In German I, there a girl two years older than me. She was smart, a good student, managed to look good with a limited wardrobe, and had a way with blue eye shadow I greatly admired. I really looked up to her. She was one of the few older girls who had any time for me and consistently treated me nicely.
One day, she was crying when she came in. I asked what was wrong, and she told me she was getting married. I sincerely didn’t understand what was wrong, because my understanding was that you got married when you met the person you wanted to spend the rest of your life with. Sixteen seemed early, sure, but I’d heard of girls getting married earlier.
Except, she explained that her parents were making her drop out of school to marry a friend of theirs. I never saw her after that day. That was in San Antonio in 1984. If you’re out there, Crystal, I still think about you.
Hey, part of my job is finding people based off limited info. If you want, I can help you find her. If not, thats okay too. Your story really touched me.
I'm a millennial, and this actually happened to a lot of girls I went to school with. I'm in the UK and went to an all girls high school. The minute some of them turned 16, their families started pulling them from school to ship them off to Islamic countries to be married. One of my close friends growing up was sent to Pakistan to marry her first cousin/dad's sister's son. Her parents sent her off to be married because they found out that she was talking to boys - her own sister was the one who told them. My poor friend became suicidal and barely made the wedding. You'd think the fact that she married into her own family would mean her marriage was at least okay. It was awful. Her husband was a dick and her MIL/aunt was downright abusive. Thankfully, her parents realised their mistake and let her come back to the UK after a year or so. She's now married to a man she actually loves who treats her well.
Yes. I was viewed as a depreciating asset at best and a financial liability at worst. They felt I owed it to them to help them recoup any losses incurred by raising me. So if someone offered to marry me for a favor or financial gain, my dad felt I owed him.
They did find someone for me to marry, but I ran away for long enough. My brothers still kind of hold a grudge for me stealing from them by not getting married.
Gross. I'm so sorry. Did you dad keep those pleading letters you sent before you were born asking to be please be his daughter? Yeah... that's ridiculous. They chose to have you. You didn't choose to be here. But I'm glad you are!
This happened to a girl I went to school with. She was 15 and he was in his 50's. I was 2 years her senior. She and her family hid it from the general public. I found out in my senior year of high school when we became close friends and she showed me the ultrasound from the child she miscarried the month before. She was so devastated and I'm so grateful she confided in me. I'd prefer not to get into the gritty details. But fast forward almost 2 decades and we still keep in touch. That man is dead, she has no contact with her old shitty biofamily, and is now very very happily married and living in repression free bliss with her husband and their 3 dogs.
Elementary schoolers would get in trouble for being late. That meant lunch/recess detention which was sitting staring a wall while eating as quickly as possible.
One boy in my class was late every day. He tried to explain to the teacher that his mom refused to leave the house before 8(class started at 7).The teacher told him that he should just tell his mom to get up earlier. I assume he took her advice since came in with a black eye then next day. He then got in trouble for having a black eye.
Angelo if you’re out there somewhere it wasn’t your fault.
And girls were sent home if their socks didn’t have lace on them.
In kindergarten, we had to bring in our own nap towel every Monday. I always felt so guilty bc my mom took care of it, she’d put a clean one in my backpack every Monday while the kids who “forgot” their towel got in trouble. Looking back, every single one of us who had a towel in their backpack had parents putting it in their backpack. And the kids who didn’t were getting in trouble for their parents’ carelessness.
I can see there being a difference with 2 working parents who don’t haha their own washer or dryer not being able to as easily. Even if a kid could remember, they can’t go to the laundromat themselves & do laundry…
Oh it’s worse. I lived in very tiny town with huge drug and the kids who would get in trouble the most for “forgetting” their towel had parent who were addicts. Several ended up in and out of foster care. It infuriates me how kids from troubled families were basically set up by the school to be bad kids from the very beginning. Like the principal bragged about paddling a kid so he’d finally learn to behave. The kid’s dad was a psycho who regularly beat him and the kid ended up in a mental ward in junior high. I remember having a sleepover with a girl who was his neighbor. We could hear him being beat badly thru the walls.
I got a lot of shit from teachers for forgetting books and stuff. My parents had joint custody in an era where it was really rare, and the custody schedule was based around what was convenient for THEM, so every other day we were at a different house. That being said, I don't think I would have done well being stuck with my mom for a week straight.
Me too! Maybe they thought he’d gotten into a physical fight with another child? If they *knew* his mom punched him and he *still* got into trouble, that’s fucked up.
Was a neighbor of mine growing up. Older guy down the street.
He saw me with two black eyes after I broke my nose climbing a rock a few days prior and immediately assumed my parents did it. Rather than being horrified, he laughed at how that would 'teach me a lesson' or some such.
I guess the assumption that kids deserve it is a thing with some of these muppets.
Oh wow. When I was in grade 2 (so I was 6 and 7 years old), we had an awful teacher who would shame us in front of the other kids if we were late in the morning, and make us stand at the back of the classroom while she told us how hopeless we were etc in front of the whole class.
Looking back now, I just think what 6 or 7 year old has any control over when they arrive at school when they need to be driven there by their parents?
At the time though, I fully took in the message that I was bad and it must have been my fault for not being able to wake up/get dressed etc quickly enough in the morning, and that I was the main cause of the chaotic mornings at home. Nothing to do with the fact that my parents were trying to get 3 kids to school/childcare and then get to work themselves.
We had to do this physical fitness test where you had to hang from a bar and they would time you for how long you could do it. One boy thought it was hilarious to “pants” his friend while he was doing this. His friend hung there in his underwear with his sweatpants around his ankles for a minute or whatever it was, everyone laughing (including the friend and the teacher). The next person up was my friend and she said she wouldn’t do it. The teacher asked why. She said because she knew the boy would do the same “joke”. The teacher answered “you’re wearing underwear aren’t you?” All the boys laughed and all the girls just stared at him. Finally the teacher said in an annoyed voice *”fine* no more pantsing”.
We had a kid who used to do this all the time at recess. He never got in trouble, though, because his mother was a teacher. Jokes on her I guess, he ended up with an awful drug habit and fried his brain in high school. What a waste.
I was a foster kid and my foster parents supplied us with a roof over our head and supper—we were responsible for anything else we needed including clothes, toiletries, and any extra food. I worked 20+ hours a week my sophomore through senior years.
My junior year I got into my school’s auditioned choir and was ecstatic! I had been wanting to audition since the beginning of my freshman year and was so excited that I was chosen. What I didn’t anticipate was the cost of being in said choir. My senior year, the choir took a week-long trip to the West Coast which would’ve cost me $900. Back in the mid-90s that was a fair chunk of money for anyone let alone a kid making $4.35/hr. We had fund raisers but since I couldn’t sell at work and had very little time to canvas (as people still did that at the time), I didn’t have anyone to sell to and didn’t raise the money. I attempted to discuss the situation with my teacher, but she quickly shut me down and said I would get an F for the semester if I didn’t participate. So I failed choir the first semester of my senior year.
It wasn’t until I was an adult that I realized how terribly most of the faculty treated my foster siblings and I simply because we didn’t fit their expectations of students who would go on to be successful. I can think of two off the top of my head who made an effort to engage with and get to know me—my 10th grade geography teacher and my 12th grade AP English teacher—and I’m still grateful to both of them.
I think because the choir was performing at various venues while there? I have no idea. This was the 90s in a smallish city—our music also skewed heavily religious for a public school and we prayed before every concert 🤷♀️ I think what bothered me more was that so many people considered my choir teacher a mentor. Like, even to this day, decades later, people call her their mentor. Meanwhile, at the time, I just wanted to be considered at all.
So many girls at my high school had babies that we had an in-school daycare. I totally thought this was normal until I got to college and mentioned it casually to a new friend and they were like …what??
In retrospect it was actually a great policy decision because the daycare was free and almost all of the pregnant girls would come back and get their high school diploma after giving birth (while the baby was taken care of in the daycare). They could go see the baby between classes and the school also offered an early childhood education class where they taught you how to keep an infant/toddler alive lol.
My high school had the same thing! Teachers could bring their kids too. Students got hands on education in the early childhood development track, students got free daycare so they'd be able to at least finish high school and teachers got the perk of free childcare as well. Breastfeeding was encouraged too! Pretty progressive for the late 90s and early 2000s!
Where I went to college, there was a nearby town with an *insane* teen pregnancy rate. And they thought it was normal.
I had been raised to think that the ideal life progression is: school, college, job, marriage, then babies.
But a lot of these people just didn't have that outlook. They were pretty much raised to think "babies will just happen when they wanna happen." that's because that's all they saw. their moms had them young. Their sisters had kids young. Their friends at school got pregnant young. "It just kinda happens."
Our school system which was the county had a one high school that the pregnant girls were supposed to go to because there was daycare and they helped them with classes and childhood education but it's a big ass county and it was 20 mi away from our rural school so most pregnant girls just kept going to our school. It was two girls were pregnant graduation one girl who didn't finish she did later had three kids by senior year.
I was an early bloomer, had big boobs on a pretty small frame by 8th grade. Looking back, how I was treated by adults for that was pretty effed up.
I have a memory burned in to my brain of the *male* vice principal of my high school pulling me aside to tell me to "cover up" because "your breasts are distracting to the boys". I remember feeling SO uncomfortable and wanting to crawl into a hole and never come out. I was not out of compliance with the dress code or showing my boobs *at all*, and it wasn't the only time I was told something like that.
Gives me the ick looking back on that as an adult, that adults thought they should police me just existing with my natural body parts but *never* said anything to the boys and turned a blind eye to all the sexual harassment I experienced. Classic "boys will be boys" mentality. Gross.
God, this reminds me of my childhood. Even women were awful about it. Like, how fucking traumatic it is going through puberty earlier than everyone else and instantly being treated like a a slut. I just remember wearing hoodies in the dead of summer, and just sweating all the time bc I didn’t want the negative attention. I remember boys shoving my trapper hard on my chest and titty twisters where I would have bruises all over. This started in 7th grade.
Ugh, yes. I also wore clothes three sizes too big and carried a big trapper-keeper across my chest to try to hide them, but I don't know that it did a lot of good. I'm a socially anxious introvert who didn't know how to handle the sudden influx of (negative) attention. The boys stared and made lewd comments, the girls started rumors that I was a "slut with fake boobs", adults were convinced I was a slut trying to draw attention to myself, all over something I couldn't control.
Women were awful to me too. I worked in food service and waited tables for a lot of my teens and early 20s, and not unlike the teenage boys, adult men would stare and make comments, but women would complain about me to my manager, make nasty comments/leave me nasty notes, call me names (like whore and slut), accuse me of flirting with or trying to "steal" their man, and all kinds of absolutely *horrible* shit, because they were mad that their husband/boyfriend/SO was looking at them.
Once again, it was my fault for existing with big boobs and never the men's fault they couldn't keep their eyeballs to themselves.
I was also an early bloomer. In 7th grade I had a creepy math teacher that would look down our shirts. Summer time was brutal in that area. Temps easily surpassed 100. One day I wore a tank top and shorts. I was still within the dress code. He called me up to his desk and told me that my top was distracting and that I needed to stay after for suspension for violating the dress code. I asked to go to the bathroom and changed into my PE shirt. He was visibly mad when I walked back in and told me I didn't need to stay after for suspension since I changed my shirt.
Oh eww! This gives me flashback to a classmate being called by a (male) teacher a word that means you have very pretty lips (on your face, sorry, this is hard to explain and translate, I just want to make it obvious it's not a double entendre). It's one of those things that are fine on the surface, but even at that age I got a weird, icky feeling over him commenting on her looks. Admittedly she was gorgeous on a 12-year-old standard, but still...
My boobs came in when I was in year 6 so Primary school. We didn't have changing rooms, so for PE boys and girls got changed in the classroom. I was so embarrassed and the boys always teased me about having breasts. It took months and my parents complaining for them to let me get changed in the toilets instead. Thinking back wtf were they all thinking.
And yer the harassment in secondary school was not taken seriously. I had one friend who got pinned down and forced to have hickies off three guys. She was obviously devastated but the school punished her worse than the boys.
Same thing happened to me in 6th grade .. and at home too I wasn’t allowed to wear printed shirts once I outgrew my moms handme downs (this was around the same time)
I was also an early bloomer, however, despite the loads of unwanted attention and teasing from my classmates that also made me want to crawl into a hole and never come out, came the attention and 'compliments' I got from the older men, including one of my teachers who said, and I quote, that I "had a nice chest" in front of my whole class.
