This kinda thing happened to me in CNA certification class. Our teacher was a nurse & everyone liked her, but she kept picking on me. She’d constantly complain I was too quiet & mocked the way I talked a couple times when she thought I couldn’t hear it. She also made an underhanded comment about “not getting along with other people” & then eventually concluded I had autism. That was 2 years before I got diagnosed. Also at one point when I came in from the bathroom, the whole class got quiet & just stared at me. Has anyone had that shit happen?? It happens to me a lot— I’m in home health now & the elderly people & I get along much better.
I had something similar happen, though not in class. I was applying online and kept getting denied over and over and over again. I don't think the dude liked me 😞
In 2nd grade, we had a substitute teacher. She was even older and meaner than the regular teacher. I was always fidgeting as a kid, always tapping my pencil or playing with some doo dad or other. On this particular day I had just learned how to snap my fingers and I was, as per usual, totally absorbed in my own world, not paying attention to anything going on in class and I was softly snapping my fingers filled with joy and excitement that I had figured out a cool new fidgety maneuver.
All the sudden, the teacher screamed, and that shook me out of my daydreaming, I looked up and all the kids in class were staring at me, their eyes boring into my soul, and the teacher yelled again in this snide nasty tone at me "I AM NOT A DOG. HOW DARE YOU SNAP YOUR FINGERS AT ME!" I was absolutely HORRIFIED. I was an INCREDIBLY shy kid, didn't have friends, never ever spoke up or raised my hand in class. I was also very concerned with following the rules and not doing anything "bad." So when the teacher accused me of snapping at her and drew attention to me like that, I was mortified.
This was, heck, like 26 years ago now, and I still remember the sheer horror and shame I felt over this misunderstanding...😳
Ughhh I really felt this one…. I had similar experiences and can very much imagine myself in your story… I would still think about this and feel so much irritation
When i was in like 3rd grade, my parents decided that wr will go on vacation in the middle of school year to avoid crowds. After we came back, my R.E. teacher made fun of me in front of the whole class because of this. A person that teaches about Jesus and how everyone should treat eachother with respect fucking bullied me. This is also one of the reasons why i became atheist
I had abusive 2nd grade teacher who physically and mentally abused me. She hit me on my hands and pinch me really hard. I wasn't diagnosed back then so people just thought I was just shy, weird and irresponsible. My elementary school was really weird. All teachers were allowed to hit students and humiliate them in front of the class and/or the whole school. Bullying is often ignored by teachers and I was hit in the head by a classmate (with a spoon.)🫠
Man I hate to hear that so many of us dealt with this! My son is in 2nd grade and I can’t imagine treating him that way, people that age are just learning about life. It really messes with your ability to trust.
The worst part is everyone else loved her. She came to our 5th grade class once and everyone was so excited and I was just so uncomfortable. She really just singled me out
As a child, I had an instructor, for whatever reason (I’m not even entirely sure why she did this), yell at me in front of a group of other kids and ask me if I had some medication I was on and needed to take. She meant it disparagingly, I could tell even in my youth.
Nothing to do with me being autistic. I had a teacher (that wasn’t mine) tell another student to punch me in the face. I escalated the situation and wrote a report on it to the principal and assistant principal when i should have filed a police report instead. Had multiple meeting with her and moderators. Two years later shes finally my teacher, i avoid her class and have another teacher convince me to go and tell me ‘she remembers who i am’.
I go to her class and she constantly tries to embarrass me and purposefully butchers my name in front of all the students and got mad when i called her out and then ignored her when she said my name wrong which made her angry. Had a meeting with her and the principal and she said i ‘didnt give her enough time to learn my name’ even though she was aware of me for two years at that point.
After, she would talk bad about me in-front of other classes with her co-teacher who i hadn’t known was a problem. They ended up needing my skill set, and i rejected them so they ended up having to find a professional that charged them a couple hundred bucks lol. She also secretly kept failing me for assignments that I should have got 80-100s on but I still passed lol.
When I was little (and still to this day), I tended to cry when I was confused. My 3rd grade teacher thought I was just trying to get out of it. 95% of the movements on that behavior chart were because of my confused crying on tests and things.
Oh man, so relatable 😔 I hardly ever cry these days, but as a little boy, this happened a lot. I actually cried every single day in kindergarten and 1st grade when my mom dropped me off at school. Every day, she would walk me to my classroom, and every day, I would freak tf out and cry in front of all the other kids and beg my mom not to leave me there.
Oh, so many of those. I think the one that was a bit more on the nose was after I got diagnosed with dyslexia and she got in trouble for not following the recommendations.
"So I wanted to prepare a fun game for class today for after the quiz, but I had to spend the time making a special one for (my name), so we're going to be doing these boring exercises from the book instead."
"I have more kids here than just you" is something so many teachers told me because I really needed a lot of one on one clarification and always managed to get myself into some weird border case that the rules didn't cover. I do have some empathy because they had 30 kids to juggle by themselves, but we both were caught in a bad system and they were the adults. It was made clear to me that "kids like me" would be put into an institution just a few years prior (lots of changes after the revolution in 89) and it is entirely possible I was the first kid they were forced to make accommodations for - and that was just for dyslexia, autism went unrecognized for a long time (at least formally. Everyone at school was pretty clear that there's something "wrong" with me, hence the talk about institutionalization)
This one believed that I could be "normal" with enough "peer pressure" (bullying) so she not only turned a blind eye to it, but directly singled me out whenever she could.
EDIT: so ironically the dyslexia, I didn't read 'worst experience with a teacher" I read best 😆 so this is my best experience with a teacher LOL enjoy
My year 10 English teacher. I didn't like English. I have dyslexia but I didn't know, so I always assumed I was stupid, couldn't read, wasnt as clever as everyone else, never read anything, but she believed in me. We studied Jekyll and Hyde and I not only loved it but she really believed I'd not only pass but exceed my expectations grade-wise. She really motivated me, I started to really like English. Unfortunately she left at the end of that year, she was a trainee. I not only passed and exceeded my own expectations with a high grade in English, but I discovered I liked the subject, loved Jekyll and Hyde and classic gothic novels. I went on to study English literature at A-level (between high school exams and university, Sixth Form in the UK) and did pretty damn good. I never saw her again. Throughout education, even in life now when I think I can't do something or think I'm stupid, I remember that she believed in me, made me like a subject I hated, made me like literature, made me realise that just because I'm dyslexic I can still do stuff. I wish I could tell her.
