Was anyone else bullied by their teacher?

[Tellytibby]

I feel like I've become overly obsessed with this. But I guess that's what the trauma of bullying does to people.

When I was in school, I was bullied by my teacher who was head of the department which taught my favourite subject. He was cruel to me, made negative remarks about me to other students, ignored me and when he was alone with me in a private lesson told me to my face that I was useless and would amount to nothing.

He made my life hell.

I can't get my head round it because I was a good kid. Yeah I got a couple of detentions and daydreamer quite a lot but that's it. I didn't misbehave. Was kind. Had lots of friends. Was never a nuisance. I'm not saying that kids who misbehave should be bullied by their teachers. Nobody deserves to be bullied. But it might help make it make sense.

15 years on I still think about it regularly. I fantasise about what I would say if I bumped into him in the street. Being bullied by a child is one thing
Being bullied by your teacher is just a whole other level.

Has anyone else ever come across this before?

I saw this in "Similar threads" and thought I'd answer as you didn't get an answer when you posted last month. Sorry you experienced this. Must have been really hard.

I've just started a thread like this and just come across yours. I know exactly what you mean. Children bullying children is very different to adults doing it. It's totally bizarre. I wish I could confront my teacher bully too. I wonder how brave she would be now that I can stand up for myself and answer back.

I'm sorry this happened to you also

Oh very similar! Mine said I wasn't up to doing her subject at A Level even though I got an A for GCSE (this was before stars) and ended up with an A for A Level and I got the top mark with the exam board in one component. She just hated me.

My PE teacher did. I was a bigger girll - not fat just taller and she used to make comments about me being so big to the other girls in my class and laugh at me when we ran. I still remember the things she said now decades later. To make matters worse, she was friends with my Mum whom I never told about the bullying at the time. I did tell her later and she was shocked that it happened!

I had a French teacher who every time he came in the room said, directly to me, "it's respectful to stand when a teacher enters the room" because I was very small

I had a teacher when I was 7/8 who hated me. I think because she hated my gobby older sister. I was very quiet and studious.

She would berate me in front of the whole class and hold up my maths book telling everyone how stupid I was for getting all my maths wrong. She said my mum would be shocked if she could see my work so I took it home. She had been marking my work wrong when it was right. My mum came to speak to her and after she left she told everyone I couldn't follow instructions because she had not told me to show my mum and how stupid I was.

She refused to teach me again and I had to move to a new class. I never recovered from this. I couldn't make friends with groups already formed and most teachers made things difficult for me.

Mrs Robertson.

My PE teacher. Yes, I was pretty useless at games, but then she made zero effort to teach me or interest me in anything. I was perfectly willing to exercise. Given that every other teacher manages to differentiate according to the ability of children in the relevant class, she must have been pretty useless to be unable to do so in my case.

I got back at her in the summer, though. Unknown to her, I loved swimming, and she had a real shock when she expected to see me hanging back and shivering on the side of the pool to discover I was consistently one of the first in. She hated having to put me in teams. Also, I used to sign up for swimming on non-games days, so she had to go and supervise the school's not-very-inviting outdoor pool for me and other hardy types no matter how bad the weather was. 😁

I remember a really really horrible teacher when I was about 7 or 8. I struggled constantly with maths and she used to make me stand up whilst she shouted, literally roared at me constantly about how thick I was and if I paid attention then I wouldn't keep getting it wrong.

I was a bright kid otherwise, very quiet and studious. Loved reading and did well at everything else. Unsurprisingly I was terrified of getting told off, and wasn't badly behaved.

I remember her making me take the maths text book home (the only child made to) as I was behind and my parents had to help me finish it/catch me up because my being so behind was holding up the rest of the class (announced in front of said class!). I went home, and I finished it.

Took my work book back after the holiday, proud as punch to have done it. Parents had checked it, I'd got it right after a few attempts. She took one look, said 'getting your parents to tell you the answers is cheating, and we don't reward cheats DO WE CLASS?'. She made me re-do the whole text book as a punishment for my cheating.

My parents hadn't done it for me, they'd sat with me for hours helping me to understand (my Dad has a maths degree!) and she could clearly see my earlier attempts where I'd got it wrong so she knew that. She was just a vile fucking bitch. My parents weren't soft, but after that even they'd had enough and insisted I was moved to the other class.

The headmasters response? I could be moved, but the teacher wasn't to blame for the 'personality clash'. Wow.

Oh, and as an adult in my early forties I've been diagnosed with dyscalculia, autism and ADHD. I'm still no thicko, I have a successful career, and hold a senior position .... however numbers just do not compute in my wonkily wired noggin!

