such a rocky y6/y7 transition and I was always thought of as a difficult child and I wasn’t

I know it’s stupid. I’ve been clearing out some stuff and looking through some old photos.

Sorry forgot to add that of course YANBU

Changing in front of the teacher and the boys for PE is still the norm in primary school, I'm quite pissed off that DD still has to in yr5. She's started developing!

There are good teachers and bad teachers, then and now, as in any job.

My DM can be a confrontational pain in the arse, but when my Y6 teacher singled me out and tried to call me stupid/made me sit apart from the rest of the class for days, my DM called her out on it as being bullying and would not stand for the school’s whitewashing of it. She did tell me something that has always stuck with me - that just because it looks like authority, doesn’t mean it is authority and you don’t have to go along with everything. Question it.

Alternatively, I am very grateful to two of my secondary school teachers who was incredibly kind to me when I suffered panic attacks in secondary school. I remember their names. And I remember one panic attack where they hustled me into the office, and played the actual bloody accordion whilst singing songs in Russian and French 😂 unconventional but it worked!

I think about my school days a lot OP and you are not BU in how you remember some teachers.

I lived in a small village as a child and everyone knew everyone. When I was in yr 1 (so just 5 going on 6) I was moved up a year into year 2 because I was, apparently, not being challenged by the work in yr 1 (this was mid-80s and would never happen now). Anyway the teacher who’s class I was put into was absolutely vile to me. She would shout at me in front of the whole class, compare the work I was doing to others in the class as an example of how not to do something, make me stay in a break and lunchtimes until I had done work to her satisfaction (which I could never achieve), and give treats to everyone in the class except me (I remember vividly that the class had an advent calendar with sweets in that everyone had a turn in opening except for me - I was utterly devastated) I became a nervous wreck at 5 years old. Eventually my mum went in to speak to her and she said to my mum “well you can take a horse to water...) my mum kicked up an almighty fuss with the Headteacher and I was moved back down into year one. I still think about it a lot and and am ultra careful with my own DDs, listening out for them telling me about anything that doesn’t seem right at school.

My maths teacher called me stupid in front of the class and that was in 2006. I got my own back, any time she spelt a word wrong or spoke incorrectly I would correct her. Bitch. I'm not good at maths, fully admit that, but you don't call the child stupid in front of the class. No one even laughed about it, think they were embarrassed for her.

A teacher in our village was outed regarding his cruelty in a novel about a local woman's childhood, the teacher had died years ago, but his family felt the pain and the shame.

We had a weird secretary at secondary school. During one cooking lesson I burned my wrist and had to go to her for first aid. As another girl had previously burned herself more badly the same morning she refused to treat me unless I confessed to 'messing around' which wasn't the case. I felt too cowed to refuse to make a false confession and go without.

She has boasted to her friends that she was the headmistress! Thankfully one of my school friends put them straight.

I recently left the education sector after ten years. There are people in schools that really shouldn't be allowed in public service roles, let alone fucking with the minds of vulnerable youngsters. I met and worked with some really vile people.

One woman, I found out later, had been in care and had been quite severely abused herself - I realise now she was classic case of the abused becomes the abuser - awful woman. The HT adored and over promoted her because simply, she was a bully disciplinarian. I did a safeguard and it was all swept under the carpet, 11 other teaching colleague witnesses to her screaming and manhandling a child were not interviewed. Bloody awful.

The point is, Misty, that I was 5, 45 years later I've never forgiven her for the humiliation I felt. Other children were allowed to go. And, as a pp said, it can be done deliberately so that the teacher can abuse the children.

I still feel resentful about one of mine and it was 35 years ago when I was 10. My P5 teacher was a total witch. She was probably about 55-60 at the time, very much a product of the 1950s and had Victorian attitudes. She hated me for some reason, she liked the quiet little girls with pigtails who sat and said nothing and didn't like the ones who had their own ideas about things. I wasn't the only one - she let the kids who she liked sit in pairs or in groups and the rest of us had to sit Victorian style in single rows. She would pick on people for no reason and send them to stand outside the classroom for no apparent reason. She refused to let me join the school choir as I was a "troublemaker". (have to add that through the rest of my time at school, both primary and secondary not one teacher raised any concerns about my behaviour and attitude. Ever.)