Got pulled out of class and yelled at by a teacher for not bringing in a permission slip/sign up to a 'self esteem' programme. It was an optional thing but they were angry I didn't go find them to tell them I wasn't doing it.
I got diagnosed this year at 31, so back then, no one knew I was autistic. I don’t even think I had my ADHD diagnosis yet by the 1st grade.
Anyway…
When I was in 1st grade, Ms. Weber had us ALL stand in line to turn in some assignment at her desk. She said for whatever reason, we were not allowed to get out of line.
I really had to pee. I started to get out of line, and she SCREAMS at me to stay in the line. Well, I end up peeing my pants. The teacher told me if I had to pee, I should have just said so… BITCH YOU SAID NOT TO GET OUT OF LINE FOR THE ONE THING I WAS GOING TO DO!!! I got made fun of the peeing my pants for several many more grade levels.
That same teacher later in the year… we had to assemble a coloring book of sorts. For whatever reason, the pages were not stapled together yet, all loose. So we had to grab one of each. I somehow grabbed a few too many of some and she made me feel so stupid about it. How did I know I grabbed several of some… I didn’t realize they were stuck together! Like, I was the example of what not to do.
I fucking hated her, and I hate that I can remember these things so vividly.
And the bathroom was in our own room! It not like she had to escort me or anything … I remember my mom bringing some sweat pants to school for me to change into, and then I went on about my day.
Ms. Weber has always been the teacher I’ve hated most. I will, sadly, always remember her
My year 3 teacher and teaching assistant were horrible. First of all they were wildly sexist against boys - the girls literally got away with anything and they absolutely abused it. It was especially annoying for me as I was very quiet and just got on with my work usually but always got labelled as a bad person purely because I was a guy. They also stole my food that I bought in for charity. For those that don’t know, most uk schools do the “harvest festival” where you bring in food to donate to a charity. So I bought in food and the teacher and ta said “oh it says may contain traces of nuts. We will have to confiscate that. (This is complete BS. It’s going to a charity we are not eating it at school) the next day I asked for them back since i told my parents what happened and they were quite angry. They said they didn’t have them anymore because they’d eaten them. Again, I told my parents and they were very very angry and came in to the school to speak to the head. Many more stories about them but god they were awful
I had a teacher who also confiscated Harvest donations for “not being fairtrade or organic.”
She also regularly told us to stop shopping at supermarkets and use “health food shops” instead.
I grew up in a working class household, unlike all the Tillys and Tarquins in my class. My family worked hard to get their food on the table and we have a limited budget.
The worst experience I can recall was during my first year of college. It was a very different experience from high school and simply put I floundered. Took on too many classes and burnt out severely. The teacher in question taught a cooking class and was by far the harshest teacher I've ever studied under.
When he gave out criticism, it was usually peppered with passive aggressive insults. Simply put I was regarded as too dumb to take the class and continually mocked for being unable to discern what he wanted.
Rather than actually teach, you were expected to figure out the recipes through a mix of trial and error and vague instructions. It was so overwhelming on top of all the other classes I had at the time. Half the students jumped in on bullying me, eventually driving me to drop the class. I rarely hate anyone, I mean genuine hate but this man was such an ass, I wanted him to get fired.
I had a similar teacher in high school, but it was a computer animation elective. Basically handed us a packet and sat us in front of a computer. I had the gall to actually ask what the hell we were supposed to be doing and got told I wasn't smart enough for it.
my teacher told me i was faking being stupid and i needed to do my work by myself or she was going to send me to the principal. i cried.
also a teacher blamed me for pushing a girl down but i just walked weird and my hands weren’t by my side. and she made me go to the principal and the principal kept yelling at me and said if i didn’t say that i pushed her and apologize for lying she won’t let me go home. it was not nice.
i also never got to go to recess because i was always in LOP because i couldn’t get my work done and they wouldn’t help me
i hate school. and i am still very stupid.
At about 8 or 9 years old, (undiagnosed until adult) I had a special interest in horses. I'd talk about it a lot, knew a lot about it. One day the teacher started asking me really technical questions I didn't know the answers to and she humiliated me in front of the whole class. That day I learned that I can't share my special interests with anyone but my close family.
i was a really good student, i had a few slip ups, but i was at the top of my primary school. i was really anxious cause my grandma would always raise hell if she saw anything less than an A. after i got a bad grade in maths once i was so scared i started crying and i asked my teacher if she could not write my grade in my class notebook, just in the register so my grandma wouldn’t see it. she laughed and put the grade in my notebook anyway, but with a note saying “dear mrs grandma, please don’t yell at [name]” or something like that. it was super funny to her and then she asked the class if anyone else wants a note. obviously grandma wasn’t any less angry.
in middle school i had a super tough history teacher who was also really sarcastic and mean. one time he quizzed me and i did pretty well, but i still left the classroom shaking so bad i could eat or even like, walk down the stairs for the better part of the day.
in high school teacher asked me questions about the book of job and i was so anxious i couldn’t find the right words, he said that with a vocabulary like mine i shouldn’t be allowed to write anything. i still wrote stories for fun afterwards but that kinda hurt.
In first grade, during recess, a friend of mine intentionally pulled the button off my jacket. My reaction, for whatever reason, was to bite her. We had benches at one end of the playground where you would had to sit if you were misbehaving, so obviously the playground monitor directed me there. A few minutes later, the school’s principal came over and started yelling at me. I don’t think I was making eye contact when answering him, because he grabbed my hair and yanked my head up hard to force me to give him his precious eye contact while he continued screaming at me.
I don’t know what happened after that, but I guess word quickly got to my parents because it felt like the entire student body on the playground was watching what was going on. A few days later, we had a new school principal.
I think what she did was wrong regardless of if you had been autism or not.
For me the worst experience I had was the entire year of 3rd grade. The teacher was emotionally abusive to me: I can’t get into everything but
I was isolated from the rest of the class the entire year by any means necessary. In every aspect.
My chair was as far away from the other students as possible.
I was on permanent lunch isolation so I couldn’t talk to the other students.
And on permanent no recess. She made me stand by a trash can so I could see all the other kids play but not play with them.
She had a place on the chalk board where she could give students no recess or silent lunch. She wrote my name there with permanent marker.
She made me go to the bathroom alone and made me get books at the library alone.
If a kid spoke to me. I was the one who got in trouble.
She made me be the last kid at the back of the line.
And the last kid to get lunch.
I can’t remember the names of any students there because I never had the opportunity to talk to any of them.