Foul woman. I understand her missing the additional needs/neurodivergence, this was the 90s and no teachers (or anyone!) spotted it. But the outright bullying of a child was disgraceful.

I had a really vicious, wicked teacher when I was at primary. 40 years on and I still can't believe she was allowed to be a teacher. She had a famous brother whose biography went some way towards explaining why she was such an abusive bastard (awful childhood) but it still cheers me up when I remember she's dead. She caused damage to the lives of an awful lot of children, kids who did fuck all to deserve it.

At primary school one teacher really disliked me, she hated my poor handwriting, my quietness, just everything about me really. One day she went too far and slapped my hand, I went home crying and my Dad took me back at the end of the day to have a word with her, he wasn't an aggressive man but I was his favourite and he was really not happy with her. I've never seen anyone have a personality change so fast as she did that day, she denied everything and was sugary sweet, unfortunately I had proof of her dislike - we all took a turn writing a page in the class book and when she tried to find my entry it wasn't there because she'd torn it out. She got through the rest of the year by basically ignoring me. Miss Cocker, you were a total cow and I hope Karma bit your arse good and proper

My first housemisstress at boarding school when I was 11 hated me. She gathered all the girls in our year group into the common room and said 'who here doesn't like Motomum?'... everyone put their hand up except one. About 15 girls who had known me about a month. She didn't do it to anyone else - the meeting was to tell me that no one liked me. That was it. I was devastated and haven't had a friend since. In fact the other day I had to tell my neighbour something in the playground and I said to my dh when I got home I'm sure she's gone over to her friends complaining what a b#### I am. I don't think I'll ever actually recover from it...

My A level "x" teacher did for about a year. Eventually she called a meeting with me and apologised, apparently she was annoyed because I had to miss one lesson every fortnight (there was a scheduling issue with subject Y so i missed X One week and Y another. This was suggested to me by the HOY and I had no influence over it ). I didn't love her lessons but she added me as a FB friend (no idea why i accepted) and she always gushes over my pictures. I think she may have/had some bigger issues and find it rather odd.

She would do stuff like as soon as I came in halfway through thr lesson (i had to miss thr first half of a double) she would call me to the front and ask me to explain a concept she had just taught to the class and i had obviously missed! Then criticise me for not knowing. Everyone used to comment on her weird hatred of me. She also told me she felt more annoyed because I didnt't stand up to her, although that might have made it worse.

it still cheers me up when I remember she's dead.

This made me laugh, sorry. Hell mend her. I also had a horrible, bullying teacher. I wasn't a confident child and she did her best to alienate me from my friends by refusing to let me join the same sports team because I was too tall and would look like a freak (her actual words) beside the normal children. She held a class discussion once about my looks. I sometimes wonder if she's still alive and would feel nothing if she was dead. The only teacher from primary school that I wouldn't at least feel a pang of sadness for.

Yep. Gcse art teacher. My original teacher unfortunately became ill. I was predicted an A and got one in my first assignment with her. Que change of teacher. She told me I couldn't paint or draw. Told me I couldn't go to another subject activity but told someone who was behind on their work it was fine for him to go. I literally took my work on a plane, went at lunch and after school but it was never good enough. She hated my brother and I feel this started it. I want to drop art but my tutor wouldn't let me, instead I sat in his lessons to do my work. She made me do my 10 hour exam in pencil, I had to plaster up all my fingers as I was in pain.

I used to love drawing and I cant stand it now due to her. Still to this day

Yes, in the final year of primary school. He once hit me so hard in the stomach I was winded, it was the 70's and no one gave a fuck. I hope he's dead now and slowly turning on a spit in hell.

It's so sad how much damage one angry entitled teacher can do to a child. Just for balance I'd like to say my next teacher was a lovely, lovely man who saw how nervous I was and made an effort to make me feel better, I loved him then and I still remember him very fondly now

I've posted a couple of times about Boarding Schools, let's just say they're not my thing but this is an example of why. I had a History teacher who hated me, based mainly on being a scholarship kid and not from old money. He would criticise and then get really angry most lessons. One day I failed to answer a question so he threw one of those old Quink ink bottles which hit the side of my head and caused a bad cut which the school nurse closed up, but it bled badly. I still have a visible dint on my skull. I told my parents and they decided not to follow it up with the school.

I had some bell end teachers. I remember being physically pushed by one in the early 90s. I was about 7 and he was this big strong man. I really hurt myself. One teacher thrived on humiliation. She read my homework out to the class and did a slow voice on the bits that I did wrong so everyone laughed. Fuck that was awful. She told my parent I was a stick in the mud. A few years later she took me for A level and seemed surprised I got all As. That was my fuck you moment.

