To think I should’ve reported her at the time

[awkwardsitu]

Name changed as not to identify to previous posts.

I was catching up with a school friend earlier and we got chatting about one of our old teachers.

I was in high school about ten years ago. One of my subject teachers developed a bit of an intense friendship with me. Middle aged woman with family of her own, including school aged kids.

She would email me on her personal email address while I was still a student and then eventually gave me her phone number, probably around the time I was due to finish school. She took it upon herself to collect my leavers memory book when it arrived at school, which meant I didn’t get the opportunity to go and collect it with my friends like I had planned. She then asked if she could drop it off at my house and meet my parents. They agreed but found it unusual, yet had a cup of tea with her nonetheless. She had brought along a gift for me she brought back from holiday. It got stranger as she was messaging multiple times a day, about random things, at times asking me for advice about whether to leave her job, on her marriage and how to deal with issues her children were having. She would ring me on an evening after she finished work and we could be talking for up to an hour.

I remember telling my mum it was getting excessive and she said she thought it was weird and to stop contacting her. Together we composed a message to this teacher to say I was going to be really busy with my new Saturday job. I never contacted her again. I bumped into her in the shops a couple of months after and she was very frosty as though I had seriously upset her.

I look back and think, I was 15/16 and she was in her 40s. Why did she feel the need to message me and not any other friends or family? I find it all disturbing. My mum later confessed how she thought the whole thing was odd from the start but wanted to give me autonomy to manage it myself so long as she was aware.

Do you think it was just a misfired attempt at friendship or something different? I do wonder if I should have reported it - if it were a male teacher, I’m confident my parents would’ve been straight to the school - so double standards surely aren’t fair?!

Your thoughts?

I had a lesbian tutor at university. It was very obvious that she fancied me and it all got very difficult - I had to go and ask for a different tutor. I did not say why as I did not want her getting into trouble for her approaches, and I knew that she had just suffered a bereavement. It was all utterly bizarre as she knew I had just got married!

I was very young as I had gone up to university a year early and I really was not able to deal with it.

@Waltwaky not my experience but someone else's but it was in plain site. She would let a particular girl go.and smoke behind the pre fab sheds. I'm sure the girl.was having a rough time at home. And honestly I was too. But this teacher took a bit too much of a liking to her. The girl was always angry and aggressive and the teacher would be all over her and hugging her and calming her down. But it was more like watching a teen fawn over another teen.

We had another girl get drunk in the toilets and she wasn't bothered etc but this one particular girl was always her main priority. It was all a bit weird and a bit too much.

Wow, a similar thing happened to me too, also the same time period. Middle aged married female teacher but with no kids. Technically I started our 'friendship' as she was my favourite teacher and I loved her subject and had a few things in common, plus I was a bit of an outcast so I was thrilled to have made a new friend. My teacher was really keen to meet my parents and we all went out socially. She told me lots of personal information about her own problems such as falling out with family members, what she thought of her colleagues, illnesses she had, all sorts really that I can't remember. My mum thought it was a bit weird but the teacher seemed so nice and I was so happy. As I said, as I was a teenager I thought it was amazing to have this 'secret friendship' with a teacher who was telling me all sorts of gossip and who wrote me birthday cards and bought me gifts, I'd never had such a close friendship. Now that I'm older and have worked with teenagers, I look back and wonder WTF was a woman in her 40s/50s doing hanging out with a teen! Nothing really bad happened and I never got the vibe that she had a crush on me, but I sometimes wonder what her motive was. Strangely she dropped me like a stone when I was 18.

I'm really unnerved that a few of us have had very similar experiences

It might have been an ego thing. She could have thought you would look up to her and regard her as an "inspirational teacher" for the rest of your life.

Some of my university peers who went into teaching always made it know that their main goal was to have influence over younger people. I think it's bit odd but it's not that theyre paedophiles or anything dramatic like that, it's just that they are egocentric and view it as being in a position on power and that appeals to them. Maybe she is like that?