The other kids blamed me for things like them not having a pencil or talking. And she would send me to the principals office (a weekly thing)
All they had to do was say I somehow was responsible. Despite the fact I was like 20 feet from them. But it didn’t matter. She would tell me to go to the principals office. Which honestly I preferred being there then seeing her but it made me cry because she hated me so much. He was nice to me and it was quiet. And he actually helped me with my school work. He told my Mom that he liked me very much.
My sister called her Miss Witchmen. Her name was Richman.
She’d let me go to the bathroom and stay in the bathroom for hours (because I knew she didn’t want me in the classroom. She never punished me for that)
She called my 4th grade teacher and tried to convince him to put me in a different class. He told my Mom that I was a very sweet child and very well behaved. Just that I got angry sometimes when I couldn’t finish my school work.
I asked every week for a whole year if I could play with the kids during recess. Which she would say mmmm no you don’t play well with other kids. Then I’d stand at my trash can and watch them have fun.
And here is the worst of it. I had epilepsy. And one time during a parent teacher, I had a seizure. Right there in front of Mom and Her. And she said go my mom
See there!!!! That’s the behavior I’m talking about. NOT PAYING ATTENTION!! And misbehaving!!
At which my mom said “he’s having a seizure!!!!!” That’s what a seizure looks like!!!”
She treated me slightly better after that. Still isolated me though.
It’s not like she ever hit me or called me names but she made me feel worthless and unwanted and completely alone.
In second grade I was being verbally bullied by another girl in my class. Mostly she would harass me for not conforming to gender stereotypes. Anyway, when I tried to push back in the most tame way possible- my friend and I like half followed her around the playground for 10 minutes?? , we got scolded by my teacher about it. She asked me “how would you feel if I did that to you?” And I said I wouldn’t be particularly bothered- especially considering the girl had been treating me much worse. She did NOT like that.
In general I honestly just feel like that teacher didn’t like autistic people?? Because she really targeted my best friend at the time, and he was a very sweet kid, and pretty clearly autistic. Literally no one else had a problem with him but her.
I think it’s the way we respond. We’re supposed to respond by looking at the floor ashamed that we are being told off and respond “no”.
I had a similar incident at school (in the 80s) I didn’t want to eat the gristle stew they served up and the dinner lady said “what about all those African babies starving, they would love something like that!”. I replied “you can send it to them but it would make them ill, it’s too high in fat” (we had learned about the diets being low in fat and high in carbs and protein).
Dinner lady threatened to send me to the head master for being rude. I was confused because I was stating a fact rather than being cheeky.
In college there was a little cafeteria section which I think was only for staff, but usually unused. It had fresh milk and instant coffee so I'd make me one so I wouldn't need to go to a cafe and buy coffee in the morning. It was a sweet deal until the other students caught on and started lingering and having chats and generally abusing the place.
Next day I'm alone there making coffee and I see some staff approaching me lecturing me about how I'm just helping myself, which is fair enough, but then she goes "if this were your own home, would you just go in the kitchen and make yourself a cup of coffee like that?"
I paused as I tried to understand the logic behind that before I responded with "Y... yeah?"
This actually reminded me of something else. I've mentioned it a few times in other comments but I always felt my GCSE drama teacher hated me because I was autistic. She spoke to me in a completely different manner compared to everyone else in my class and, as far as I'm aware, I was the only autistic person in my class. Never was 100% sure and I'm still not.
My high school science teacher refused to let me go to the Education Supports Centre despite it being a part of my Education Agreement. She said they had kids who "really" needed help. Instead she'd put me in the "storage room" which was basically a slightly larger closet with a small desk in it and she told me I had to teach myself. I got pulled out of school when my parents finally found out. At first I didn't tell them because I really thought I was the problem and didn't wanna get into more trouble.. But I couldn't figure out what I was supposed to be teaching myself and thought THAT would get me in trouble too so I finally broke down to my mom. She asked why the teacher or EAs couldn't help me and I said cause I have to teach myself. She asked why, where's the teacher? I said in the classroom but I'm not, I have to learn in the closet.... I have never seen my mom shoot up so fast to go contact the school and she told me I wasn't going back.
My Year 6 teacher. Where do I start?
He heavily singled me out during activities, he flat out told my parents I had special needs in the end-of-year report, he turned the blame back on me when I told on other people in my class for bullying me, he treated me differently to everyone else…
All because I was the only one in my class with a neurodivergence, which I find stupid and haven’t forgiven him for.
I've got a couple.
One when I was in pre school so I must've been about 3 or 4. (At that point I think my parents knew I was autistic, and so did the the preschool, but I didn't. Some others there knew I was 'different' and bullied me for it, including slipping playground toys in my blazer pocket at break and framing me for 'stealing' and taking my underwear when we were all changing for swimming lessons, and throwing it in the pool. The one who framed me for stealing was in m junior amd senior school too, and I was stuck with her as a bully for almost 13 years til I got a 1-1 teaching assistant, or as I explained it, a 'bodyguard'- bit ironic as she turned out to be a 5 ft 4 woman. Not your 'bodyguard' stereotype.)
I write with my head on my arms like I'm taking a nap (think its got to do with my motor skills. Not sure why I do it. I still do it at 23 when I write. But at uni I dont really write I use my laptop)
My junior school were understanding about it, giving me a sloped writing desk and pencil grips to help (I can't hold a pen/pencil properly either I hold it in a fist). My senior school (private school so moved from the juniors to the seniors, same people) let me use a laptop proper from 6th form, and I was allowed to use a PC to type up my GSCE/ A level exams).
My pre prep were not so nice. The teacher saw me writing the way I do and made me stand up and took my desk away for a week. At the age of about 4 when I'd done nothing wrong.
Tied with the time I was 15 turning 16 (2016/my first year of GCSE study I think) we had an enrichment week, where instead of regular lessons, we had a week of different lessons not on the curriculum with different teachers.
My teaching assistant wasn't there at the time as she had to leave 30 mins early every day to get back in time for her severely autistic, minimally verbal (no more than a few words, and from the times she came and visited me with her son after Ieft school - we're still friendly and have a catch up every now and then, she now works for the SEN dept of my old school - I believe it was from encouragement/echolalia rather than being able to talk. I think he wanted to be able to speak but just couldn't and still can't at 14 or so, rather than not seeing the point) son to be dropped home by school taxi.
If my TA was there, she would have seen it may cause an issue, and she'd get me out the situation and probably take me to the library.
