School – Verbal Abuse by Teachers!

[Anonymous]

zsazsa…during those 2.5 minutes, what do you do to inspire them?

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[Zita]

In grade 7 my teacher bitched me out in front of the whole class saying if the topic didn’t have any thing to do with boys then I wasn’t interested….just short of calling me a slut….nice eh? The topic was math…..I still don’t understand it. It’s funny the very people that are paid with our tax $$ to teach our childern, at the time my parents tax $$ to teach me and my fellow students are the very people running us down. I’m still angry that I went through 14 years of school and not one teacher cared enough to wonder what was going on with this girl, why didn’t’ she try. It seems that students that require a little effort and extra time are just a pain in their ass. It’s just easier for them to run us down then take the time to find out what’s wrong. Now I have to say later on in year this teacher did sit down with me one on one and went through some things. She reported back to my mom that as soon as she had told me some thing I forgot right away….that’s when the ball was put in mom’s corner…..

I really feel when teachers are going to school there should be some kind of education or part of a course identifying red flags of learning disabilities and/or disorders.

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[Anonymous]

in high school i was looking out the class window and daydreaming when the teacher asked me if i used Pond’s. he said to say yes so i did and then he said, “i guess you do because bathtubs aren’t big enough”. I was a little chubby you see. The class broke up laughing and i went back to looking out the window. How cruel adults can be. Children live what they learn and if children are cruel, just look at the parents. My own mother called me lazy. She was a school teacher and i wonder how she ever got to be a teacher when she paid no attention to the kids right under her nose. My whole family thinks i am odd and i have paid the price over decades by letting them tell me all my so called faults and accepting the blame and guilt heaped on me when the truth is they are just plain stupid about human beings. God i have let others ruin my life because of their ignorance and my own failure to realize i know a lot more about me than they do.

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[Anonymous]

These blogs speak for a lot of us ADDers.

I am in my 50’s and was dignosed with ADD about 15 years ago. Yeah, childhood was mostly a nightmare. Add to the undiagnosed ADD; dyslexia and Irline’s, being left-handed, being a girl in the 1960’s, living in poverty, constantly feeling stupid…..

I can’t go back there in my mind anymore. I had to let that go.

Now there is my prescription, an understanding Doctor and websites like this for info. Family and friends are still on the whole pretty non-supportive and make no attempt to understand. I find now that I’m older I can shrug things off as getting older but in my mind, I know that it’s ADD. hey, it’s all about coping. I’m just getting to the point where I start to snap when someone makes fun of me. It’s never funny, always hurtful. A really great response is, “Now why would you say that?” At least it shuts the Jerks up.

The biggest changeover was enrolling in an Ontario college a few years ago. The support and understanding was so wonderful, I cried. I cried for my horrible childhood. I cried for all the misunderstood children. I cried out of gratefullness for people who now understand my disorders.

For the first time ever, I realized that I am not an underachiever, I’m an overachiever!

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[Walter Mitty]

Third grade: I’m held from going to recess on a beautiful sunny day for an intervention with the principal. My teacher tells him that I sit and stare out the window alot and she can’t do a thing with me. The principal says: “Well I have a machine in my closet in my office that has a boxing glove on it. It uses a remote control that the teacher can use to punch you when you are not paying attention. Is that what we need to do Jimmy?”

That was about 40 years ago and I remember it like it was yesterday!

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[sketchesnscribbles]

My IEP case manager was ultimately the reason why I failed high school. During sophmore year, I went through two math teachers my first term (one teacher quit his job), I was sick a lot and my P.E. skills were lacking compared to more able-bodied persons. My case manager was always nitpicking about everything I was apparently doing wrong and not helping me solve any of the issues. He didn’t care about me as a person. He belittled me daily. To make matters worse, he ended up being my math teacher my final year of high school. I wasn’t allowed to seek help from other teachers for study hall or anything. He wasn’t good at explaining anything in his class and he was scary to ask questions to and even if you did, he would ask you how in the world you couldn’t possibly understand such a simple question. I eventually had three guts to ask him for help and he called me an idiot in front of the whole class. Every day, I fled from that classroom crying. He told the Dean that I was a discipline problem and that I didn’t put forth enough effort. His restrictions kept me from earning the credits I needed to pass high school. He told me not to even bother coming back the next year.

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[blackdog]

@sketchesnscribbles That is horrible. Is there any way you can report this idiot? I have no idea what an IEP case manager is, but there must be someone you can file a complaint with. He should never, ever be allowed to do and say things like that to a student.

I was verbally abused and made to feel very, very small and insignificant many times in school. Right up to college, where one of my instructors told me I should just drop out. And I never fought back. I just started to believe them, started to think of myself as stupid and lazy. Even though somewhere deep down on the inside I always knew it wasn’t true.

The one incident that has always stuck in my mind was in grade 2. We were making paper flowers for art and the teacher had instructed us to make the most “realistic” flower we could. Only I misheard “realistic” as “unrealistic”. So I made a beautiful purple and red flower covered in all different kinds of stickers and glitter. I was very proud of my work. And she made me throw it in the garbage. She also yelled at me and said nasty things about me in front of the whole class. But the part I remember most is having to throw my beautiful flower in the trash. I wish I had of just refused. But I was only 8 and didn’t know any better.

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[shutterbug55]

I went to high school from 1972 – 1976. Back then, ADD and Dyslexia were not clearly understood by anyone, let alone a HS counselor. They thought they were dealing with a trouble maker who was behind his class in all subjects.

Through inattention, boredom or some other reason, any counseling sessions would be completely forgotten or misinterpreted on my part. I started carrying a recorder to the sessions. This made the counselor nervous at the start, but I explained it was for my benefit, because I wanted to follow her advise and the recording would help me remember it.