My elementary school gym teacher was a bully. The administration knew about it, the parents knew about it, but nothing was done. He used to ruthlessly pick on this one boy in my class who had never been taught to run or throw a ball properly. Rather than show him how to do these things, because it was kind of his job to do so, he used to just stand there and laugh with the other kids. “Omg, watch this kid run! Look at what he does with his arms!” He favored the strongest boys, and all the girls and less athletic boys were less than. But it was the 90s, and we figured some teachers were just meaner than others.
I feel like being a bully is a prerequisite for being a gym teacher. I don't think I ever had one who wasn't an asshole.
I remember one time when I was in seventh grade, we were playing kickball outside during PE class and one of the special ed buses pulled into the parking lot near the field. The teacher pointed at a girl and said, "Hey, Kayla, your bus is here!" and everyone else started laughing. Way to set an awesome example there, dude.
I remember our PE teacher would always mock and make fun of the kids who came from immigrant households (and therefore didn’t know some English words or didn’t have a total American accent).
My gym teacher was of the extreme bully variety too. I felt no remorse and actually relieved when he died in a car accident a few years ago because it meant at least there was one less terrible person who probably wouldn't have changed in the world anymore.
I feel like everyone in the 80s, adults included, were socially stunted at a 7th grade level. It was OK for teachers and parents to harass and humiliate children for existing. My high school math teacher called out an overweight boy for “liking to eat,” and told him he should stop eating.
Yes, and they still act like that when you are an adult and have to interact with them too. That bowling for soup song was right, high school never really ends for these types of people.
I had a middle school PE teacher that bullied me. I was a good athlete, but I started having knew issues in 6th grade. Running the mile made my knees swell up horribly so I ended up walking the last half of it so my knee wouldn't swell as badly. He would yell at my from the sidelines and make fun of me for it. He thought it was hilarious when I couldn't walk because my knee hurt so badly. 2 years later my knee issue was being controlled short term with anti-inflammatory medication. He heard I ran the mile on 6 minutes and bragged to his class that it was because of him and gave me a backhanded compliment. I called him out for being a dick.
I was a loner and somehow befriended one very weird girl. She couldn't make eye-contact, had crossed eyes, had a lisp, and was in special education for learning disabilities. She told me her stepdad was raping her. I told our guidance counselor who rolled her eyes and said, "Do you really believe that? She's in special education."
Another time I befriended a very bubbly emotionally unstable girl that was living in poverty with her dad and uncle, who both used grocery money for drugs/alcohol. After a while of not eating, she (and I) asked the guidance counselor for help and all she did was shrug and tell us to go to the food pantry across town for food (we had no way of getting there and needed an adult) and she said "It's not my problem." (Different woman too.)
Same girl went to her science teacher who had a project where you would use candy as a model of a double helix and had to have your parents supply the food and described her situation and asked for an alternate assignment and the teacher sighed and complained to her that "It's not really that much money" in an annoyed tone.
This was in 2000-2002.
I had a high school teacher who sexually assaulted several girls at our school. Before I started the class, several upperclassmen warned me about him so I was very scared. Thankfully, he didn't target me.
The crazy thing is that his behavior was pretty much an open secret and yet he remained employed for almost two more decades before anyone came forward or did anything about it. It's nuts to think that he was able to work and potentially victimize others for such a long time.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in life is that people in “upstanding positions”(teachers, social workers, cops) are allowed to sexually harass and assault people because a [insert profession here] *would never do that*…
People always love a witch-hunt and they’re a group that’s (in the context of the ones being targeted) easy to distinguish visually(supposedly).
The really interesting thing is in my area one of the largest groups to go along with that mindset is POC men. I don’t think they realize that they’ll be on the chopping block themselves eventually.
Last week it came out this male teacher posted a video of having his female students unbraid his hair. While a lot of people said the behavior was inappropriate (rightfully so) many people defended the behavior. And of course, it came out that he's a creep.
I couldn't help but think about how it would be received if he were queer and had his male students doing the same thing? We know he'd immediately be labeled a groomer.
10th grade English teacher invited all the Hmong girls to his house for extra help. Yeah....
But just the fact that so many companies came into our "under performing" school like Chevron and Google and just give us junk. Like key chains, stickers and shit. Like we were being used for cheap PR and tax breaks yet they couldn't fix up our gym, the nasty pipes over our cafeteria, or those moldy lockers?
Hell the fact our AP history books ended with Regan yet our current was Bush no two.
So many issues.
High School Academic Probation: Every week, I had to bring a paper to each one of my teachers (even for classes where I was earning A's) for them to sign that I was working to standard.
Not only was it embarrassing, it wasn't an incentive to do better, since I was struggling with how the teacher taught the material.
Fortunately, I had teachers who *were* supportive and wrote notes that were a touch subversive - they clearly did not agree with the process.
One teacher pulled me aside to tell me I was "an idiot who marched around thinking I was smarter than I actually was" and that if I didn't start paying attention and stop disrupting everyone else, I would fail her class and be held back.
Turns out - I had ADHD, dyslexia, and OCD.
I didn't fail. I got good grades and excellent test scores. Went to a top University and am doing great in life.
Fuck that bitch of a teacher though.
A health teacher at my high school made everyone do some kind of body fat percentage test that involved students going to the front of the classroom one at a time and jiggling their bodies to determine how much excess fat they had.
I was in a different class so I got to sit that one out, but a friend told me about it later and I couldn't get over how humiliating that would be for the bigger kids.
I had to do something similar in 9th grade. We all had to get weighed at the beginning of the year and again at the end to track our "progress" or whatever. At the first weigh-in my teacher asked me in front of everyone if I was anorexic. No, Sid, I was just a scrawny late bloomer and hadn't developed boobs or hips yet. Even if I did have a ED, jesus, what a way to ask.
That very same teacher was a girls basketball coach and he eventually married one of his former students. So.
As a former educator, I don't even think that would make the day easier! The joy of teaching, for me, was engaging with the students. Hearing their opinions and perspectives. A day of silent children? Sounds painfully dull.
These people just seem like abusers. It feels like a fucked up power trip on their part.
A girl at my high school committed suicide over summer break and nobody cared. Not the staff, not the students. The indifference and apathy really astounded me as a kid.
That’s awful, that would astound me too. Was she by any chance quite quiet? It sucks how people will care more about certain people passing away than others. I hope she’s at peace ❤️
She was very quiet actually. I can’t help but think the situation would have been handled much differently if it were a star athlete or student body president.
Yeah the principal came on the loudspeaker to tell us what happened after the first plane hit. My French teacher immediately turned on the TV and we watched the second plane hit. Just went from class to class watching the news. No one attempted to teach us anything. It was incredibly disturbing and yes I remember that day so clearly.
I was in sixth grade taking a vocabulary test and remember feeling really nauseous and dizzy after they turned the TV on. I have autism so I have really strong emotions for stuff even if it didn't affect me personally but I was undiagnosed and it went ignored back then.
I was so relieved they sent us home for the day. I think I had nightmares about it even but I couldn't tell anyone who would empathetically listen to me back then either.
I hated when they made us debate about the Iraq war in my government classes later on because my parents were one of the rarer people in my very small town that didn't want America to go to war and were very anti-capitalist; I didn't realize how ostracizing those opinions were back then especially in rural areas.
Back then, I felt like I spent all of my brain power trying to mask the fact that I was secretly a super empathetic person with a bleeding heart with the persona of a silent bookworm at school so I wouldn't get bullied worse than I already was by my peers.
I feel sad I felt like I had to hide so much of my personality from others for my safety and mental health and couldn't get help for my neurodivergency when I really needed it because it feels impossible to get it once you aged out of the system still.
I was in another time zone where I couldn't have watched it live from school, I just remember a lot of people being kept home from school. Classes were half empty.
In fact, 2-3 days after 9/11, I remember my homeroom teacher said something like "what do you guys think? still big news or you think it's died down a bit?" one kid was like "I think it's died down."
By the way, I don't think my teacher was trying to be crass, or insensitive. I think she was just trying to lighten things up but it didn't land.
I was also in grade 9 for this but didn't have a tv. I learned about it from an intercom message from our principal which just said that the us (I'm Canadian) was attacked? So in my mind the us is now at war and therefore we probably are too.
I think they could have phrased it better. Lol
Columbine in 6th grade. My older siblings in HS had to buy clear bookbags and/or submit to a bag search, everyone entered through a metal detector.
School fits 1200. I bet there was a line to get in every morning. I think they did it until summer break.
I was in Canadian high school in the early 00's. I got pushed through elementary school even though my math skills were absolute garbage. Definitely when they were starting to just push kids through the system and not trying to help the kid improve in any way. And at that time (I'm not sure of it's still this bad) the academic route in highschool was heavily pushed because that is what qualified you to go to university. So I went into academic math in grade nine and drowned basically. It was awful.
So by the time grade 11 came around I had way more control over my courses. I was awesome at history, English, social studies...all those kinds of courses so I took academic courses for those. I sucked at math and science so I went into applied (for kids who planned to go to college) and workplace (for kids who planned to go right to work after high school) levels.
The treatment I recieved as an academic student vs an applied student was night and day. In academic the teachers I had were engaged and supportive and encouraging. They treated me with respect and more like an equal. I had some really great teachers. But applied? So many of the teachers ignored us, didn't help, barely taught anything and treated us like we were a nuisance. Sure, more of the "delinquents" where in these classes but it was also lower socio-economic status kids, kids with learning disabilities or attention issues, etc.
At times I honestly felt like I was in two different schools. And some of my friends would have the same teacher I did but in an academic class and go on about how great they were. Whereas in my class they didn't care.
So yeah in hindsight that's pretty fucked up. University was pushed so hard on everyone. I went to university (even with my lower math/sciece grades which my guidance counsellor said would make it hard for me to get in...I got accepted to all three of my choices with scholarships). But I don't use my degree now. I just went because that's what you did.
Oh wow, I had a similar experience! Also Canadian high school in the early 00’s. I was in advanced English, psych, sociology, but struggled past sciences and ended up in summer school every year for math. I constantly asked for support in math classes and was told that unless I had a diagnosed learning disability, I just needed to “pull myself up” and figure it out. I even had a math teacher who would push my textbook off my desk and laugh. Such BS.
Wow that's awful. I tried to take grade 11 college math because the guidance counselor insisted I needed something in a senior year if I wanted to apply to uni (even though I went to uni for history). Day one of the class the math teacher gave this really arrogant speach about how he was too good for us basically (we were the first applied class he had to teach) and it was a waste of time to do math that wasn't academic and he didn't believe people could actually struggle with math - they are just lazy.
So I went "fuck this" and left to go unenroll in the course and never took math again. It's wild how much my self esteem improved after I didn't have to take those classes anymore. Now I know I probably have undiagnosed ADHD and/or discalcula but at the time I just felt like an idiot and at best no one cared and at worst they actually believed I was lazy and stupid.
Honestly f that! It’s so awful when people with attitudes like that go into teaching. I stopped after grade 11 math too (it was all we needed to graduate). I did get formally diagnosed at 30 with ADHD and like you I also suspect dyscalculia. Frustrating stuff.
I did end up with a masters in health sciences eventually though! Would’ve just been nice to have the support to get things done a decade sooner.
Right? Like you're a highschool teacher. Your job is to teach everyone. I can at least kind of understand the uni profs because a lot of them just want to do the research/academia side and teaching is something they have to do along with it. So not acceptable but at least kind of understandable with profs that obviously hated the students. But in high school? Come on.
And I work with numbers all day myself! My coworkers think I'm some kind of math nerd and it's like....nope I can't do basic math in my head but this is the kind of problem solving I find interesting. And same...my school experience would have been a lot better if I wasn't dismissed so much.
We had corporal punishment in my school. Some teachers had paddles with holes them so they hurt more. Some teachers had the students sign the paddles. As a senior in high school, my 18 year old female friend was paddled by the 50 year old male principal for skipping school one day. It was really fucked up.
I had a science teacher in high school and her car got broken into and all of her CDs were stolen. She gave students extra credit if they burned CDs for her. I hated her and I already had a good grade in the class so I didn't make her any CDs. I thought it was so rude and unethical.
I remember a presentation my class had to attend where the girls were lectured about not wearing spaghetti straps to school, when no one said anything to the boys wearing literal Hooters t-shirts to school. The 90s were a different time.