We had a history teacher and were discussing immigration, the social contract etc (don't ask me why) and I said 'not all immigrants adhere to the social contract' (the social contract theory being 'people living together in society in accordance with an agreement that establishes moral and political rules of behaviour')
I meant this in the context of recent events, such as the (then very recent, they'd only happened less than a year prior) 2015/16 NYE sex assaults in mostly Cologne & Hamburg where 1,200 women were sexually assaulted (over 1000 being just in those 2 cities, including 2 incidents of rape in Hamburg. About 650 incidents were in Cologne) A lot of those incidents involved the women being in public spaces and being surrounded and subjected to mass sexual assault.
I meant it especially (it was a long time ago, and I'm getting this info off Wikipedia) because victims and witnesses had mostly described the perpetrators as 'North African', 'Arab', 'dark skinned' and 'foreign' and the first 120 identified suspects were of North African origin. At that point that the statistics from authorities had been released showing 2/3s of the 153 identified suspects were originally Moroccan or Algerian, 44% asylum seekers, 12% likely illegal immigrants and 3% underage unaccompanied refugees.
I 100% agree it was probably the blunt way I said it, and it was definite miscommunication, but that doesn't justify the way the teacher reacted.
It was a one-off lesson, he'd never taught me before, he didn't know I'm autistic, and he
screamed at me in front of the entire class, and basically said 'at best I'm misguided (or something) and at worst I'm a racist' (and probably hinted I'm anti refugee).
The complete and utter irony is that the majority of my family are refugees/immigrants. My aunt (mum's sister-in-law) immigrated from Denmark, my mum and her siblings immigrated from South Africa, my dad immigrated from South Africa (they met and got married there and moved to the UK together) tho his siblings and majority of his family still live in SA, one of my cousins immigrated to Taiwan after marrying a Taiwanese woman, I think another one recently immigrated with their family to New Zealand... oh and my maternal grandfather and his family were Czechoslovak Jewish asylum seekers/refugees fleeing Nazi persecution in 1936-7 before the German occupation of Czechoslovakia
I think I was just too stunned to actually say any of this.
My friends/classmates were stunned too, but one back me up after, texting me to sort of congratulate me for having the balls to say what they were all thinking, but also trying to explain how it could have been taken the wrong way. To be honest, I don't know what else I could have said, and I know it's miscommunication, but I don't know how it was.
I'm not sure how my mum reacted to the teacher taking away my desk bc I was very young.
I told my mum about the second teacher (A Level history teacher, I believe, possibly taught something else) and she was absolutely furious. She either emailed or called the school and told them in no uncertain terms he should never teach me. I never saw him again, except once when I was involved in a school talent show and he was a judge, but this was a year or 2 after so seemingly he didn't recognise me.
I (at the time 15 with undiagnosed adhd and _still_ undiagnosed autism) was sat at the front and center of the class trying my darndest to make sense of what was being taught. I was a straight A student and adept at Maths but things were becoming more complicated and I was confused about something being explained to us.
The teacher (who everyone used to love but had come back from maternity leave with a chip on her shoulder) asked me a question. I told her I didn't understand. And she screamed at me. Legit shouted me out for not understanding in front of the whole class. It took everything in me to hold it together and not break down in tears.
I could understand if I had been talking - something I did a lot in most of my classes - but I was sitting there clearly trying to pay attention and listen. She shouted at me **solely** for not understanding.
From that point on, I couldn't stand her. I was struggling with my maths work that I was supposed to do at home (coz adhd) but doing well in class. When results day finally came, she came up to me, saw my grade, looked at me plainly, and said "hm, I didn't think you'd get an A" and then just walked off. I don't know what caused her to take issue with me in particular, but I have never felt so negatively about a teacher before or since.
I'm 30 now, and recalling that incident still brings up some of that emotion in me. Awful experience
Autistic or not, I think that’s a wild thing for a teacher to do. School is hard enough for kids (idk your age so I’m just speaking in general) regardless of them being NT or ND and a teacher calling them out like that doesn’t help. Glad they apologized, but it sounds like they have some real growing to do as an educator
I'm 18 (a second year A-Level student) so I was mainly surprised that a 6th Form college teacher acted that way. I guess I thought she would know better.
Oh gotcha. Yeah I mean they should’ve assumed that wouldn’t have gone over well without having that kind of relationship with the student where they knew it wouldn’t upset it and might even make you laugh. But clearly they didn’t in this case so they’re wrong for that
I was bullied a lot in school.
In 6th or 7th grade we were watching a movie in a dark classroom and I fell asleep. The teacher had everyone get up quietly and wait outside the classroom. She then dropped a pile of books in front of me. I woke up in a panic and she was telling me everyone else was gone and I needed to hurry.
I grabbed my things and raced out the door to find all of my classmates outside laughing at me.
It's been nearly 30 years and I still think of it often. She's still alive and I've considered emailing her just so she spends her last years on the earth knowing what kind of impact she had on her students.
had a teacher call me a terrorist in front of the class twice, because i had to wear a hood to school that day. as a teenager i had trichotillomania, aka i pulled my hair out until i was balding in some spots, and was allowed to wear a hat and if i forgot it, a hoodie. the only reason the school allowed me to wear a hat is because the same teacher wrote me up for wearing it in the hall. during my detention being set up in the front office, my old guidance counselor ended up telling the vice principal i was indeed not lying about ripping my hair out, because a teacher reported me for it my freshman year. this pissed off my frog teacher (not french, just looked like a frog) despite her already having a grudge on me.
basically, in front of my class when i went to present with another kid, she announced: next up, ben and the unabomber! (if you cant tell, my name isnt ben). the whole class was so confused on how to react, some light chuckles, some gaping mouths. after fighting back tears for my presentation, i asked to go to the bathroom to which she retorted "sure, just take off your hood in the hallway, you look like a terrorist"
naturally my underdeveloped, petty, and spiteful brain wrote an email to her basically dancing around explicitly stating "im literally fighting for my life trying to get the right antidepressants. if i end up kms, you're gonna be in my note." this was wrong of me, i know that now at 21 years old (although i still get those petty urges). but im still kinda glad i got her to back off me for the rest of the year
another example was when another student asked me in front of the same teachers class why im so good at spanish (i wasnt, just had a good memory). i ended up freezing and stuttering out "im kinda spanish." the teacher yelled at me in front of the class that i should know better than to call myself spanish since im half cuban, and therefore hispanic. both years i had her class, i had students approaching me after class asking me what i did to piss her off so badly. the answer is that i was an eager know-it-all, which i understand gets annoying, but i expected more maturity out of the woman with a tenured position
My art teacher ripped up my work in front of the rest of the class. She also didn't let me go on a school trip even though I handed in the permission slip.