Unfortunately teaching attracts some complete wankers. My mum spoke about the nuns. Women who hated children she said. She has some horrid stories.

not a teacher but a sports coach (outside of school) No one wanted to upset him because he was a volunteer so no one said anything. but he was a bully and a horrible man. it wasn't just me he bullied, but many kids. I stopped going to his sessions which meant I missed out on valuable training time. I was relieved when he finally gave it up. what made it worse was that one of my good friends was his 'favourite'. he did have favourites, only one at a time, but always a girl.

I had an english teacher in year 7 who was new to the school, she was lovely for the first term, really encouraging and said how much she liked my writing and put me forward for a poetry competition.
Then she met my parents at our schools christmas fair and went dead sour.
She didn't submit the poem I wrote and said I was being a horrible show off for thinking I was any good. She made rude comments all the time about my (ginger) hair, held my plait once and pretended to cut it off with paper scissors, then laughed at me for moving away and said I was vain for being "so protective" over my horrible hair. She moved me from my group table and put me at a single desk in the corner "because I think I'm so special". Gave me demerits for having a 'smug look on my face' and for 'being cocky' when I raised my hand to answer a question. It was such bitchy school girl type stuff which was so weird coming from an adult teacher.

I told my mum that she was being horrible to me, she asked who and it turns out she went to college with my parents and had a crush on my dad, she had asked him out at a party and he said no as he had started dating my mum, who was the year below. She did bitchy stuff to my mum fkr the rest of college, like spitting gum into her hair and spreading rumors that she gave my dad chlamydia.

It really upset me at the time, that she had gone from being really nice to hating me for something I had nothing to do with and it did make me self consious at the time- especially of my hair and ever looking like I was showing off.
But I think because I have a reason for it it helped and now she just seems like a sad, pathetic woman who never got over being rejected and took that out on a 11 year old.

PE teacher. Dumpy little woman who could only feel good by using whatever power she had to humiliate pre-teens. It wasn't just me but I still get enraged thinking about her.

One of my fondest memories of school is the day she took a hockey puck to the forehead at full speed.

Every single teacher (bar one) at primary

My face just didn't fit-i think it was a case of the fact my parents owned their own house (in a school full of kids from council houses-i didn't ask my parents to buy theirs)

One reacher was even more evil than the others-my narc mother made a point of making friends with this bitch so I could never dob her in as I wouldn't be believed

This woman would rip up my work,refuse to help if I didn't understand something,deny me a pencil to work with-and have a go at me because i couldnt work without one and once made me work on a maths sum for months-it turned out the answer book was wrong (not for other kids on the same sum tho)

I thrived at secondary school-my face didn't exactly fit but it was better

Years later,I'm walking down the street and this teacher came out of nowhere and tried to coo over my baby in her pram while being fake friendly to me

I told her to fuck off and to take her fake,bullying arse with her

She had the nerve to look shocked and next thing I know,my narc mother was on the phone having a go at me for being rude!

Teacher had rang her to tell on me,knowing my mother cares more about her image than me

I sent a message back saying that if she ever came me again,id put her on her arse (I mean it-i still would)

I know this woman lost her husband and dd within 6 months of each other a few years after I left the school

I feel for the husband and dd-they didn't deserve to die the way they did

Mrs fisher-i will never forgive you or your colleagues (who egged each other on)

I hope you all burn in hell

I had one that tried . Sadly for her, the most she got from me was anger . She never actually managed to hurt or upset me. Most of the time I just rolled my eyes and/or refused to answer her questions. Worst she could do was to fuck up my grades in class, but meh. Her face when I got top grades at my baccalaureate in her subject was priceless. She always told me I would fail. Even better , her favourites got less points than me.

Yep. Horrible PE teacher straight out of central casting. I was an academic kid, and I enjoyed some sports like gymnastics but not athletics or hockey, which were her favourites. I was smaller than average and had a terror of being hit with hockey sticks or tripping over hurdles and smashing my face. My mum was a teacher at the same school and I kept telling her how horrible she was and my mum did nothing. She also started picking on my younger sister because she hated me.

The day I found out she’d died was like a balm to my soul. Her reign of terror over small weedy tween girls was finally over.

I witnessed it in school. I had a subject where there was only 12 of us in the class. One girl was constantly picked out by the teacher for everything for the two years we had him. I mean from the the way she sat (no different from the rest of us), the tone of her voice, the way she looked at board even. He used to bring eleven handouts to class and just exclude her. The rest of the class noticed straight away and made sure that she was never left alone with him. We raised it with other staff but the couple who believed us were dismissed by higher up teachers. Sadly her parents did not believe that this was happening with no reason. He only recently passed away and I met her mother out shopping and she mentioned how sad it was that he passed away. She seemed shocked when I said that I was more upset that her daughter went two years with being bullied by him.