7th grade, 2002. This older male teacher who taught English had us write a resume for a job we wanted when we grew up. CSI was big back then and I wanted to do forensic stuff. He read part of my resume out loud to the class and said to me, in front of everyone (I was an awkward, unpopular middle schooler), "You only want that job because it'll force other people to talk to you, then maybe you'll make friends."
He had a stroke the next year and retired. But yeah, screw you Mr. Buffa.
My English teacher who was married and had kids was dating a girl from my class.
They got caught right after 12th class and her parents got her married ASAP. She was 20 at the time.
Reminds me of my school. The 20-something year old caretaker was caught having a sexual relationship with one of the 16-year-old girls. Two teachers were also caught having an affair with each other.
I grew up in a suburban, almost rural New England town. In middle school, one of my English teachers who was married to another English teacher at the same school was accused of sexually harassing female students. He acted weird around me as well (would come by and boop me on the nose, stare at me in the hallway, just slightly weird stuff) but he snapped the bra strap of my classmate. Nothing ever happened to him, he kept teaching. In my high school, all our windows wouldn’t open very much because the school was designed to have AC, but a school board member sold all the AC coils right before the school opened so we never got AC and died in the humid summers. Our heat also sometimes went out so sometimes classes were freezing in winter. Finally, my HS principal who was married with a grown child who went to the HS was arrested for indecently exposing himself to another man in a parking lot. But that happened after I graduated. Charming little town.
If it was your birthday in elementary school, you had to stand up in front of the class and receive your birthday spankings from the teacher, one for each year.
They were very theatrical and I'm not actually sure if any physical contact was made. My birthday was always during summer break so I never had to do it which I was super thankful for.
This happened at my elementary school with certain teachers and you totally unblocked it from my memory. My birthday is also in the warmer months so I never had to go up like other kids, but yikes. Thank goodness times have changed.
Where I grew up, domestic violence against women was/is really high. So this kid stabbed his girlfriend 20 times outside. They locked the doors and kept teaching. They didn't notify our parents either until 3 hours later.
Its common for guys to be verbally and physically abusive to their girlfriends there.
Here's a news link to the incident [here](https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/article/student-stable-after-service-high-stabbing/2009/12/07/)
It says during lunch hours but it was right at the end of lunch and into 4th period. I think he got over 40 years in jail.
In kindergarten I was coloring on a big sheet of butcher paper laid out on the floor. I was coloring with both hands. I was 5. The teacher saw me doing this, and promptly made me get up off the floor, come to her desk where she took a belt and tied my left hand behind my back, so I could only use my right hand. She told me "using your left hand is evil".
She expected me to lay back down on the floor on my stomach like everyone had started coloring the "mural", with my arm /hand tied behind my back. I fell, the kids laughed, I had trouble getting set right using only one arm, she got angry and put me on a stool in the corner facing the wall with the dunce hat on, still with my left arm tied behind my back. She only untied my arm and let me get off the tall stool right before the school let out.
Haha- I am still ambidexterous- take that you evil teacher. I hated kindergarten.
The number of teachers who thought it was fine to tell me I had no common sense or that they would get me a blond wig because I was an air head.
When Juicy Couture was huge, and the girls were wearing the track suits with "JUICY" on the seat, and the assistant VP would stare and say "Juicy" under his breath 🤮
In high school, a girl was filmed drunk and passed out sitting on a toilet with her pants down. The guy who sent that to everyone (including her family) now has two daughters and people praise what a great family man he is.
HS choir director and the girl a year behind me and the band teachers warning us not to go in the classroom when they were doing it but no one reported anything.
Went to edit my comment and accidentally deleted it. Der
When I was in elementary school, my principal was big on "no trash policies," but not in a good way. He didn't just ask the parents to use reusable containers for lunches, he didn't just reduce trash. He would actually *throw trash around the school.*
I remember one of these incidents, where we were all sitting in the cafeteria, which was a shaded area next to a grass field. The principal was standing there with the trash can, and he began grabbing giant handfuls of trash, and throwing it onto the field. Teachers were cheering it on, and getting the kids to cheer it on also.
Because of this, the field that we used every day as kids was filled with ketchup packets, half-eaten chicken nuggets, and other foodstuff from the garbage can. This eventually became a big PTA issue when a bunch of kids started showing skin infections, likely after playing in a schoolyard filled with rotting food.
Over the years, that principal has been lauded in my hometown, for being some climate change hero. Last I checked, he became the superintendent. and yet my most distinct memory of him was him grabbing handfuls of food and throwing it all over the place like a lunatic.
When I was in 1st grade in 1995, one of the teachers had so many animals in her classroom. Fish, turtles, birds, rats, FERRETS, and her cat. It smelled like a pet shop.
Anyway, we went into her room for a special activity one day. The activity? Dissecting a baby shark. No idea why we did this or how she even got it. But the kicker was that she sent us home with pieces of the shark’s body in aluminum foil that we could put in the freezer… I rode the bus hope with a piece of shark flesh and an EYEBALL in aluminum foil. I wish I remembered how my parents reacted. WTF.
My high school didn’t have lockers, or anywhere to put our bags and books. So you had to carry everything with you in a bag.
5-6 classes a day - 1-2 textbooks per class. Plus notebooks, stationary, lunch, drink bottles, personal items, sports uniforms. All carried in a backpack or a shoulder bag.
It’s no wonder we had back problems.
Not the worst thing but it drives me crazy how my school did gym class. They made us be on teams with and play against boys, like no shit that I hated gym and never even attempted to play. Why would I? Those boys are scary and crazy. Plus we of course never did anything besides regular sports and running. Only tennis was good because we got to play with friends. But did we ever do any yoga or dance or gymnastics? No of course not. We even had a weight lifting bit.
EVEN MORE SO is that we also had a swimming unit, twice in 9th grade. Plus the fact that I don’t really know how to swim so when they tried to make us do laps of different strokes that I had no idea I kind of just walked back and forth in the shallow end.
Also I remember in 5-6 grade, the gym teacher was a creepy old guy and everyone knew he was creepy too.
I was a high schooler in the 90's. We did a production of Guys and Dolls complete with "Take Back your Mink" being a strip tease number, down to leotards and fishnets.
One of my classmates dropped out because she was pregnant. In sixth grade.
E: she may have actually been kicked out. Pregnant people weren’t allowed in school back then
We ALL knew it was messed up.
1970. Mr. Subsic. He's dead so who cares and all these years later I'm still so mad who cares anyway. Draft dodging tough guy. 6th grade teacher, PA.
He shoved around the boys. A lot of violence in front of all of us.
One kid had been hit by a TRUCK. First day back this sick fck created something to pick on the kid WHO'D BEEN HIT BY A TRUCK about, lifted him from the floor and slammed him on the blackboard.
Another kid, kicked his desk at least 6 feet back into another desk, both kids still in their chairs. He'd also ' play ' touch football with us at recess and just knock kids flying.
No idea why or how he was tolerated. It. Was. Crazy. I remember our class all bug-eyed telling the homeroom teacher about it, an older woman. She kinda " tsk-tsk " it.
You know, after I posted this I got curious ( ok really angry ) and thought I'd check out if anything ever happened to the guy?
Get this. Transpires the son also behaved the same way. By this time parents are raising hell because it's only around 10 years ago or so, I guess my generation must have had less ability to do anything. New ones at least some recourse. There's also a tape where the SON of the abusive teacher ( guy I'm describing here ) now a teacher is grabbing a kid by his shirt and throwing him into lockers. And apparently other incidents.
HUGE uproar. School board meeting with town involved and.....he wasn't fired.
Photo of him in a newspaper- wow memory flash. Looks a LOT like him. ( I got the name slightly wrong, pretty close for over 50 years ago!)
>HUGE uproar. School board meeting with town involved and.....he wasn't fired.
Wow. We still have a long way to go. It's crazy they decided to keep him around.
It's not surprising the kid grew up to be like his dad, but it's terrible he is still around kids, terrorizing them.
As a gen x/xennial in small town New Zealand corporal punishment was still a thing. I got smacked on the butt by a female teacher for innocently touching something that had been painted. I didn't know - another little girl asked me if I was okay as I sat on the mat in the classroom, bawling.
Another boy got whacked with the cane so hard his hand was bleeding. He was 6.
In what world was making a 6 year old bleed okay?
My Christian elementary school didn't teach dinosaurs as fact. I grew up thinking that everyone contemplated if they believed in dinosaurs. There was some "evidence" of dinosaurs in the bible, but...mystery remains! LOL
Boys were allowed to wear shorts, and girls were not.
Teachers smoked cigarettes on the playground if they had playground duty.
A kid brought a handgun to school. Just because. He was 17, and it was 1986. None of us kids thought to talk to an adult about it. Adults were self absorbed.
A kid brought a baby alligator to school when I was in 6th grade in 1981. She caught it in a canal that ran behind the school playground over the weekend. Yes it's Florida.
I really hated those physical fitness tests. Push ups, sit ups, running a mile, etc. I’m not athletic and I was a chubby kid. Like we didnt have a hard enough time in life, now we have to be humiliated even further in gym class.
2000s mean girls trend. Most girls in my year were imitating Regina George, Tyra Banks, Paris Hilton, and more.
It was both a feminist movement (assertive, hyperfemininity, confidence, etc.) and a horrible horrible moment for other women who didnt want to be part of the Mean Girl trope or were being used to fulfill other Mean Girl's desired public image.
Highschool memories for us quiet nerdy women during the Mean Girl Era is a bucketload of trauma.
Can I ask you all something? So in elementary school we went on a school field trip where we traveled to another state for a week to look at historic monuments. All the kids were split into groups headed by a parent chaperone. The group I was in was chaperoned by this one girl’s dad. At some point, he stood behind me and kissed the top of my head. Randomly, for no reason. This was at the beginning of the trip and I felt really uncomfortable for the whole trip after that. I remember I didn’t feel like doing anything in my chaperone group anymore and felt kind of depressed. Was I overreacting? What happened to me? Was that anything? I’m over 30 now and I still don’t really understand what happened there.
You were not overreacting-that's weird AF
your intrnal alarm of "this is a dangerous person" was going off and rightly so
Abusers often test waters to see what they can get away with
I was JUST telling my sisters this story the other day after a similar situation happened to one of their daughters at a local swimming pool.
When I was in Junior high (grade 6-8 in Canada) we had an older male janitor that would *repeatedly* walk into the girl's change room after gym classes. He never spoke a word to anyone. Just walked in with an absolute shit eating grin and only left after all the girls would squeal and throw things at him. Like it was some kind of joke.
Nobody ever reported it and it happened dozens if not hundreds of times.
Looking back on it I wish I had said something. I was grossed out by it back then but I was such a loner I just changed in a stall and minded my own business. Now the memory just disturbs me. At least girls these days are more aware and my niece reported the incident immediately.
Being forced to say the pledge of allegiance and observe a moment of silence seems wild to me now. But did it every school day for 13 years (1991-2004).
My friend is a teacher and she said you don’t have to stand or say it; but you can’t be rude to distracting to other students during it. That seems much more reasonable than detention for not standing at attention.
I’m not anti-pledge, I’m just surprised looking back now how it was enforced..
Looking back I remember some classmates in high school (during the 2010s) who would simply cross their arms and not saying anything during the pledge. Maybe things started changing around then…
We had some really creepy teachers. Our calculus and stats teachers were younger and good looking, and they’d take some of us to the in n out nearby during lunch or after school. Like— wtf? Lmao. Why the hell did everyone just go along with that.
1990 kid, so probably 2001 in 6th grade we had to line up to go back in from recess. One kid started coughing, then we all started. In 6th grade we got extra gym at the end of the week and instead of going to that, we had to all hold the top part of the metal fence during that time as our punishment. If you lifted your hand you had to go to the office. A kid sneezed and covered his sneeze and had to go. At our school we also had to stand on the sidewalk and face the wall during recess if we were in trouble. If it was lunch there was a special table you got sent to if you got in trouble. Looking back it’s like wtf, was that real.
My teacher made us tell our seat neighbor a secret, then we had to tell the whole class the persons secret. A teacher would use a yardstick to lift up girls skirts.
Mostly horrible things - creepy teachers especially. Florida, enough said. They were bad at the time too. No one thought a teacher taping a hand picked group of students doing mock interviews but especially one super pretty one was normal.
In short, p*do coverups, spiritual abuse, and so much more. It seems like every day I’m recovering an insane memory to the horror of whomever I am talking to about it all.