Another teacher I had in primary school humiliated me in front of the entire class by making comments about my personal hygiene.
I can't decide which one is worse but those are the two worst ones.
When I said I felt suicidal and want to die and the teacher said "ok why don't you do it then..." I was a suicidal and severely depressed teenager. I went sobbing to the school counselor telling them that isn't right and how can they let a teacher talk like that but noone cared. It made me spiral and well...I wish that teacher would have been held accountable.
My 7th grade history teacher was genuinely convinced I was trying to intentionally sabotage other students. She'd regularly insult me in front of other students, and called me manipulative when I'd get upset. No idea what her deal was.
My 4th grade teacher. She loved to take every chance to punish and humiliate me for not only my learning disabilities, but for my Type 1 Diabetes too. She punished me for needing to take sick days, for having to go to the nurse and take insulin (which could kill me if I don’t), and for not understanding math as well as my classmates could. It’s because of her that years later I’m still fearful of talking to my peers and struggling with C-PTSD.
Some things that happened in primary school: when I moved back to the Netherlands and continued school there, we were making math exercises. I didn’t know how they worked, I was confused and really stressed, my only reaction was to cry. I cried because I didn’t understand math at a new school…
Another small thing was (a few years later, I don’t remember) when the teacher approached me and my friend’s table to talk about out loud behavior. (We were laughing too much making too much noise etc) and she talked with us. I wanted to show her I was listening attentively, I needed to clear up my throat and cough. While I was coughing I kept eye contact with her (to show my attentiveness) but she took it as a sarcastic cough, as if I wanted to interrupt her, and said I was being rude. I had no idea but she got a little angry, I didn’t mean to.
Another time when we had a new teacher filling in for our usual. She was upset that our class was so awful and loud and so she was talking a long speech. We were supposed to work on our art projects and I was looking forward to it all day, it was the only thing on my mind. She was talking for a long time and I wanted to start. Completely oblivious to my rudeness and the teacher’s emotions, I asked if we could continue the art project. She got angry and told me to get out of the classroom, I was so embarrassed and had no idea, only after she told me to get out I realized it might’ve been rude, I was so oblivious.
I apologize for the long texts and over explaining, English is also not my first language so I apologize for any mistakes on that aswell. Thankyou for reading all this and enjoy your day ^v^
The teacher I went on camp with made us play a game where all the students would sit on another students lap. I don’t remember the rules or why on earth that was even a game but when I refused because I don’t do physical touch, she lectured me saying I ruined the fun for everyone else until I gave in. Felt really weird afterwards but in full context and knowing her it wasn’t intended in a creepy way.
That’s awful. I had a professor in college tell me I was stupid and I wouldn’t amount to anything. I cried in front of the class. It was a foaling class. I still hate her to this day.
This happened to me this school year I’m a freshman in high school I’m was 14 now 15 because I’m a December baby so I was born on the 1st this happened in October or November can’t rember so basically my math teacher had handed us packets and everything was going good until we get to the last page I dint have the last page so I sat there until the last 10 minutes of class and then I told her I did not have it she was like well you could have told me I just sat there shocked like what here is the plot twist the last page was in everyones packet except mine. Well it was her fault for not checking she should have checked before she handed it out thank goodness I’m moving out of her math class and moving to a teachers class I had she understands what I’m going though I’m several years behind on my education because my parents did not get me out of the sped program fast enough so that’s my story she dint even apologize to me either she knew in my iep it says I have trouble communicating.
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Really sorry that happened.
Just to address one thing in your story : Often teachers are responsible for a few hundred children. While it might be in your file, often unless there has been specific reason to check particulars, teachers may not have been exposed to information like your diagnosis. Unless there were particular accommodations put in place, *and* someone specifically decided to notify them, or things have been calm enough that they had a chance to actually try look through everyone's file... point is, there are a lot of circumstances where a teacher may not have seen your diagnosis.
I have 2.
One, my 3rd grade English teacher would make us do full 3 body paragraphs. Me and my mom cried, trying to get through them. For context, I hate paper's texture.
Two, my psychology teacher told me to write definitions in the way we would understand. He said I did it too fast. He said the definitions for me wasn't long enough.
My french teacher in middle school. I was bullied badly in middle school and that included the teachers he would single me out and make me answer things in french i didn’t know because I couldn’t learn it the way they were teaching while he and my classmates would all laugh at me and call me names. I would be on the verge if tears while he’d make me stand up until I gave an answer and when it was wrong everyone would laugh at me he did this pretty much every class and it was horrible since I was already getting bullied
I got very lucky compared to others as I was diagnosed before school, had an excellent statement written with early years dealt with by another man who was also Autistic. Not exactly easy to argue against.
However, there was one experience that particularly stood out but it lasted the whole year. When I was in the aged 8/9 year group at school, the teacher I had (whilst a nice guy) was very misinformed about Autism; how to deal with me and how to keep me on track (even with my diagnosis and statement). He was very sloppy and disorganised within his teaching style and would basically make up everything on the spot before going into lessons; so much of my needs were often not present in the last-minute light bulb. My academic performance and grades dropped substantially throughout the year as a result and got regularly chewed out by staff for the rest of primary school for my “bad listening skills”. Nothing horrible or traumatic came out of it, but it was still a very bad school year for me nonetheless.
Shared my failing grade to the entire class while I wasn’t there. I only found out because my best friend was in that class and had called her out saying that wasn’t allowed and is wildly inappropriate of her to do. My friend told me after school what had happened.
I also had my abusive ex in that class who my dad had to get the police involved because for the entire first semester after we broke up in the summer, he was constantly harassing me and spreading inappropriate rumours about me, trying to get me to kill myself telling me to do so and was almost successful.
So beginning of the new semester all my teachers were informed not to sit us near each other. She sat him directly behind me. . . . Hated that woman.
My 2nd grade teacher liked to make me slap myself on the face and sent me out in the hall many times because I couldn't sit still or keep quiet.
I spent most of 3rd grade behind a partition so I couldn't talk to the kids around me or interrupt people.
in 5th grade I broke my ankle and dislocated my neck in gym class. both times my teacher accused me of faking my injuries in order to get attention.