I’d say grooming as well OP. Totally inappropriate for a 40+yo to want a friendship with a 16yo student.

I left school in 2010, I can remember my friends and I asking all the “cooler” teachers if we could add them on Facebook. They were mortified and all said no. So attitudes weren’t much different back then to what it is now.

This sounds very odd, OP. I remember back in the late 90s / early 00s that there were a couple of female teachers in their 20s who would be a bit more candid when chatting to me and other female pupils about non school related topics during something like a school trip etc, but it was in a kind of big sisterly advice context, rather than offloading their personal problems on us, their pupils.

They certainly wouldn't have dreamt of sharing their personal phone numbers with us, and this was over 20 years ago!

She majorly stepped over the line there. It honestly sounds like she’d developed a crush on you. Taking your file so she’d have an excuse to visit your house and meet your parents? Creepy.

I remember a male teacher striking up a too-friendly relationship with one of my friends around year 10 or 11 (this was the late 90s). He left the school before we did, but he gave her his address and they wrote to each other for a while. Eurgh.

Mid 2010s was when I did my teacher training, and I vividly remember the “beware of social media” and “don’t make friends with kids” training sessions, so it is absolutely not a recent thing.

At a school I taught at there was a case where a female colleague was dismissed (and ultimately banned from teaching at a professional misconduct hearing) for having a personal “friendship” with a student. The girl was vulnerable and at first it started with the teacher giving her her personal number so she could call and ask for help if she needed it - sounds very caring from one perspective, but is completely inappropriate and against all the rules. It escalated and long story short, she introduced the girl to a friend of hers who she believed could mentor her, but this was all done outside the knowledge of the school and this mentor was not DBS checked, so the child was put at significant risk of harm as a result of this woman’s attempts to “help”. It’s hard to know if there was ever any malicious intent from the teacher, or if she was just seriously, seriously misguided in her desire to help this young person, but the rules are there for a reason and it’s right that she is no longer teaching.

I’m sorry that you went through an experience that made you feel uncomfortable. It was completely wrong of the teacher to behave this way towards you, regardless of the motives. It might be worth sending an email to the current Head - if she is still teaching and they know where, they’ll be obliged to pass on your concerns to her current employer.

I don't know if your teacher was motivated by a crush on you but her behaviour was definitely inappropriate and I'm very surprised your parents didn't report it to the school to be honest. I certainly would if a teacher showed such an inappropriate interest in my teen 😳

I had a male teacher in his 60s do this to me and my parents thought it was hilarious. Nothing ever untoward happened and I think it was the sign of the times but I wouldn’t let it happen now.

At that age you knew it made you feel weird but you wouldn’t have known how inappropriate the teacher was being in the way you understand now that you more life experience. Maybe she was grooming you, maybe she was lonely and desperate and didn’t understand boundaries, but texting and calling a student for a personal chat isn’t on. I think your parents should definitely have reported it even though there was less understanding of safeguarding at that time

I’m also of the opinion that your parents should have taken action at the time.

10 years ago was not much different that now in terms of safeguarding.

I think adults that don't work in education or sectors where safeguarding is a big topic don't always realise the signs of a potential predator or what concerning behaviour looks like.

What she did goes against absolutely everything you are taught about safeguarding as a teacher, not only towards a student, but protecting yourself as a professional aswell.

Its disturbing how many women have turned out to be abusive towards their own children, or children they take care of, yet as a society we don't see women as a risk the way we do men.

I hope this woman isn't still teaching, if she is I might consider reporting it. Your piece of information could be the missing part of a puzzle for someone else.

my era is similar and five or take a couple years and your post had me flashing back to all the inappropriate relationships/friendships/grooming. Regardless of safeguarding, there’s people who do the wrong thing. Maybe the lines are clearer now but back then or even earlier most teachers knew how to be preforssional. The ones that don’t will disregard safeguarding.