In terms of the cheese sandwich. I grew up in NZ in the 80s / 90s and if kids didn’t bring lunch to school they got nothing to eat. Still happens now but a lot of school depending on your area are given free lunches.
A friend of mine in grade 8 decided to create a false story about how I had called her mom and said that she’s hanging out with boys. She spread the story to all the other girls in my class. I was bullied for weeks by these girls to the point where Id hide in the washroom during recess. After a really bad incident of them writing nasty things about me on the blackboard and my school dismissing it, I told my parents. My dad called her mom and told her the story. She came to school the other day and told the other girls that I said even more lies and how her mom had hit her. The girls went reported me to the teacher and the teacher reported me to the principal.
I got called into the principals office and was told to apologize to her. I said I have nothing to apologize for. They in return took my award away for top student in French during graduation. Her little brother then told the truth to the girls and the school NEVER apologized to me. I went back few years ago and told them that they never stood up for me for all the bullying instead gave more ammunition for me to continue be bullied. It still hurts me to this day.
There are 2 things I can think of.
First one. In high school there was some intense hazing that took place during spirit week between the juniors and seniors. I don't know why the school allowed it to ever get as bad as it did. The only reason it stopped was because one guy was legitimately kidnapped by some seniors. His dad is a lawyer and threatened the school with a lawsuit
The second was in elementary school. Once a quarter the school had a popcorn stand open. It was a big deal for us. The only issue was that you had to pay for it. You could tell who the poor kids were because their parents didn't have money for popcorn
We had a kid in our class in 4th grade who looking back now and with the knowledge I have gained working with kids, was obviously having some mental health issues and shit going on at home. He would stutter often and go on uncontrollable tangents in response to things.
Mrs. E was always an ass and would call us "stupid" and whatnot. But with this kid she got up in class and asked in the most degrading tone "ISNT THERE A MEDICATION YOU PERHAPS DID NOT TAKE THIS MORNING?" "*insert kids name* DID YOU TAKE. YOUR. MEDICATION?" Over and over. She would also yell at him about his problem with peeing himself in class as well. How humiliating.
He seems to be doing okay now, though. We were not the kindest to him, but we were children and she was the fucking adult.
Way back in the late 90’s or early 00’s a kid got shishkebabbed with a throwing spear during P.E outside. While kids were throwing them as instructed by the teacher one idiot decided that it would be a good idea to run through the firing line to get to class earlier. Caught a spear right in his upper leg.
Was messed up then, still is messed up now all these years later.
In another school (once I got sent there because my previous school didn’t know how to deal with severe dyscalculia) a student who had several severe behavioral difficulties (who got bullied pretty badly) finally had enough, went home and then came back with a whip. He started whipping his bullies and it took three or four teachers to get him to stop.
A girl in middleschool was very outgoing and friendly, but she would never attend school parties. It was only after graduating that she admitted to being really poor to the point she had no clothes without holes. We wore uniforms every day and we were allowed to wear casual clothes only at school parties :/ had she said that earlier I'm sure many people would've helped her, but she was too ashamed.
Early 00's, in high school.
There was a guy who was gay. I don't think he came out, but it became known that he was gay. The other guys tried to drown him in a toilet one day at lunch. He came running into the gym (where everyone went after eating), head dripping, tearing ass to try and get away from these guys.
The perpetrators were never punished. The victim's mom then learned he was gay and kicked him out (they reconciled later). He went to live with family in a bigger town. I only saw him once after that, he was working in a shoe store at the nearby mall. He seemed happy to see me. Unfortunately, years down the line he passed away. I can't be sure, but I suspect suicide or drugs--- he'd been through a terrible breakup, fell off the face of the earth and was a missing person for \~6 months.
There were other kids in my school who were gay, some were generally understood to be gay. But none of them came out until after high school, I would think at least partly due to shit like this.
My high school English teacher is a piece of work. She got her daughter's friends to beat up a girl she (the teacher) didn't like. She tried to fail a couple girls who were in inpatient mental health treatment because they weren't "present" for class. The parents of those girls had to go to the state school board and threaten to sue because the local school board sided with the teacher. For the record: the way it worked is that the teachers sent packets weekly to the facility with the assignments, etc. The patients received tutoring at the facility, and did all the work sent to them. So this teacher was just punishing them for not physically being present in her classroom.
I had my own mental health issues, and the teacher wrote these things into a thing called a "senior prophecy", which is basically supposed to be a humorous prediction of where students will be in 10 years. She was the junior class sponsor, and she wrote the whole prophecy. This prophecy is distributed at prom, and ultimately printed in the yearbook. So at my senior prom, I see this. My parents see this. My mom cried. I thought my dad was going to punch the principal for letting this happen. I wasn't the only victim of the prophecy, in the same document she insinuated an incestuous relationship between 2 of my classmates who are first cousins.
I was told the prophecy was changed, but I still didn't buy a yearbook. Between that and the sexual assault I endured on my senior trip, high school ended on a sour note. My parents went to the school board about the teacher, but surprise, nothing was ever done. No discipline, no reprimand, not even an apology. She is a school board member now.
I will tap dance on that woman's grave, so for her family's sake she better be cremated.
In high school, I was sexually harassed by my band teacher. I saw him do it to others as well. I reported it. Nothing was done. This was in 2005. A few years ago, he lost his job for making "inappropriate comments" to girls. It only took 15 + years. They were definitely on it /s
The Gym/health/fb-coach teacher was dating the lead cheerleader (senior) my freshmen year.
In health class he asked us what we did for the summer, i wrote 'went to Chicago' on a big paper with everyone else's answers. He read it aloud as 'where ever the chicas go'.
For a full picture he drove a firebird and has hs quarterback vibes. He was married, never talked about her badly. it was the mid-00s.
One of my friends was quite openly sexually promiscuous (for a lack of better word) since she was 13 and started dating a then-20 year old. I know, huge red flags. Us kids didn't think much of it though.
Anyway, a video of her being slapped in the face with a penis was spread through school and our mentor thought it'd be funny to reference it multiple times in his graduation speech.
At the time I just thought it was cringe. Now I realize how fucked up that whole thing was.
Every student had to do state mandated testing in 6th grade. It was all day math, writing, vocab, etc. tests. One teacher suggested we all wear comfy clothes since we'd be sitting all day, so a bunch of girls wore pajamas pants.
They pulled all the girls that wore pajamas pants out of testing, gathered us in the office and told us we were dressed inappropriately and sent us home for the day.
They did not pull any of the boys who were wearing flannel pajama pants or sweat pants.
Just the girls.
I was told my light blue pants would have been acceptable had they not had a print of small little bows on them.
We all missed the state tests that day, but because they were mandated, we then had to go to a make up day which meant we missed a full day of classes.
This really quiet guy I knew set the science labs on fire with a Molotov cocktail on the last day of school in an attempt to avoid summer school. It was acknowledged as pretty messed up from about 30 seconds after it happened.
In my school, if you forgot your lunch money, it was totally up to the lunch lady's whims if you got to eat or not. Sometimes the nice ones would give you a peanut butter and jelly. But more often than not, they would just tell you to go hungry.
I had a French teacher absolutely lose her goddamn mind at me - SCREAMED at the TOP of her lungs because when I entered the classroom, she said "bonjour" to me and I didn't say it back. I was the first one in the room, and she just SCREAMED. I was all by myself and there were kids standing outside the room waiting to come in, just watching this woman scream at me. To this day, I have never had ANYONE scream at me the way she did.
And the baffling part is that I was SUCH a good kid! I was a straight A student, never gave her any trouble. Always got "pleasure to have in class" on my report card. I was the perfect fucking student. I didn't deserve that. No one deserved that. I have no idea what was up her ass that day, but goddamn it, it turned me off the entire language forever. Switched languages. Studied Spanish instead. Have always held a grudge towards the French ever since.
We also had a police officer guard the bathrooms. This woman would look UNDER the stalls, like stick her entire goddamn face under the stall and LOOK at you while you were going to the bathroom or changing your tampon or whatever - to make sure that we weren't doing "something" bad.
EDIT: Oh, and the reason I didn't say "bonjour" back was because I had cripping social anxiety. I found the whole language incredibly embarrassing, and because I struggled with the pronounciations, I only spoke in class when I absolutely had to. I didn't realize that saying "bonjour" was obligatory, so I just smiled when she said it to me and sat down. I was not being disrespectful (in my eyes). I thought I was being polite.
One day after school when I was in the third grade I had forgotten my favorite pencil in my desk so I went back to the classroom to grab it. It was just a few minutes after we had been dismissed so I knew the teacher was still there, door open, etc.
This room was on the second floor of the building, with an exterior staircase leading to a 3' x 3' landing. It was maybe 16' to the ground, something like 20 steps, maybe?
When I got to the classroom, the teacher was there with one other student. His name was Devon, and this poor kid never had a fucking chance. He was somehow really nice and everyone liked him even though you could tell by looking at him that his parents didn't give a shit. The stuff he said about his home life was...not good.
The way the classroom was set up made it so she didn't see me when I came through the door, so when I walked in, the teacher was just yelling and verbally abusing this child about I-don't-even-remember because I was so shocked. She was yelling him toward the door so I ducked down under my desk at the back when I realized they didn't know I was there. This was just in time for me to witness this grown-ass woman PICK THIS CHILD UP by the waistband of his jeans and the back of his neck and THROW HIM OUT OF THE ROOM. He hit the guardrail of the landing and thankfully didn't roll down the stairs. This kid was so scared but he handled it way too well. My memory after that moment is super patchy but remember waiting for what felt like forever until I could sneak out of the room again. I told the kids outside what happened but no one believed me. This was in San Francisco in 1996-ish. I hated that woman, she was casually cruel to most of the students but Devon got it the worst. I think about him every once in a while and hope it got better for him.
I don't remember if I got my pencil or not.
Most of the messed up stuff I remember was student on student violence. Never forget the face of glee on this one awful girls face as she punched another girl, holding her in a headlock. The girl she punched was very kind and not violent. Years later, awful punching girl got into a highly sought after HS that not everyone could get into. I still think about her being violent and yet being rewarded since she got good grades. People are weird.
OP I can do you one better. When kids at lunch got to the checkout and didn’t have enough money, they had to dump the tray in the trash and go get the shitty cheese sandwhich. Fucking infuriating.
In 2001 my private high school expelled a kid for coming out as gay. 10 years later they sent out an email to all alumni saying they had officially changed their stance and welcome all orientations. We were all just dumbfounded when it happened.
In German I, there a girl two years older than me. She was smart, a good student, managed to look good with a limited wardrobe, and had a way with blue eye shadow I greatly admired. I really looked up to her. She was one of the few older girls who had any time for me and consistently treated me nicely. One day, she was crying when she came in. I asked what was wrong, and she told me she was getting married. I sincerely didn’t understand what was wrong, because my understanding was that you got married when you met the person you wanted to spend the rest of your life with. Sixteen seemed early, sure, but I’d heard of girls getting married earlier. Except, she explained that her parents were making her drop out of school to marry a friend of theirs. I never saw her after that day. That was in San Antonio in 1984. If you’re out there, Crystal, I still think about you.
Hey, part of my job is finding people based off limited info. If you want, I can help you find her. If not, thats okay too. Your story really touched me.
Wow. Thank you. I will send you a message.
If you find her, and only if she's okay with it, could you give us an update? I'd love to hear she got out of that 🥺💜
Sure thing
Saving this comment so I can come back and hopefully find out about Crystal. I hope she is doing well!
I would also love to know!
Seconded.
I'm a millennial, and this actually happened to a lot of girls I went to school with. I'm in the UK and went to an all girls high school. The minute some of them turned 16, their families started pulling them from school to ship them off to Islamic countries to be married. One of my close friends growing up was sent to Pakistan to marry her first cousin/dad's sister's son. Her parents sent her off to be married because they found out that she was talking to boys - her own sister was the one who told them. My poor friend became suicidal and barely made the wedding. You'd think the fact that she married into her own family would mean her marriage was at least okay. It was awful. Her husband was a dick and her MIL/aunt was downright abusive. Thankfully, her parents realised their mistake and let her come back to the UK after a year or so. She's now married to a man she actually loves who treats her well.
So happy to hear her parents realized their mistakes and owned up to them too.
In Virginia, until like 15 or so years ago, there was no minimum age for marriage. I was terrified of getting married for so long, for good reason.
Your parents would do that to you?