I still didn’t do what she thought was in my best interest, but it stopped the constant put downs and snarky comments. I did learn several lessons from our talks, not the least of which are taking recordings of important conversations. They can fill in the gaps in my memory.

Moral to the story: I don’t know if you are actually the subject of verbal abuse from your counselors, or if that is how you remember the conversations. I wasn’t there. Let’s say you are/were. Recordings would be proof positive. Let’s say you weren’t. Recordings will fill in those crucial gaps in memory so you can get the whole message.  I still record important conversations, and I use them as another tool in my kit to cope with the world.

Hope this helps.

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[Patte Rosebank]

Yesterday, I saw a cartoon version of the “Eloise” books.

In it, Eloise rebelled under what she thought was the strictness of her tutor, and he quit.  So, she started going to “a very good” private school…where she learned what strictness REALLY was.

When she’d share stories of her adventures travelling around Europe, the teacher told her to stop exaggerating and making up stories.  When she’d use colourful words, the teacher told her the words weren’t real.  The whole school was based on strict conformity and no individuality.

Finally, Eloise stood up to the teacher, and got sent home for the day.  After less than a week at the “very good” school, she realized that she was better off with the tutor.

As someone who had several teachers who felt threatened by a smart kid who’d travelled the world and wanted to share what she’d seen & done & learned, and who loved using colourful words—-I got so angry watching that cartoon.

Even though it had a happy ending, and the teacher eventually realized that being a tyrant is NOT the way to inspire learning, I knew that this sort of thing still goes on all the time, in the real world.  Especially at “very good” schools.

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[blackdog]

@shutterbug55 Thanks for that. Great advice. 🙂

I have been thinking about getting a recorder of some sort to help with my memory for a long time. But I keep forgetting. (no pun intended) I need to put it on the list and keep it there until I do it.

It can also assist you in important situations where your rights are involved. Not to be negative, but having a recording of people being verbally abusive towards you can protect you as well.

I was told by a teacher in high school that if I was having trouble keeping up I should just drop some of my classes. When I said I can’t do that I need the credits he replied “No you don’t, not with the way your going.” He made a few other comments to the effect that I was basically a loser who was never going to accomplish anything. And not just to me. My friends heard him talking about me and told me he even made jokes about me in front of his class.  He wasn’t even one of my teachers. He only knew me because he was the “attendance officer”. All of this was just because I was a few minutes late in the morning.

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[sketchesnscribbles]

@blackdog, I never got the chance to report the teacher because no one would listen to me. My other teachers.were scared of him because he was a.senior teacher and everyone knew not to mess with him. It.was a case of David and Goliath. Except that David was a 4’6 , 19 year old girl with a temper. I tried to go to the Dean and the principal about him and they said that I should just grin and bear it. The biggest problem is that he was my IEP (Individual Education Plan) case manager. Meaning: he knew my capabilities and my flaws and he ignored them! He treated me like trash even though he was too lazy to conform to my way of learning! Luckily, I think he got fired because of teacher cuts in the state.

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[blackdog]

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” -Eleanor Roosevelt.

 

@sketchesnscribbles It’s unfortunate that teachers often get away with things like that. There were a few like that at my high school too. And one I worked with once in a special needs class who was remarkably similar. He put the kids down constantly and basically acted like there was no point in teaching them anything. It was a very common attitude towards children with special needs at one time. Times have changed but some people haven’t.

Someone once said the best revenge is living well. There is nothing you can do to change the past, but you can change the present and take steps towards a better future. You are in control now.

 

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[jojosephine]

It is absolutely disgusting the way that some teacher are towards students.

I was told by my grade 8 music teacher that I will never be a musician (in front of the class). I have a real talent and love for music. I stopped doing anything musical. Until the last ten years, I love it. I could have been real successful if I had pursued it.

I had another teacher interrupt me during my presentation (again in front of the class). That “This is really boring”. I was reading it and read the same lines over again.

Earlier in this post:

There is no extra help for the special kids. It just doesn’t happen. IEPs? Wheelchairs will get you one as will autism. Where I am, ADD is NOT considered ‘serious’ enough to warrant any special considerations other than not loading too many of them on a teacher who already has ‘real’ special needs students.

That is why my son is being improperly assessed for Asperger’s. Because everyone sees that he functions differently than everyone else. and this is the only thing they assess for at school. because he can get help with Autism but not ADHD. It is absolutely bullshit. and I guarantee a lot more kids suffer from ADHD than autism. I am scared for my son and what school is going to be like for him.

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[shutterbug55]

Jojosephine,

I don’t know what state you live in. In Washington, we are VERY fortunate to have “on-line” or virtual schools. You can follow this link: http://www.k12.com/wava#.UmanAhDMufU. Hopefully your state has one.

Our grandson goes to one now. He can spend about 2 hours a day “going to school” and get all the work done he would normally do in a brick and mortar school. Cut out all the lectures from the teacher, talking to kids, walking to and from classes and distractions, and you have a 7 hour day into 2.

He went from being just like his gran-dad, seeing the inside of the principal’s office more than the outside on the play ground, to taking advanced classes in math, science and literature. We all like it and the results are amazing!

 

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[bob harrington]

I was bullied and picked on from elementary school and half way through junior high. The only thing that stopped it was moving. It got so bad that I even had a Health teacher in junior high call me the same names that everyone else was calling me. I guess he thought that I would get over it sooner. That happened in the mid 1980s. The he is STILL teaching AND he is a coach as well. Makes me mad, just thinking about it. I’m seriously thinking of writing a ‘Tell All’ about my history of being bullied, including names, and publishing it in the local paper. One of the kids (now an adult) is the son of a well known doctor where I live.

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[Author]

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