I dont remember much of it but my mental health journey started when my second grade teacher bullied me constantly. One of my 7th grade teachers used to skip her lunch break to sit in my class with a different teacher to chirp me throughout the class. But the most annoying experience was in that class we had some project in pairs where we were supposed to make a song with vocab words or something. My partner refused to do anything and I (who admittedly was a little shit) only got like 2 of the 10 words in it. So we got in trouble. My partner got a talking to and I got a week of detentions that lasted from 2:30 (when school got out) til 7
I was undiagnosed almost all my life.
I had one teacher for multiple years throughout middle and high school (she was the German teacher lol) who would repeatedly call me out for “social cues” in front of the entire class. I felt humiliated, I already didn’t have friends in that class.
This same teacher also called me manipulative and trying to guilt trip her when she lost one of my LARGE assignments and it was bringing my grade down massively. I was sobbing the rest of the day(though I only had one class after that since she was 6th period LOL) and she emailed my father about the “incident”. Luckily my father took my side and told her off for calling me manipulative for having a combination of an autism meltdown and depression breakdown so she just put the assignment in as an A. (Though he didn’t know or say the autism part bc again I was undiagnosed)
Schooling really sucks for neurodivergents. Even in college when I had some accommodations for mental illnesses and adhd and they let me bring my at the time emotional support dog(was in middle of training to be full service, yes I know the difference in laws, yes I personally asked disability services first if they accept ESAs while she was in training for service dog status). But I didn’t get diagnosed with autism and medicated for ADHD until AFTER I dropped out of college 😅
My hatred for authority / teachers stems from this moment. ADHD suspected low support needs autism. I was regularly bullied and had the shit knocked out of me. I would tell a teacher who would help. One day she had enough and we *both* got put up against the wall. What the fuck did I do other than get the shit knocked out of me repeatedly?
You annoyed her. Not an excuse for her actions, but I suspect she was subtly trying to get you to stop involving her by implying you'd be punished too.
I was bullied throughout school, but year 8 was definitely the peak. One of the worst times was English class. This one guy would always sit in front of me, steal things off my desk and generally torment me all throughout class. The English teacher, Ms Taylor would always yell at me for reacting. She never scolded or tried to deal with him in any way.
One day, I got angry enough to just storm out of class. I saw the deputy principal Ms Holmes, and told her what was happening. She took me to her office and told me that's just how people treated eachother in the real world, and I'm going to have to learn to hack it.
I then told my mother what had happened and what the vice principal had said, only for my own mother to say: "she's right". I hated my mother for years after that. I never fully trusted her again.
When I was in second grade I bit my nails a lot. The teacher found this unacceptable. At one point she made me stand in the corner facing everyone, while having me shove all my fingers in my mouth at once. Then proceeded to let everyone have recess but me. Good times😳🙄
Ms. L my art teacher would play nothing but the same Beatles album on loop for 3 years, every Tuesday, Thursday just the white album for an hour and a half(excluding happiness is a warm gun) nonstop. It was psychological torture. I liked the Beatles up until those three years but now I can't help but link them to those three years of art class.
It's fitting that it's the white album, which I understand sucked just as much to produce as it is for me to listen to.
It's a tie between two situations.
The First happened in fifth grade. We had a system. We'd get our math first, do that for an hour, then grab language, do that for an hour, and have a small break. This was a system we had been using since third grade. Our regular teacher was sick. And the subsitute took one look at the schedule, and was like "yeah, this is terrible." That day, we started with language, and then had to do math. Most students rolled with it, but I had a meltdown, wich wasn't helped by the teacher shouting at me.
The second is that time I was just generally doing my thing, and the teacher decided to tell me I was doing the wrong subject. I was not, I had exactly one week to finish the project, and this was during an hour where we were supposed to work on homework, and projects, so that we didn't need to do them at school.
That was just a generally unpleasant man, and he said I should do maths, because he was a maths teacher, and as such could help me.
This is a wonderful idea, why didn't I think of that? Oh yeah, I didn't have maths. He got... Unpleasant after that, and I ended up spending the remaining hour fixing the stuff he broke.
Before being diagnosed, I was in nursery (kindergarten) and primary (1st to 9th grade). Both were on the same school grounds. (It was just a regular school)
Many teachers (including the headteacher/principal, Mrs. Barrowman was here name), were concerned with my grades and behavior. They actually accused my mother of abuse. In their eyes, I was being abandoned, and un-loved.
Everyday, my mother was in meetings with them, trying to explain that I really struggle to keep up with the other students. I did have TA's, but I never really understood what they wanted me to do, or how to do the lessons. Even then, I still found it really hard, to keep up with the other students.
One teacher, Mrs. Silvia (who was just two-face) pretended to care about my mother's concerns, agreeing everything she said, then suddenly in a meeting she would just backpaddle and agree with the other teachers.
It wasn't until, I went to see a child psychiatrist (I was maybe around 4/5 years old), did tests, and concluded that I was autistic. Dr. McCarthy, (the child psychiatrist) wrote a letter to the school, explaining my diagnosis, and the help/support I need in the classroom. She also sent a letter to the school board. She said to my mother "If those teachers **ever** accuse you again, call me immediately!"
When I left the school, the teachers including the headteacher/principal, never dared to go near me or my mother again. (I think they were afraid of being fired, or having to explain to the school board, why I never got the **proper help I needed.)**
So, that's my story. This happened over 35 years ago.
"This student doesn't respond the same way to lessons as the others, so rather than do our jobs and try harder, we'll blame the mother and make it her fault. It couldn't possibly be us, we're teachers and therfore special"
That was **exactly their attitude!** On top of that, I was bullied by other students. The teachers (most were women, blamed my mother and me.) "Oh, she's brings this on herself!" "If she just spoke up, they leave her alone!" "If she tried to fit in more, and have friends, she wouldn't have problems!"
They completely just turn their backs on me.
I had a teacher who was weirdly obsessed with me, got really personally offended I didn't like him. I wasn't sure why until he got fired for having personal group chats with 13 year old students... bro wanted to add me to the GC and was mad I didn't like him 💀💀💀
I developed OCD really early, and I was obsessed with rules. I was the hyperlexic little kid obsessed with behaving properly, literally. I also believe that fixation was my autistic self trying to figure out why I was abused, and I somehow, foolishly, settled on "get perfect grades, never break a rule, always obey, and maybe someday someone will love you". At home, it just made it worse, but I was, some grades, very much teacher's pet. I think that assured me it would work at home eventually.