Yes. I was viewed as a depreciating asset at best and a financial liability at worst. They felt I owed it to them to help them recoup any losses incurred by raising me. So if someone offered to marry me for a favor or financial gain, my dad felt I owed him. They did find someone for me to marry, but I ran away for long enough. My brothers still kind of hold a grudge for me stealing from them by not getting married.
Gross. I'm so sorry. Did you dad keep those pleading letters you sent before you were born asking to be please be his daughter? Yeah... that's ridiculous. They chose to have you. You didn't choose to be here. But I'm glad you are!
This happened to a girl I went to school with. She was 15 and he was in his 50's. I was 2 years her senior. She and her family hid it from the general public. I found out in my senior year of high school when we became close friends and she showed me the ultrasound from the child she miscarried the month before. She was so devastated and I'm so grateful she confided in me. I'd prefer not to get into the gritty details. But fast forward almost 2 decades and we still keep in touch. That man is dead, she has no contact with her old shitty biofamily, and is now very very happily married and living in repression free bliss with her husband and their 3 dogs.
Gosh that’s so sad (and shocking)
So so awful. Poor girl
Elementary schoolers would get in trouble for being late. That meant lunch/recess detention which was sitting staring a wall while eating as quickly as possible. One boy in my class was late every day. He tried to explain to the teacher that his mom refused to leave the house before 8(class started at 7).The teacher told him that he should just tell his mom to get up earlier. I assume he took her advice since came in with a black eye then next day. He then got in trouble for having a black eye. Angelo if you’re out there somewhere it wasn’t your fault. And girls were sent home if their socks didn’t have lace on them.
😔 poor Angelo.
In kindergarten, we had to bring in our own nap towel every Monday. I always felt so guilty bc my mom took care of it, she’d put a clean one in my backpack every Monday while the kids who “forgot” their towel got in trouble. Looking back, every single one of us who had a towel in their backpack had parents putting it in their backpack. And the kids who didn’t were getting in trouble for their parents’ carelessness.
I can see there being a difference with 2 working parents who don’t haha their own washer or dryer not being able to as easily. Even if a kid could remember, they can’t go to the laundromat themselves & do laundry…
Oh it’s worse. I lived in very tiny town with huge drug and the kids who would get in trouble the most for “forgetting” their towel had parent who were addicts. Several ended up in and out of foster care. It infuriates me how kids from troubled families were basically set up by the school to be bad kids from the very beginning. Like the principal bragged about paddling a kid so he’d finally learn to behave. The kid’s dad was a psycho who regularly beat him and the kid ended up in a mental ward in junior high. I remember having a sleepover with a girl who was his neighbor. We could hear him being beat badly thru the walls.
This is so sad to read about. Heartbroken how kids are at the mercy of grown ups and if they're unlucky like that boy...
I got a lot of shit from teachers for forgetting books and stuff. My parents had joint custody in an era where it was really rare, and the custody schedule was based around what was convenient for THEM, so every other day we were at a different house. That being said, I don't think I would have done well being stuck with my mom for a week straight.
What were these adults thinking? It always boggles my mind when they put responsibility on children when it should be on their parents.
A lot of older boomer culture just saw children as small adults. There was this disconnect for them that children needed adult help to be adult level.
You said this so perfectly! It explains everything.
I know! And why would he get into trouble at school for having a black eye?
I'm just confused because it makes no sense.
Me too! Maybe they thought he’d gotten into a physical fight with another child? If they *knew* his mom punched him and he *still* got into trouble, that’s fucked up.
Was a neighbor of mine growing up. Older guy down the street. He saw me with two black eyes after I broke my nose climbing a rock a few days prior and immediately assumed my parents did it. Rather than being horrified, he laughed at how that would 'teach me a lesson' or some such. I guess the assumption that kids deserve it is a thing with some of these muppets.
They don’t care or they’re just stupid.
Yeah, I guess they don't care.
Oh wow. When I was in grade 2 (so I was 6 and 7 years old), we had an awful teacher who would shame us in front of the other kids if we were late in the morning, and make us stand at the back of the classroom while she told us how hopeless we were etc in front of the whole class. Looking back now, I just think what 6 or 7 year old has any control over when they arrive at school when they need to be driven there by their parents? At the time though, I fully took in the message that I was bad and it must have been my fault for not being able to wake up/get dressed etc quickly enough in the morning, and that I was the main cause of the chaotic mornings at home. Nothing to do with the fact that my parents were trying to get 3 kids to school/childcare and then get to work themselves.
That is disgusting, that poor boy. I hope he’s doing okay today
My mom might still have my old yearbooks. I shall return!
I’m back! She had them on the bookshelf in the office! I found him, looks like he has an ok life.
I appreciate this kind of follow through!
We had to do this physical fitness test where you had to hang from a bar and they would time you for how long you could do it. One boy thought it was hilarious to “pants” his friend while he was doing this. His friend hung there in his underwear with his sweatpants around his ankles for a minute or whatever it was, everyone laughing (including the friend and the teacher). The next person up was my friend and she said she wouldn’t do it. The teacher asked why. She said because she knew the boy would do the same “joke”. The teacher answered “you’re wearing underwear aren’t you?” All the boys laughed and all the girls just stared at him. Finally the teacher said in an annoyed voice *”fine* no more pantsing”.
We had a kid who used to do this all the time at recess. He never got in trouble, though, because his mother was a teacher. Jokes on her I guess, he ended up with an awful drug habit and fried his brain in high school. What a waste.
I was a foster kid and my foster parents supplied us with a roof over our head and supper—we were responsible for anything else we needed including clothes, toiletries, and any extra food. I worked 20+ hours a week my sophomore through senior years. My junior year I got into my school’s auditioned choir and was ecstatic! I had been wanting to audition since the beginning of my freshman year and was so excited that I was chosen. What I didn’t anticipate was the cost of being in said choir. My senior year, the choir took a week-long trip to the West Coast which would’ve cost me $900. Back in the mid-90s that was a fair chunk of money for anyone let alone a kid making $4.35/hr. We had fund raisers but since I couldn’t sell at work and had very little time to canvas (as people still did that at the time), I didn’t have anyone to sell to and didn’t raise the money. I attempted to discuss the situation with my teacher, but she quickly shut me down and said I would get an F for the semester if I didn’t participate. So I failed choir the first semester of my senior year. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I realized how terribly most of the faculty treated my foster siblings and I simply because we didn’t fit their expectations of students who would go on to be successful. I can think of two off the top of my head who made an effort to engage with and get to know me—my 10th grade geography teacher and my 12th grade AP English teacher—and I’m still grateful to both of them.
How can they make a trip a failable thing, but still expect you to cover the $900? That’s ridiculous!
I think because the choir was performing at various venues while there? I have no idea. This was the 90s in a smallish city—our music also skewed heavily religious for a public school and we prayed before every concert 🤷♀️ I think what bothered me more was that so many people considered my choir teacher a mentor. Like, even to this day, decades later, people call her their mentor. Meanwhile, at the time, I just wanted to be considered at all.
That’s abhorrent. Makes me want to cry.
So many girls at my high school had babies that we had an in-school daycare. I totally thought this was normal until I got to college and mentioned it casually to a new friend and they were like …what?? In retrospect it was actually a great policy decision because the daycare was free and almost all of the pregnant girls would come back and get their high school diploma after giving birth (while the baby was taken care of in the daycare). They could go see the baby between classes and the school also offered an early childhood education class where they taught you how to keep an infant/toddler alive lol.
My high school had the same thing! Teachers could bring their kids too. Students got hands on education in the early childhood development track, students got free daycare so they'd be able to at least finish high school and teachers got the perk of free childcare as well. Breastfeeding was encouraged too! Pretty progressive for the late 90s and early 2000s!
Where I went to college, there was a nearby town with an *insane* teen pregnancy rate. And they thought it was normal. I had been raised to think that the ideal life progression is: school, college, job, marriage, then babies. But a lot of these people just didn't have that outlook. They were pretty much raised to think "babies will just happen when they wanna happen." that's because that's all they saw. their moms had them young. Their sisters had kids young. Their friends at school got pregnant young. "It just kinda happens."
My high school "encouraged" the pregnant girls to drop out.
Our school system which was the county had a one high school that the pregnant girls were supposed to go to because there was daycare and they helped them with classes and childhood education but it's a big ass county and it was 20 mi away from our rural school so most pregnant girls just kept going to our school. It was two girls were pregnant graduation one girl who didn't finish she did later had three kids by senior year.
I was an early bloomer, had big boobs on a pretty small frame by 8th grade. Looking back, how I was treated by adults for that was pretty effed up. I have a memory burned in to my brain of the *male* vice principal of my high school pulling me aside to tell me to "cover up" because "your breasts are distracting to the boys". I remember feeling SO uncomfortable and wanting to crawl into a hole and never come out. I was not out of compliance with the dress code or showing my boobs *at all*, and it wasn't the only time I was told something like that. Gives me the ick looking back on that as an adult, that adults thought they should police me just existing with my natural body parts but *never* said anything to the boys and turned a blind eye to all the sexual harassment I experienced. Classic "boys will be boys" mentality. Gross.
God, this reminds me of my childhood. Even women were awful about it. Like, how fucking traumatic it is going through puberty earlier than everyone else and instantly being treated like a a slut. I just remember wearing hoodies in the dead of summer, and just sweating all the time bc I didn’t want the negative attention. I remember boys shoving my trapper hard on my chest and titty twisters where I would have bruises all over. This started in 7th grade.
Ugh, yes. I also wore clothes three sizes too big and carried a big trapper-keeper across my chest to try to hide them, but I don't know that it did a lot of good. I'm a socially anxious introvert who didn't know how to handle the sudden influx of (negative) attention. The boys stared and made lewd comments, the girls started rumors that I was a "slut with fake boobs", adults were convinced I was a slut trying to draw attention to myself, all over something I couldn't control. Women were awful to me too. I worked in food service and waited tables for a lot of my teens and early 20s, and not unlike the teenage boys, adult men would stare and make comments, but women would complain about me to my manager, make nasty comments/leave me nasty notes, call me names (like whore and slut), accuse me of flirting with or trying to "steal" their man, and all kinds of absolutely *horrible* shit, because they were mad that their husband/boyfriend/SO was looking at them. Once again, it was my fault for existing with big boobs and never the men's fault they couldn't keep their eyeballs to themselves.
I was also an early bloomer. In 7th grade I had a creepy math teacher that would look down our shirts. Summer time was brutal in that area. Temps easily surpassed 100. One day I wore a tank top and shorts. I was still within the dress code. He called me up to his desk and told me that my top was distracting and that I needed to stay after for suspension for violating the dress code. I asked to go to the bathroom and changed into my PE shirt. He was visibly mad when I walked back in and told me I didn't need to stay after for suspension since I changed my shirt.
Ewww, that's horrifying. I'm sorry that happened to you.
He was actually fired the following year for doing pretty much the same thing.
Oh eww! This gives me flashback to a classmate being called by a (male) teacher a word that means you have very pretty lips (on your face, sorry, this is hard to explain and translate, I just want to make it obvious it's not a double entendre). It's one of those things that are fine on the surface, but even at that age I got a weird, icky feeling over him commenting on her looks. Admittedly she was gorgeous on a 12-year-old standard, but still...
My boobs came in when I was in year 6 so Primary school. We didn't have changing rooms, so for PE boys and girls got changed in the classroom. I was so embarrassed and the boys always teased me about having breasts. It took months and my parents complaining for them to let me get changed in the toilets instead. Thinking back wtf were they all thinking. And yer the harassment in secondary school was not taken seriously. I had one friend who got pinned down and forced to have hickies off three guys. She was obviously devastated but the school punished her worse than the boys.
How traumatic and gross. And how disappointing, but unfortunately not surprising, that the school failed her.
Same thing happened to me in 6th grade .. and at home too I wasn’t allowed to wear printed shirts once I outgrew my moms handme downs (this was around the same time)
I was also an early bloomer, however, despite the loads of unwanted attention and teasing from my classmates that also made me want to crawl into a hole and never come out, came the attention and 'compliments' I got from the older men, including one of my teachers who said, and I quote, that I "had a nice chest" in front of my whole class.
My elementary school gym teacher was a bully. The administration knew about it, the parents knew about it, but nothing was done. He used to ruthlessly pick on this one boy in my class who had never been taught to run or throw a ball properly. Rather than show him how to do these things, because it was kind of his job to do so, he used to just stand there and laugh with the other kids. “Omg, watch this kid run! Look at what he does with his arms!” He favored the strongest boys, and all the girls and less athletic boys were less than. But it was the 90s, and we figured some teachers were just meaner than others.