She made up the curriculum as she went along - and as this was about 1982 there was nothing stopping her. We never did art as it was "messy". I don't think we did "project" type work, or science, or anything creative or expressive at all. Maths, dictation, spelling, grammar, handwriting.

It was bloody awful and I had a miserable year. Poisonous old bat who never should have been in teaching in the first place.

I get that perfectly but we know who would enjoy reading about it, not a good idea.

Sorry to hear about your experiences.

Nothing in the same league as the sexual grooming but my PE teacher was such a bitch that she has put me off sport for life. I run alone and go to the gym, I need to as I have a tendency to gain weight, not helped by meds, but I would never have the confidence to start a sporting hobby or even join a gym class or do park run.

She would single me out to humiliate such as making me do things over and over again in front of the class and scream at, getting so worked up as to be incoherent, and give me terrible grades with no explanation. I really wasn't that bad and was actually ok at certain activities! Sure as hell can't shake it off though.

I also think these things come back to you when you have kids of the same age - my youngest is now the same age as I was with the poisonous teacher and his experience is so different that it brings into focus just how crap my teacher was.

No, I feel the same.

I grew up in a house where my dad was having numerous extramarital affairs and sexually abusing my mum, amongst various other things. I was my mum's primary carer and also my sister who had undiagnosed severe autism. By 14 she was beating my mum and I up regularly. At 17 I was diagnosed with severe anxiety. GP suspected it was a reaction to my childhood.

My primary school teacher asked if she could help me (I was on work experience then and it must have been apparent I was unwell) .

She admitted they all knew things were happening in my house that shouldn't have been and that they didn't want to intervene because it might have looked like interfering.

Took me all my strength not to say anything - but in my eyes she and others had failed totally in their role. She didn't seem to see it that way and she was a fucking head of two primaries. Ignorance and poor judgement. I find it very hard to forgive and understand why they didn't help me or my family.

I had a teacher in Year 2 who was so scary. She would fly into rages at the slightest thing, and she had really long witchy hair and nails. If we weren't facing the board or facing her when we were sitting on the carpet, she would reach over and grab the top of your head, digging her nails in and squeezing your head, and twist your neck round to face her. A few parents complained and she took 'voluntary' redundancy. That was in 2000/2001

I also think these things come back to you when you have kids of the same age - my youngest is now the same age as I was with the poisonous teacher and his experience is so different that it brings into focus just how crap my teacher was.

This 100%. My memories of what happened when I was a child, and my DSis's too, came back once we had young children. Before that they were completely buried, as that enabled us to function.

I worry about the way the teaching profession is going now due to the Ofsted system. I left teaching but noticed that in order to be successful teachers were schmoozing strong characters in their classes the bullies, the badly behaved. This gets them on side but means the bullies are running the class and the school. Senior teachers all did it. Weaker characters in the class can end up being sidelined or worse. Our ofsted system creates a dog eat dog culture, a bullying culture and the teachers almost have to promote this as it's the children's view of the school and the teachers these days that informs Ofsted. Children's views are sought all the time in teacher observations even when interviewing teachers for a job. It's the stronger characters that are asked because they are the most outspoken. Things had improved but I'm worried about the current situation.

Fair enough. 😊

Yes, agree again with lizzie48. My children's teachers have been a different breed and a different league entirely to the monsters I had

I was badly bullied throughout primary school. I went to school in a tiny village school which was run by a head teacher who refused to believe bullying happened in her school.
My parents went in numerous times to complain but nothing was ever done.
The relentless bullying even resulted in me running away from home at the age of eight. The head teacher asked me why I had run away and I told her it was due to the bullying but still nothing was done.
One incident in particular has always stuck with me.
The bully (who was a boy three years older than me) convinced his friends to all attack me on the way out of school.
I was set upon by a group of ten older boys who were all punching and kicking me. I swung my school satchel to defend myself an at this point the teacher walked in and blamed me for everything. She told me that I always complained about bullying to my parents and then behaved like this.
I was devastated and crying my eyes out. When I left my Mum was waiting in the car outside. I told her what happened but she didn't bother to return to the school and correct the teacher. She feared authority and really let me down many times due to this.
When I got home, still feeling incredibly upset and worthless was when I first begun to self harm. I was eight years old!
I have never been able to forgive this teacher.
The bullying led to years of damaged self esteem and social anxiety.
It was 30 years ago and still affects my life today.