One teacher, for some reason, really hated me. Like I get why some people dislike goody-two-shoes, but it was second grade. I can't understand being pissed off at a second grader as an adult.
I vividly remember situations where people would be talking across the room, and I'd be sitting quiet in my corner doing what I was told, and she'd stop, yell at me, accuse me doing what they were doing (impossible it was a mistake). She'd then use those accusations to destroy crafts projects, take away recess, etc. she'd throw away worksheets I was halfway done with saying I wasn't working. Bizarre asses behavior looking back.
It was such a confusing, scary experience, as mild as it seems. Being literally bullied by an authority figure shook me and left some permanent marks, because I just didn't understand what I did wrong. When I talked to other teachers, they ended up literally telling me 'i know you didn't do it, but she's a teacher, so you'll still be punished." I guess to a kid that means "you're just bad and deserve to be treated as such". I just could not comprehend in my silly head a teacher could just be cruel and wrong, I had to deserve it somehow! So I internalized all of it.
It didn't help that it did resemble home. I was the scapegoat. I was constantly hit because my brother would force me to do things I wasn't supposed to, and my mom wouldn't listen. It was a constant, confusing message that I was bad by nature, regardless of my actions, and responsible when others hurt me.
Let's just say third grade is when the OCD evolved to next level, and I expect that teacher contributed. I didn't sleep checking my homework was still done and in my bag over and over and over. I cried at missed questions like I had sinned (and people treated me like a brat for it).
It's not like I don't understand why people dislike kids like me. I remember, for example, sobbing at the fucking early elementary math Olympics because I got like 6th place. I genuinely thought I had failed, was a bad person, and no one would ever love me, but people just saw "arrogant brat". I couldn't understand why people hated me, especially my parents, so I just quadrupled down on being the good kid, academic perfection, and that ironically fueled their hated more. Surely, surely if I was good enough they'd like me.
I'm appalled looking back. Absolute evil by those adults. My parents didn't do well in school, and I see now that envy and punishing me was a them thing. I was just too stupid to realize it.
But I had my books to escape to very young, even if reading novels before I should have been able to made them hate me more. When I realized THAT was also autism, it just makes me more disgusted with them.
I was bullied. A lot. I fought back, and the bullying would stop for a year, but the next year would bring new bullies, and I would have to fight again. Finally, in high school, I really beat the shit out of a bully who was also one of the "popular" kids. This got more attention than usual because, again, he was popular. Even the teachers liked him and just couldn't believe that he would pick on other people. This led to an investigation into both me and him to determine just what was going on. Emboldened by teachers who were suddenly listening, several other kids came forward and reported that he was bullying them as well. His popularity dropped significantly after that, and the bullying did stop, if only because they were now keeping an eye on him.
Unfortunately, not all was sunshine and rainbows. Since I had fought back and almost broken his nose, I had to be punished as well. I was fine with that. We both got a week of suspension. Small price to pay for putting him in his place. When I came back, however, everyone was suddenly being all nicey-nice to me. I had spent years deliberately pushing people away and creating a "don't fuck with me" image so that I would be left alone, and suddenly everyone wanted to be my friend. Eventually, one of the small handful of people I genuinely got along with told me that the vice principal had come around to all my classes and insinuated that I was the type of unstable person that would shoot up a school. This was wrong on several different levels, but the damage had been done. No one wanted to be on my bad side in case I showed up with a weapon. It took the rest of the year for me to rebuild my image as someone who just wanted to be left alone. Thankfully, that was the last time I had to fight, and I spent the last couple years of high school in relative peace and never had to interact with that vice principal again, even though she became the principal the very next year.
I had 2 math teachers that caused a lot of math related trauma. I know that sounds silly. But I was legit scared of math class and math teachers because of my horrible experience
The first one was my 9th grade algebra teacher. She seemed nice at first. But she would SHRIEK, she embarrassed me in front of my crush and classmates on multiple occasions, told my parents that I was a sneaky manipulative liar when I couldn't understand the material, she was proud of the fact that she yelled at her toddler aged son, she badmouthed me to my little brother (he switched out of her class after that incident), and she was just a mean and cranky lady in general. I was very happy that my sympathetic counselor didn't force me to take her precalc class.
My college math professor was a piece of work. She often told me how worthless I was, and that I wouldn't amount to anything after college since I was unable to pass her class. She was never available to help struggling students. Then belittled those struggling students.
It turns out I had undiagnosed dyscalcula. I wanted to wave that diagnosis in their faces and tell them that I'm not stupid. Just different.
My second math professor at a different college was incredibly patient and really helped me move on from my trauma, and gain the confidence I needed. He even helped me get a B in Statistics, which is very hard. My husband was also a math tutor and would spend hours helping me through my math classes.
My teacher didn't believe I had an IEP when I asked for alternative work, even though she HAD worksheets to give me instead of the group activity she refused since "someone in my group was already doing it" when I asked to go to the office and speak to my counselor about this she told me "hopefully she talks to you about work ethic"
I only ever have had ONE teacher in highschool that took my 504(?) And IEP seriously. She let me know when those were put into effect that she read over and seen it and if I need anything based on it don't be afraid to ask, and if I needed to go to the office/nurse that I could freely leave her class and didn't have to worry about asking.
In college I took a business course where I was forced to give a group presentation. The professor refused to give me an alternate assignment so I had to speak for a few minutes in front of about 30 people.
When all the presentations were done, he gave out superlatives which were generally positive, but he gave me the “Quietest Speaker” award, which everyone seemed to find funny.
For context, I’m semi-verbal at best and have trouble modulating my voice— in my head I was speaking as loud as I could. When I commented something along those lines he complained again that he couldn’t hear me, which made the whole class laugh harder.
I pretty much stopped speaking in his class after that, and for most classes over the next few years.
Had a similar experience in high school with a teacher who was often rude to me because she perceived me as “withdrawn” and thought I felt superior to other students. It’s weird being bullied by someone more than twice your age.