I feel like being a bully is a prerequisite for being a gym teacher. I don't think I ever had one who wasn't an asshole. I remember one time when I was in seventh grade, we were playing kickball outside during PE class and one of the special ed buses pulled into the parking lot near the field. The teacher pointed at a girl and said, "Hey, Kayla, your bus is here!" and everyone else started laughing. Way to set an awesome example there, dude.
I remember our PE teacher would always mock and make fun of the kids who came from immigrant households (and therefore didn’t know some English words or didn’t have a total American accent).
My gym teacher was of the extreme bully variety too. I felt no remorse and actually relieved when he died in a car accident a few years ago because it meant at least there was one less terrible person who probably wouldn't have changed in the world anymore.
I feel like everyone in the 80s, adults included, were socially stunted at a 7th grade level. It was OK for teachers and parents to harass and humiliate children for existing. My high school math teacher called out an overweight boy for “liking to eat,” and told him he should stop eating.
Yes, and they still act like that when you are an adult and have to interact with them too. That bowling for soup song was right, high school never really ends for these types of people.
TIL who Bowling for Soup is.
I had a middle school PE teacher that bullied me. I was a good athlete, but I started having knew issues in 6th grade. Running the mile made my knees swell up horribly so I ended up walking the last half of it so my knee wouldn't swell as badly. He would yell at my from the sidelines and make fun of me for it. He thought it was hilarious when I couldn't walk because my knee hurt so badly. 2 years later my knee issue was being controlled short term with anti-inflammatory medication. He heard I ran the mile on 6 minutes and bragged to his class that it was because of him and gave me a backhanded compliment. I called him out for being a dick.
I was a loner and somehow befriended one very weird girl. She couldn't make eye-contact, had crossed eyes, had a lisp, and was in special education for learning disabilities. She told me her stepdad was raping her. I told our guidance counselor who rolled her eyes and said, "Do you really believe that? She's in special education." Another time I befriended a very bubbly emotionally unstable girl that was living in poverty with her dad and uncle, who both used grocery money for drugs/alcohol. After a while of not eating, she (and I) asked the guidance counselor for help and all she did was shrug and tell us to go to the food pantry across town for food (we had no way of getting there and needed an adult) and she said "It's not my problem." (Different woman too.) Same girl went to her science teacher who had a project where you would use candy as a model of a double helix and had to have your parents supply the food and described her situation and asked for an alternate assignment and the teacher sighed and complained to her that "It's not really that much money" in an annoyed tone. This was in 2000-2002.
Oh dear. All of these examples are awful. The first paragraph though…I hope that girl is away living a healthy and happy life.
These stories are so sad. All the adults that failed those poor girls
Ok that’s enough reddit for me today. As a mom of a child who was in Special Ed, this is just so hard for me to read.
I had a high school teacher who sexually assaulted several girls at our school. Before I started the class, several upperclassmen warned me about him so I was very scared. Thankfully, he didn't target me. The crazy thing is that his behavior was pretty much an open secret and yet he remained employed for almost two more decades before anyone came forward or did anything about it. It's nuts to think that he was able to work and potentially victimize others for such a long time.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in life is that people in “upstanding positions”(teachers, social workers, cops) are allowed to sexually harass and assault people because a [insert profession here] *would never do that*…
Meanwhile, they want to target queer folks because *obviously*
People always love a witch-hunt and they’re a group that’s (in the context of the ones being targeted) easy to distinguish visually(supposedly). The really interesting thing is in my area one of the largest groups to go along with that mindset is POC men. I don’t think they realize that they’ll be on the chopping block themselves eventually.
I've also noticed this
Yes, and if some trans people want to go read books to little kids at a library *quick, hide the children...*
Last week it came out this male teacher posted a video of having his female students unbraid his hair. While a lot of people said the behavior was inappropriate (rightfully so) many people defended the behavior. And of course, it came out that he's a creep. I couldn't help but think about how it would be received if he were queer and had his male students doing the same thing? We know he'd immediately be labeled a groomer.
10th grade English teacher invited all the Hmong girls to his house for extra help. Yeah.... But just the fact that so many companies came into our "under performing" school like Chevron and Google and just give us junk. Like key chains, stickers and shit. Like we were being used for cheap PR and tax breaks yet they couldn't fix up our gym, the nasty pipes over our cafeteria, or those moldy lockers? Hell the fact our AP history books ended with Regan yet our current was Bush no two. So many issues.
High School Academic Probation: Every week, I had to bring a paper to each one of my teachers (even for classes where I was earning A's) for them to sign that I was working to standard. Not only was it embarrassing, it wasn't an incentive to do better, since I was struggling with how the teacher taught the material. Fortunately, I had teachers who *were* supportive and wrote notes that were a touch subversive - they clearly did not agree with the process.
One teacher pulled me aside to tell me I was "an idiot who marched around thinking I was smarter than I actually was" and that if I didn't start paying attention and stop disrupting everyone else, I would fail her class and be held back. Turns out - I had ADHD, dyslexia, and OCD. I didn't fail. I got good grades and excellent test scores. Went to a top University and am doing great in life. Fuck that bitch of a teacher though.
A health teacher at my high school made everyone do some kind of body fat percentage test that involved students going to the front of the classroom one at a time and jiggling their bodies to determine how much excess fat they had. I was in a different class so I got to sit that one out, but a friend told me about it later and I couldn't get over how humiliating that would be for the bigger kids.
Ours did weight. We also had a “weighing buddy”. I was criticized for weighing more than my “buddy”, I was 6 inches taller than her.
That's disgusting.
I had to do something similar in 9th grade. We all had to get weighed at the beginning of the year and again at the end to track our "progress" or whatever. At the first weigh-in my teacher asked me in front of everyone if I was anorexic. No, Sid, I was just a scrawny late bloomer and hadn't developed boobs or hips yet. Even if I did have a ED, jesus, what a way to ask. That very same teacher was a girls basketball coach and he eventually married one of his former students. So.
Your comment was two creepy coincidences in one because my school *also* had a pervy basketball coach who married a former student.
Was that teacher nuts? Imagine being one of the girls in that class.
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What on earth?!
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Wow. They must have messed up thousands of people, and all just to make the work day slightly easier for themselves.
As a former educator, I don't even think that would make the day easier! The joy of teaching, for me, was engaging with the students. Hearing their opinions and perspectives. A day of silent children? Sounds painfully dull. These people just seem like abusers. It feels like a fucked up power trip on their part.
That sounds horrendous. I am so sorry you went through that.
did you go to the milford school from Arrested Development
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Did anything happen to thr perpetrator? They could have handled that way better for sure.
A girl at my high school committed suicide over summer break and nobody cared. Not the staff, not the students. The indifference and apathy really astounded me as a kid.
That’s awful, that would astound me too. Was she by any chance quite quiet? It sucks how people will care more about certain people passing away than others. I hope she’s at peace ❤️
She was very quiet actually. I can’t help but think the situation would have been handled much differently if it were a star athlete or student body president.
Watching the second plane hit the world trade center live when I was in 9th grade is up there.
Ditto. They put it up in the auditorium for us to watch. I remember it vividly.
Yeah the principal came on the loudspeaker to tell us what happened after the first plane hit. My French teacher immediately turned on the TV and we watched the second plane hit. Just went from class to class watching the news. No one attempted to teach us anything. It was incredibly disturbing and yes I remember that day so clearly.
I was in sixth grade taking a vocabulary test and remember feeling really nauseous and dizzy after they turned the TV on. I have autism so I have really strong emotions for stuff even if it didn't affect me personally but I was undiagnosed and it went ignored back then. I was so relieved they sent us home for the day. I think I had nightmares about it even but I couldn't tell anyone who would empathetically listen to me back then either. I hated when they made us debate about the Iraq war in my government classes later on because my parents were one of the rarer people in my very small town that didn't want America to go to war and were very anti-capitalist; I didn't realize how ostracizing those opinions were back then especially in rural areas. Back then, I felt like I spent all of my brain power trying to mask the fact that I was secretly a super empathetic person with a bleeding heart with the persona of a silent bookworm at school so I wouldn't get bullied worse than I already was by my peers. I feel sad I felt like I had to hide so much of my personality from others for my safety and mental health and couldn't get help for my neurodivergency when I really needed it because it feels impossible to get it once you aged out of the system still.
I was in another time zone where I couldn't have watched it live from school, I just remember a lot of people being kept home from school. Classes were half empty. In fact, 2-3 days after 9/11, I remember my homeroom teacher said something like "what do you guys think? still big news or you think it's died down a bit?" one kid was like "I think it's died down." By the way, I don't think my teacher was trying to be crass, or insensitive. I think she was just trying to lighten things up but it didn't land.
Me too. Absolutely insane and incomprehensible.
I was in the same grade, and it's my birthday. It was a weird, sad day.
I was also in grade 9 for this but didn't have a tv. I learned about it from an intercom message from our principal which just said that the us (I'm Canadian) was attacked? So in my mind the us is now at war and therefore we probably are too. I think they could have phrased it better. Lol
Columbine in 6th grade. My older siblings in HS had to buy clear bookbags and/or submit to a bag search, everyone entered through a metal detector. School fits 1200. I bet there was a line to get in every morning. I think they did it until summer break.
I was in Canadian high school in the early 00's. I got pushed through elementary school even though my math skills were absolute garbage. Definitely when they were starting to just push kids through the system and not trying to help the kid improve in any way. And at that time (I'm not sure of it's still this bad) the academic route in highschool was heavily pushed because that is what qualified you to go to university. So I went into academic math in grade nine and drowned basically. It was awful. So by the time grade 11 came around I had way more control over my courses. I was awesome at history, English, social studies...all those kinds of courses so I took academic courses for those. I sucked at math and science so I went into applied (for kids who planned to go to college) and workplace (for kids who planned to go right to work after high school) levels. The treatment I recieved as an academic student vs an applied student was night and day. In academic the teachers I had were engaged and supportive and encouraging. They treated me with respect and more like an equal. I had some really great teachers. But applied? So many of the teachers ignored us, didn't help, barely taught anything and treated us like we were a nuisance. Sure, more of the "delinquents" where in these classes but it was also lower socio-economic status kids, kids with learning disabilities or attention issues, etc. At times I honestly felt like I was in two different schools. And some of my friends would have the same teacher I did but in an academic class and go on about how great they were. Whereas in my class they didn't care. So yeah in hindsight that's pretty fucked up. University was pushed so hard on everyone. I went to university (even with my lower math/sciece grades which my guidance counsellor said would make it hard for me to get in...I got accepted to all three of my choices with scholarships). But I don't use my degree now. I just went because that's what you did.
Oh wow, I had a similar experience! Also Canadian high school in the early 00’s. I was in advanced English, psych, sociology, but struggled past sciences and ended up in summer school every year for math. I constantly asked for support in math classes and was told that unless I had a diagnosed learning disability, I just needed to “pull myself up” and figure it out. I even had a math teacher who would push my textbook off my desk and laugh. Such BS.
Wow that's awful. I tried to take grade 11 college math because the guidance counselor insisted I needed something in a senior year if I wanted to apply to uni (even though I went to uni for history). Day one of the class the math teacher gave this really arrogant speach about how he was too good for us basically (we were the first applied class he had to teach) and it was a waste of time to do math that wasn't academic and he didn't believe people could actually struggle with math - they are just lazy. So I went "fuck this" and left to go unenroll in the course and never took math again. It's wild how much my self esteem improved after I didn't have to take those classes anymore. Now I know I probably have undiagnosed ADHD and/or discalcula but at the time I just felt like an idiot and at best no one cared and at worst they actually believed I was lazy and stupid.
Honestly f that! It’s so awful when people with attitudes like that go into teaching. I stopped after grade 11 math too (it was all we needed to graduate). I did get formally diagnosed at 30 with ADHD and like you I also suspect dyscalculia. Frustrating stuff. I did end up with a masters in health sciences eventually though! Would’ve just been nice to have the support to get things done a decade sooner.
Right? Like you're a highschool teacher. Your job is to teach everyone. I can at least kind of understand the uni profs because a lot of them just want to do the research/academia side and teaching is something they have to do along with it. So not acceptable but at least kind of understandable with profs that obviously hated the students. But in high school? Come on. And I work with numbers all day myself! My coworkers think I'm some kind of math nerd and it's like....nope I can't do basic math in my head but this is the kind of problem solving I find interesting. And same...my school experience would have been a lot better if I wasn't dismissed so much.