Across my own school and others, myself and others there was:

• Gay male teacher who used to take a group of (vulnerable) boys out drinking and take about intimate problems they were having (often teen boy penis stuff kinda things) and they’d all jump to his defence, and even get weepy and say it was homophobia to assume that because he was gay he was grooming - words he’d clearly put into their mouths.
• female teacher who groomed a fellow 13 year old student into a relationship - they were “together” for years in secret
• Dick picks from male teacher
• innapropriate behaviour from male teacher to many many girls across the years
• Inappropriate messages from more than one teacher to different students
• At college a female teacher who slept with two of the boys (at least)
• at uni a few male lecturers going through the vulnerable students telling them he loved them, sleeping with them then moving on

quite honestly I’m surprised So many people are shocked by this of haven’t experienced more than one dodgy teacher. I didn’t go to “bad” schools btw.

op your experience was traumatic though I’m sure and will have left a mark. I wouldn’t be annoyed at your mum as at least she was watching. At 15 girls can be stubborn and think their mum is trying to meddle - if she’d come straight out and said no you’re being groomed by a freak you might have gone further to the women rather than away from her. Obviously hindsight sure. But also, even back then, even now, women are just viewed as less of a threat.

look at that post the other day about the woman whose son 12/13 or thereabouts was being directly messaged by another mother and going behind the op’s back to arrange things with him and convince him to ignore his mum etc. SO many people were like “I don’t think she’s grooming him but yeah it’s not cool”. …?! Why? She’s showing predatory signs and separating him from his family yet just because she’s a woman people assume she couldn’t be a sexual predator.

Thing is, we like to think that people go into teaching for noble reasons, but people go into it for all sorts of reasons, including nefarious ones. People might want to be seen as the hero, the older sister, the confidant, or they might just be a predator, and the best way to find kids is to work with them.

There are a couple of teachers at my sons school and I honestly question why on Earth they are teaching as they honestly seem to hate kids and do everything in their power to make their school lives a misery.

When I was at 6th form in the 90s there was a male teacher probably in his early 30s who would take us out drinking, we’d go back to his flat etc. He was never dodgy and I think it was more about being kind of a “cool older guy” that we looked up to, but now I look back and think, why did this man want to hang out with people 15 years younger than him?

Yes, your account is classic textbook material for inappropriate teacher behaviour on our school child protection training courses. We are taught that child abuse often starts with boundary crossing and over time ends up in the red zone.
That teacher may have been checking out how close you were to your parents by asking to go to your house to drop off the gift.

She was being completely inappropriate and she sounds pretty bonkers. I am surprised your parents didn’t put a stop to it. You were underage, their responsibility and they were aware of her weird behaviour towards you. They should not have left it up to you to deal with.

but the op told her mum it was excessive and they composed a letter to her to put a stop to it.
thank goodness you had a good relationship with your mum op @awkwardsitu

If this had happened 30 years ago it would be wrong but boundaries were less clear so it would be more understandable that your parents didn't report it. But really ten years ago they should have. Maybe it was because she was a woman they saw her as less of a threat. I guess it's a big decision as she would probably have lost her job.

I remember in the early nineties a friend of mine being befriended by a male teacher they had a common interest in acting but it ended up with them writing letters to each other (parents knew!) he moved to another school and they stayed in touch for several years. This started w hen she was 10. Gives me the heebie jeebies now.

This is wrong. I have reported staff for giving students who are leaving their personal email addresses and phone numbers. This is to safeguard the staff member as much as the child. It is fine to stay in contact, but not to seek out that contact, and always over school emails which can be traced and not doctored. I am still in touch with some students who left 10 years ago but still over the school system. Despite them being well into their 20's, in management training courses, PGCEs and one even a home owner! At this point I could probably move to a personal email address but I don't see the point, and I still see them as a student, although I am proud of the adults they have become.

It was 10 years ago not 100, safeguarding was still in place and it would still have been inappropriate. I was in school in the 90s and this would have been considered something to be reported, especially exchanging personal numbers, that's always been a big no.

I am also quite surprised that your parents were so passive about this behaviour once you told them about the full extend. I don’t think that was the right time and situation for a 15/16 year old to assert themselves considering the obvious school related dynamic.