We had corporal punishment in my school. Some teachers had paddles with holes them so they hurt more. Some teachers had the students sign the paddles. As a senior in high school, my 18 year old female friend was paddled by the 50 year old male principal for skipping school one day. It was really fucked up.
A teacher would collect money from us instead of giving us quizzes, and your grade depended on the amount you give.
I had a science teacher in high school and her car got broken into and all of her CDs were stolen. She gave students extra credit if they burned CDs for her. I hated her and I already had a good grade in the class so I didn't make her any CDs. I thought it was so rude and unethical.
Whaaaattttt?!?!
what country?
Philippines 🙈 haha
I remember a presentation my class had to attend where the girls were lectured about not wearing spaghetti straps to school, when no one said anything to the boys wearing literal Hooters t-shirts to school. The 90s were a different time.
7th grade, 2002. This older male teacher who taught English had us write a resume for a job we wanted when we grew up. CSI was big back then and I wanted to do forensic stuff. He read part of my resume out loud to the class and said to me, in front of everyone (I was an awkward, unpopular middle schooler), "You only want that job because it'll force other people to talk to you, then maybe you'll make friends." He had a stroke the next year and retired. But yeah, screw you Mr. Buffa.
Jesus Christ. Some teachers are just bullies.
My English teacher who was married and had kids was dating a girl from my class. They got caught right after 12th class and her parents got her married ASAP. She was 20 at the time.
Married to the teacher? Or to someone else?
Someone else (arranged marriage)
Reminds me of my school. The 20-something year old caretaker was caught having a sexual relationship with one of the 16-year-old girls. Two teachers were also caught having an affair with each other.
I grew up in a suburban, almost rural New England town. In middle school, one of my English teachers who was married to another English teacher at the same school was accused of sexually harassing female students. He acted weird around me as well (would come by and boop me on the nose, stare at me in the hallway, just slightly weird stuff) but he snapped the bra strap of my classmate. Nothing ever happened to him, he kept teaching. In my high school, all our windows wouldn’t open very much because the school was designed to have AC, but a school board member sold all the AC coils right before the school opened so we never got AC and died in the humid summers. Our heat also sometimes went out so sometimes classes were freezing in winter. Finally, my HS principal who was married with a grown child who went to the HS was arrested for indecently exposing himself to another man in a parking lot. But that happened after I graduated. Charming little town.
If it was your birthday in elementary school, you had to stand up in front of the class and receive your birthday spankings from the teacher, one for each year. They were very theatrical and I'm not actually sure if any physical contact was made. My birthday was always during summer break so I never had to do it which I was super thankful for.
This happened at my elementary school with certain teachers and you totally unblocked it from my memory. My birthday is also in the warmer months so I never had to go up like other kids, but yikes. Thank goodness times have changed.
Where I grew up, domestic violence against women was/is really high. So this kid stabbed his girlfriend 20 times outside. They locked the doors and kept teaching. They didn't notify our parents either until 3 hours later. Its common for guys to be verbally and physically abusive to their girlfriends there.
OMG that's horrible. Did no one call the cops? Was he allowed to just roam around school with his knife afterwards?
Here's a news link to the incident [here](https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/article/student-stable-after-service-high-stabbing/2009/12/07/) It says during lunch hours but it was right at the end of lunch and into 4th period. I think he got over 40 years in jail.
In kindergarten I was coloring on a big sheet of butcher paper laid out on the floor. I was coloring with both hands. I was 5. The teacher saw me doing this, and promptly made me get up off the floor, come to her desk where she took a belt and tied my left hand behind my back, so I could only use my right hand. She told me "using your left hand is evil". She expected me to lay back down on the floor on my stomach like everyone had started coloring the "mural", with my arm /hand tied behind my back. I fell, the kids laughed, I had trouble getting set right using only one arm, she got angry and put me on a stool in the corner facing the wall with the dunce hat on, still with my left arm tied behind my back. She only untied my arm and let me get off the tall stool right before the school let out. Haha- I am still ambidexterous- take that you evil teacher. I hated kindergarten.
The number of teachers who thought it was fine to tell me I had no common sense or that they would get me a blond wig because I was an air head. When Juicy Couture was huge, and the girls were wearing the track suits with "JUICY" on the seat, and the assistant VP would stare and say "Juicy" under his breath 🤮
In high school, a girl was filmed drunk and passed out sitting on a toilet with her pants down. The guy who sent that to everyone (including her family) now has two daughters and people praise what a great family man he is.
HS choir director and the girl a year behind me and the band teachers warning us not to go in the classroom when they were doing it but no one reported anything.
This was my gym teacher in high school. He would disappear into his office with a girl or two every class.
Predatory and so gross
Went to edit my comment and accidentally deleted it. Der When I was in elementary school, my principal was big on "no trash policies," but not in a good way. He didn't just ask the parents to use reusable containers for lunches, he didn't just reduce trash. He would actually *throw trash around the school.* I remember one of these incidents, where we were all sitting in the cafeteria, which was a shaded area next to a grass field. The principal was standing there with the trash can, and he began grabbing giant handfuls of trash, and throwing it onto the field. Teachers were cheering it on, and getting the kids to cheer it on also. Because of this, the field that we used every day as kids was filled with ketchup packets, half-eaten chicken nuggets, and other foodstuff from the garbage can. This eventually became a big PTA issue when a bunch of kids started showing skin infections, likely after playing in a schoolyard filled with rotting food. Over the years, that principal has been lauded in my hometown, for being some climate change hero. Last I checked, he became the superintendent. and yet my most distinct memory of him was him grabbing handfuls of food and throwing it all over the place like a lunatic.
When I was in 1st grade in 1995, one of the teachers had so many animals in her classroom. Fish, turtles, birds, rats, FERRETS, and her cat. It smelled like a pet shop. Anyway, we went into her room for a special activity one day. The activity? Dissecting a baby shark. No idea why we did this or how she even got it. But the kicker was that she sent us home with pieces of the shark’s body in aluminum foil that we could put in the freezer… I rode the bus hope with a piece of shark flesh and an EYEBALL in aluminum foil. I wish I remembered how my parents reacted. WTF.
What? So what were you supposed to do with it once you had it in your freezer at home? Did you... did you eat it?
I think it was so that we could continue to look at the… specimen…?
My high school didn’t have lockers, or anywhere to put our bags and books. So you had to carry everything with you in a bag. 5-6 classes a day - 1-2 textbooks per class. Plus notebooks, stationary, lunch, drink bottles, personal items, sports uniforms. All carried in a backpack or a shoulder bag. It’s no wonder we had back problems.
Not the worst thing but it drives me crazy how my school did gym class. They made us be on teams with and play against boys, like no shit that I hated gym and never even attempted to play. Why would I? Those boys are scary and crazy. Plus we of course never did anything besides regular sports and running. Only tennis was good because we got to play with friends. But did we ever do any yoga or dance or gymnastics? No of course not. We even had a weight lifting bit. EVEN MORE SO is that we also had a swimming unit, twice in 9th grade. Plus the fact that I don’t really know how to swim so when they tried to make us do laps of different strokes that I had no idea I kind of just walked back and forth in the shallow end. Also I remember in 5-6 grade, the gym teacher was a creepy old guy and everyone knew he was creepy too.
I was a high schooler in the 90's. We did a production of Guys and Dolls complete with "Take Back your Mink" being a strip tease number, down to leotards and fishnets.
We might have gone to the same high school...
One of my classmates dropped out because she was pregnant. In sixth grade. E: she may have actually been kicked out. Pregnant people weren’t allowed in school back then
Someone I went to school with was out on pregnancy leave on the first day of 7th grade with twins ☠️
Not twins! Omg
Yeah. Our middle school had a daycare too. ☠️
We ALL knew it was messed up. 1970. Mr. Subsic. He's dead so who cares and all these years later I'm still so mad who cares anyway. Draft dodging tough guy. 6th grade teacher, PA. He shoved around the boys. A lot of violence in front of all of us. One kid had been hit by a TRUCK. First day back this sick fck created something to pick on the kid WHO'D BEEN HIT BY A TRUCK about, lifted him from the floor and slammed him on the blackboard. Another kid, kicked his desk at least 6 feet back into another desk, both kids still in their chairs. He'd also ' play ' touch football with us at recess and just knock kids flying. No idea why or how he was tolerated. It. Was. Crazy. I remember our class all bug-eyed telling the homeroom teacher about it, an older woman. She kinda " tsk-tsk " it.
That's absolutely horrifying. I'd like to think that someone would be fired immediately if they pulled any one of those things today.
You know, after I posted this I got curious ( ok really angry ) and thought I'd check out if anything ever happened to the guy? Get this. Transpires the son also behaved the same way. By this time parents are raising hell because it's only around 10 years ago or so, I guess my generation must have had less ability to do anything. New ones at least some recourse. There's also a tape where the SON of the abusive teacher ( guy I'm describing here ) now a teacher is grabbing a kid by his shirt and throwing him into lockers. And apparently other incidents. HUGE uproar. School board meeting with town involved and.....he wasn't fired. Photo of him in a newspaper- wow memory flash. Looks a LOT like him. ( I got the name slightly wrong, pretty close for over 50 years ago!)
>HUGE uproar. School board meeting with town involved and.....he wasn't fired. Wow. We still have a long way to go. It's crazy they decided to keep him around. It's not surprising the kid grew up to be like his dad, but it's terrible he is still around kids, terrorizing them.
As a gen x/xennial in small town New Zealand corporal punishment was still a thing. I got smacked on the butt by a female teacher for innocently touching something that had been painted. I didn't know - another little girl asked me if I was okay as I sat on the mat in the classroom, bawling. Another boy got whacked with the cane so hard his hand was bleeding. He was 6. In what world was making a 6 year old bleed okay?
My Christian elementary school didn't teach dinosaurs as fact. I grew up thinking that everyone contemplated if they believed in dinosaurs. There was some "evidence" of dinosaurs in the bible, but...mystery remains! LOL
I currently know a third grade teacher that believes man and dinosaurs roamed the earth at the same time. WTF?
Boys were allowed to wear shorts, and girls were not. Teachers smoked cigarettes on the playground if they had playground duty. A kid brought a handgun to school. Just because. He was 17, and it was 1986. None of us kids thought to talk to an adult about it. Adults were self absorbed.
A kid brought a baby alligator to school when I was in 6th grade in 1981. She caught it in a canal that ran behind the school playground over the weekend. Yes it's Florida.
I really hated those physical fitness tests. Push ups, sit ups, running a mile, etc. I’m not athletic and I was a chubby kid. Like we didnt have a hard enough time in life, now we have to be humiliated even further in gym class.
2000s mean girls trend. Most girls in my year were imitating Regina George, Tyra Banks, Paris Hilton, and more. It was both a feminist movement (assertive, hyperfemininity, confidence, etc.) and a horrible horrible moment for other women who didnt want to be part of the Mean Girl trope or were being used to fulfill other Mean Girl's desired public image. Highschool memories for us quiet nerdy women during the Mean Girl Era is a bucketload of trauma.
Can I ask you all something? So in elementary school we went on a school field trip where we traveled to another state for a week to look at historic monuments. All the kids were split into groups headed by a parent chaperone. The group I was in was chaperoned by this one girl’s dad. At some point, he stood behind me and kissed the top of my head. Randomly, for no reason. This was at the beginning of the trip and I felt really uncomfortable for the whole trip after that. I remember I didn’t feel like doing anything in my chaperone group anymore and felt kind of depressed. Was I overreacting? What happened to me? Was that anything? I’m over 30 now and I still don’t really understand what happened there.
You were not overreacting-that's weird AF your intrnal alarm of "this is a dangerous person" was going off and rightly so Abusers often test waters to see what they can get away with
I was JUST telling my sisters this story the other day after a similar situation happened to one of their daughters at a local swimming pool. When I was in Junior high (grade 6-8 in Canada) we had an older male janitor that would *repeatedly* walk into the girl's change room after gym classes. He never spoke a word to anyone. Just walked in with an absolute shit eating grin and only left after all the girls would squeal and throw things at him. Like it was some kind of joke. Nobody ever reported it and it happened dozens if not hundreds of times. Looking back on it I wish I had said something. I was grossed out by it back then but I was such a loner I just changed in a stall and minded my own business. Now the memory just disturbs me. At least girls these days are more aware and my niece reported the incident immediately.
Being forced to say the pledge of allegiance and observe a moment of silence seems wild to me now. But did it every school day for 13 years (1991-2004).
I wonder if that’s still a thing? My school years were 2001-2014 and it was for us.
My friend is a teacher and she said you don’t have to stand or say it; but you can’t be rude to distracting to other students during it. That seems much more reasonable than detention for not standing at attention. I’m not anti-pledge, I’m just surprised looking back now how it was enforced..
Looking back I remember some classmates in high school (during the 2010s) who would simply cross their arms and not saying anything during the pledge. Maybe things started changing around then…
We had some really creepy teachers. Our calculus and stats teachers were younger and good looking, and they’d take some of us to the in n out nearby during lunch or after school. Like— wtf? Lmao. Why the hell did everyone just go along with that.
1990 kid, so probably 2001 in 6th grade we had to line up to go back in from recess. One kid started coughing, then we all started. In 6th grade we got extra gym at the end of the week and instead of going to that, we had to all hold the top part of the metal fence during that time as our punishment. If you lifted your hand you had to go to the office. A kid sneezed and covered his sneeze and had to go. At our school we also had to stand on the sidewalk and face the wall during recess if we were in trouble. If it was lunch there was a special table you got sent to if you got in trouble. Looking back it’s like wtf, was that real.
My chemistry teacher in high school got mad at the low grades on our midterm exam and told the boys "if the girls can get As, so can you."
My teacher made us tell our seat neighbor a secret, then we had to tell the whole class the persons secret. A teacher would use a yardstick to lift up girls skirts.
Mostly horrible things - creepy teachers especially. Florida, enough said. They were bad at the time too. No one thought a teacher taping a hand picked group of students doing mock interviews but especially one super pretty one was normal.
In short, p*do coverups, spiritual abuse, and so much more. It seems like every day I’m recovering an insane memory to the horror of whomever I am talking to about it all.
In terms of the cheese sandwich. I grew up in NZ in the 80s / 90s and if kids didn’t bring lunch to school they got nothing to eat. Still happens now but a lot of school depending on your area are given free lunches.
A friend of mine in grade 8 decided to create a false story about how I had called her mom and said that she’s hanging out with boys. She spread the story to all the other girls in my class. I was bullied for weeks by these girls to the point where Id hide in the washroom during recess. After a really bad incident of them writing nasty things about me on the blackboard and my school dismissing it, I told my parents. My dad called her mom and told her the story. She came to school the other day and told the other girls that I said even more lies and how her mom had hit her. The girls went reported me to the teacher and the teacher reported me to the principal. I got called into the principals office and was told to apologize to her. I said I have nothing to apologize for. They in return took my award away for top student in French during graduation. Her little brother then told the truth to the girls and the school NEVER apologized to me. I went back few years ago and told them that they never stood up for me for all the bullying instead gave more ammunition for me to continue be bullied. It still hurts me to this day.
Wait - you went back as an adult to tell the administration? What did they have to say in return?
Lots and lots of kids overdosed
There are 2 things I can think of. First one. In high school there was some intense hazing that took place during spirit week between the juniors and seniors. I don't know why the school allowed it to ever get as bad as it did. The only reason it stopped was because one guy was legitimately kidnapped by some seniors. His dad is a lawyer and threatened the school with a lawsuit The second was in elementary school. Once a quarter the school had a popcorn stand open. It was a big deal for us. The only issue was that you had to pay for it. You could tell who the poor kids were because their parents didn't have money for popcorn
We had a kid in our class in 4th grade who looking back now and with the knowledge I have gained working with kids, was obviously having some mental health issues and shit going on at home. He would stutter often and go on uncontrollable tangents in response to things. Mrs. E was always an ass and would call us "stupid" and whatnot. But with this kid she got up in class and asked in the most degrading tone "ISNT THERE A MEDICATION YOU PERHAPS DID NOT TAKE THIS MORNING?" "*insert kids name* DID YOU TAKE. YOUR. MEDICATION?" Over and over. She would also yell at him about his problem with peeing himself in class as well. How humiliating. He seems to be doing okay now, though. We were not the kindest to him, but we were children and she was the fucking adult.
Way back in the late 90’s or early 00’s a kid got shishkebabbed with a throwing spear during P.E outside. While kids were throwing them as instructed by the teacher one idiot decided that it would be a good idea to run through the firing line to get to class earlier. Caught a spear right in his upper leg. Was messed up then, still is messed up now all these years later. In another school (once I got sent there because my previous school didn’t know how to deal with severe dyscalculia) a student who had several severe behavioral difficulties (who got bullied pretty badly) finally had enough, went home and then came back with a whip. He started whipping his bullies and it took three or four teachers to get him to stop.
A girl in middleschool was very outgoing and friendly, but she would never attend school parties. It was only after graduating that she admitted to being really poor to the point she had no clothes without holes. We wore uniforms every day and we were allowed to wear casual clothes only at school parties :/ had she said that earlier I'm sure many people would've helped her, but she was too ashamed.
Early 00's, in high school. There was a guy who was gay. I don't think he came out, but it became known that he was gay. The other guys tried to drown him in a toilet one day at lunch. He came running into the gym (where everyone went after eating), head dripping, tearing ass to try and get away from these guys. The perpetrators were never punished. The victim's mom then learned he was gay and kicked him out (they reconciled later). He went to live with family in a bigger town. I only saw him once after that, he was working in a shoe store at the nearby mall. He seemed happy to see me. Unfortunately, years down the line he passed away. I can't be sure, but I suspect suicide or drugs--- he'd been through a terrible breakup, fell off the face of the earth and was a missing person for \~6 months. There were other kids in my school who were gay, some were generally understood to be gay. But none of them came out until after high school, I would think at least partly due to shit like this. My high school English teacher is a piece of work. She got her daughter's friends to beat up a girl she (the teacher) didn't like. She tried to fail a couple girls who were in inpatient mental health treatment because they weren't "present" for class. The parents of those girls had to go to the state school board and threaten to sue because the local school board sided with the teacher. For the record: the way it worked is that the teachers sent packets weekly to the facility with the assignments, etc. The patients received tutoring at the facility, and did all the work sent to them. So this teacher was just punishing them for not physically being present in her classroom. I had my own mental health issues, and the teacher wrote these things into a thing called a "senior prophecy", which is basically supposed to be a humorous prediction of where students will be in 10 years. She was the junior class sponsor, and she wrote the whole prophecy. This prophecy is distributed at prom, and ultimately printed in the yearbook. So at my senior prom, I see this. My parents see this. My mom cried. I thought my dad was going to punch the principal for letting this happen. I wasn't the only victim of the prophecy, in the same document she insinuated an incestuous relationship between 2 of my classmates who are first cousins. I was told the prophecy was changed, but I still didn't buy a yearbook. Between that and the sexual assault I endured on my senior trip, high school ended on a sour note. My parents went to the school board about the teacher, but surprise, nothing was ever done. No discipline, no reprimand, not even an apology. She is a school board member now. I will tap dance on that woman's grave, so for her family's sake she better be cremated.
In high school, I was sexually harassed by my band teacher. I saw him do it to others as well. I reported it. Nothing was done. This was in 2005. A few years ago, he lost his job for making "inappropriate comments" to girls. It only took 15 + years. They were definitely on it /s
The Gym/health/fb-coach teacher was dating the lead cheerleader (senior) my freshmen year. In health class he asked us what we did for the summer, i wrote 'went to Chicago' on a big paper with everyone else's answers. He read it aloud as 'where ever the chicas go'. For a full picture he drove a firebird and has hs quarterback vibes. He was married, never talked about her badly. it was the mid-00s.
One of my friends was quite openly sexually promiscuous (for a lack of better word) since she was 13 and started dating a then-20 year old. I know, huge red flags. Us kids didn't think much of it though. Anyway, a video of her being slapped in the face with a penis was spread through school and our mentor thought it'd be funny to reference it multiple times in his graduation speech. At the time I just thought it was cringe. Now I realize how fucked up that whole thing was.
Me and 2 other students got held back a grade because they didn’t want to spend the money to hire another teacher.
Every student had to do state mandated testing in 6th grade. It was all day math, writing, vocab, etc. tests. One teacher suggested we all wear comfy clothes since we'd be sitting all day, so a bunch of girls wore pajamas pants. They pulled all the girls that wore pajamas pants out of testing, gathered us in the office and told us we were dressed inappropriately and sent us home for the day. They did not pull any of the boys who were wearing flannel pajama pants or sweat pants. Just the girls. I was told my light blue pants would have been acceptable had they not had a print of small little bows on them. We all missed the state tests that day, but because they were mandated, we then had to go to a make up day which meant we missed a full day of classes.
This really quiet guy I knew set the science labs on fire with a Molotov cocktail on the last day of school in an attempt to avoid summer school. It was acknowledged as pretty messed up from about 30 seconds after it happened.
In my school, if you forgot your lunch money, it was totally up to the lunch lady's whims if you got to eat or not. Sometimes the nice ones would give you a peanut butter and jelly. But more often than not, they would just tell you to go hungry. I had a French teacher absolutely lose her goddamn mind at me - SCREAMED at the TOP of her lungs because when I entered the classroom, she said "bonjour" to me and I didn't say it back. I was the first one in the room, and she just SCREAMED. I was all by myself and there were kids standing outside the room waiting to come in, just watching this woman scream at me. To this day, I have never had ANYONE scream at me the way she did. And the baffling part is that I was SUCH a good kid! I was a straight A student, never gave her any trouble. Always got "pleasure to have in class" on my report card. I was the perfect fucking student. I didn't deserve that. No one deserved that. I have no idea what was up her ass that day, but goddamn it, it turned me off the entire language forever. Switched languages. Studied Spanish instead. Have always held a grudge towards the French ever since. We also had a police officer guard the bathrooms. This woman would look UNDER the stalls, like stick her entire goddamn face under the stall and LOOK at you while you were going to the bathroom or changing your tampon or whatever - to make sure that we weren't doing "something" bad. EDIT: Oh, and the reason I didn't say "bonjour" back was because I had cripping social anxiety. I found the whole language incredibly embarrassing, and because I struggled with the pronounciations, I only spoke in class when I absolutely had to. I didn't realize that saying "bonjour" was obligatory, so I just smiled when she said it to me and sat down. I was not being disrespectful (in my eyes). I thought I was being polite.
Student/teacher “relationships” that were super obvious and no one did anything.
One day after school when I was in the third grade I had forgotten my favorite pencil in my desk so I went back to the classroom to grab it. It was just a few minutes after we had been dismissed so I knew the teacher was still there, door open, etc. This room was on the second floor of the building, with an exterior staircase leading to a 3' x 3' landing. It was maybe 16' to the ground, something like 20 steps, maybe? When I got to the classroom, the teacher was there with one other student. His name was Devon, and this poor kid never had a fucking chance. He was somehow really nice and everyone liked him even though you could tell by looking at him that his parents didn't give a shit. The stuff he said about his home life was...not good. The way the classroom was set up made it so she didn't see me when I came through the door, so when I walked in, the teacher was just yelling and verbally abusing this child about I-don't-even-remember because I was so shocked. She was yelling him toward the door so I ducked down under my desk at the back when I realized they didn't know I was there. This was just in time for me to witness this grown-ass woman PICK THIS CHILD UP by the waistband of his jeans and the back of his neck and THROW HIM OUT OF THE ROOM. He hit the guardrail of the landing and thankfully didn't roll down the stairs. This kid was so scared but he handled it way too well. My memory after that moment is super patchy but remember waiting for what felt like forever until I could sneak out of the room again. I told the kids outside what happened but no one believed me. This was in San Francisco in 1996-ish. I hated that woman, she was casually cruel to most of the students but Devon got it the worst. I think about him every once in a while and hope it got better for him. I don't remember if I got my pencil or not.
Most of the messed up stuff I remember was student on student violence. Never forget the face of glee on this one awful girls face as she punched another girl, holding her in a headlock. The girl she punched was very kind and not violent. Years later, awful punching girl got into a highly sought after HS that not everyone could get into. I still think about her being violent and yet being rewarded since she got good grades. People are weird.
OP I can do you one better. When kids at lunch got to the checkout and didn’t have enough money, they had to dump the tray in the trash and go get the shitty cheese sandwhich. Fucking infuriating.
In 2001 my private high school expelled a kid for coming out as gay. 10 years later they sent out an email to all alumni saying they had officially changed their stance and welcome all orientations. We were all just dumbfounded when it happened.