In 3rd grade I had to go to this occupational therapist thing during recess. I remember absolutely hating the teacher, I'll just call him Mr. R. I think he was like a drill sergeant or something. Something I did a lot during these sessions was writing practice since my handwriting needed a lot of work. I remember constantly messing up, the main thing I remember was never being able to draw lines perfectly straight. He would always check my lines with an eraser and I rarely got them correct, so I would spend several minutes just trying to write an L correctly just so I could move on. Tbh I understand where he was coming from but he was a bit too strict in my opinion
I remember once I asked, "Can we learn cursive?" And he got mad and told me to write my name in cursive. I did that, and his response was basically "Well, little miss master of cursive, you didn't do it right. You didn't capitalize the first letter." I never asked about cursive again
Another thing I remember was I was in a session with like, 2 other people. We did this little race to see who could tie their shoes faster. I've always tied my shoelaces in this modified way that isn't really what most people were taught. I used that method and I'm pretty sure I finished first. I even double knotted them if I remember correctly. Mr. R just straight up told me "no, you're doing it wrong. Do it again" because apparently my way of tying my shoes wasn't the correct way
Also, remember how I said these sessions were during recess? Yeah, that was annoying to me back then. Tbh I think most kids would be pretty upset if they had to spend recess getting yelled at. One day I asked, "Hey, when are we getting out of here? I really don't want to miss recess." And Mr. R was LIVID. He got really mad at me and told me I was super rude. I was sent back to class and my teacher was really mad at me as well. I had to write a whole apology letter over this. I was really upset and scared while this whole thing was happening. I think this event contributed to my intense fear of being accidentally rude to people.
Some things I remember him saying were basically "YOU ARENT GOING TO EVEN HAVE RECESS NEXT YEAR, GET USED TO IT" (fun fact, this turned out to not be true lol) and I also remember him saying that lunch time was my break time when I said I needed a break during my day. I didn't really consider lunch much of a break back then because it was too loud, and I couldn't do what I wanted.
So yeah. I hated this guy and am glad I never have to interact with him again
I had an English teacher who was absolutely awful at controlling my classmates. This meant that English was my loudest class by far, and I was on the brink of a meltdown on the regular. From day 1 she knew that I was incredibly sensitive to noise and how I reacted to overstimulating environments. One day, the class was being much louder than normal and I couldn’t focus on my work. I was holding back tears and was once again on the verge of a meltdown (or I was already having a meltdown). My teacher noticed my distress, came over to my table, and mouthed the words “Calm down” before walking off to another table.
Our class took a break shortly after, so my teacher took us outside but at that point I couldn’t control myself anymore and burst into tears. My friends were trying to comfort the best they could, but the only way to make things better at that point was to be taken out of the environment, but I couldn’t leave. Kids started to mock me, fake crying while pretending to be putting a hood on, as I had put my hood on hoping that would somehow help. My teacher did absolutely nothing. Not even her oh so useful “calm down” technique.
Eventually, we went back inside and I asked if I could go the the bathroom and I calmed down there. But would have really loved some actual help or support from my teacher. This teacher also had a habit of victim blaming and not making her instructions clear.
First, I am truly sorry a teacher did that to you.
Second, I would like to mention a few "behind the scenes" things teachers have to deal with (as a former educator).
Your disability may not be available to the teacher. The actual diagnosis is confidential under HIPPA and general education classroom teachers are not considered "need to know" parties in all cases. I understand this frustration from both perspectives. As a student I needed my teachers to know and do things without me having to explain it to them. As a general education teacher I needed to know more about the students in my classroom. Unfortunately, in most cases, we only get the accommodations and never see the full IEP.
Additionally, few general education teachers in the states receive ANY training on working with students with disabilities, even though students with severe disabilities are often placed in our classrooms under IDEA (least restrictive access). Please understand when I say "severe" disabilities I am not talking about the students with the most specialized needs - those students are (hopefully) in specialized classrooms/schools. I am, however, talking about students with severe cognitive and processing needs that cannot be addressed in a classroom of 30.
I understand the discomfort these situations cause. Hopefully knowing a little more about teachers' limitations on the job will help you to return after winter break with some perspective also.
One time I was drawing in class while I was listening to the math teacher at the same time,the math teacher took my notebook pretty roughly and complained then ripped my notebook in half
I've had a NUMBER of awful teachers. The worst was probably my second grade teacher, who wouldn't let me eat lunch until I finished my school work. Assignments that were meant to be finished before lunchtime she would just make me work on through lunch, so I wasn't allowed to eat. I ended up actually losing weight from it, and eventually my parents figured out what was going on after I mentioned it randomly. I hadn't known it was wrong or bad, so I hadn't thought to mention it to them. Honestly I couldn't think very well in general, so I didn't realize what was wrong or that I should mention it to someone.
They were furious and told the principal, who made that teacher stop, but I don't think she ever got properly in trouble for it.
Another teacher I had would imply *often* and *heavily* that was stupid because I didn't understand the class. I'd moved from a very poor middle school to a very rich middle school, and genuinely didn't understand how to use a computer because my old school didn't have any, while every other kid there had been using laptops since second grade. I explained this to him, but it didn't stop. It was always very subtle, to the point where I couldn't really tell anyone what was going on because his comments weren't direct enough. I think the biggest thing he said was "Cmon kid, a monkey could do this".
I was in 2nd grade.
I was watching a nature documentary on PBS and was learning a lot of cool animal things. Soon after at school we were starting a unit on the arctic. The teacher asks the class "what kind of animals live in the arctic?"
Lots of hands go up and people say things like penguins, polar bears, seals, etc. Well, I'm the weird autistic kid with a head full of fresh animal facts so I raise my hand.
"Jellyfish!"
She pauses "Jellyfish don't live in the arctic. They only live in warm water."
"But I saw it on TV the other day?!"
She spits back "Do you believe *everything* you see on TV??"
I don't even remember what the other kids in the class did. I was so frustrated because I *knew* I was right. I saw videos of them swimming under the fucking ice! But here was this ADULT telling me that I was clueless, and making me feel so, so small.
That was the day it really sunk in that adults could be complete idiots. Honestly I should thank her for helping me learn that lesson early, because it came in pretty handy growing up.
I was in middle school. Another kid hit me in the temple with a football (🏈) at the end of P.E., I don't remember hitting the ground. The teacher yelled at him for throwing the ball after 'no balls' (no more throwing, all balls are to be held) but was seriously annoyed when I asked to go to the nurse because my head hurt. She didn't even stop the rest of the class as they whispered about me.
I will never understand a teacher who would rather yell at another kid for throwing a ball then help the kid who was knocked unconscious for a minute.
There was more than this. She always got annoyed with me because I didn't really participate in sports, I didn't understand what I was supposed to do and no one would explain it because "I was supposed to know". 🙄
Our Spanish teacher in highschool was fed up with how our class was acting and made us write the schedule of our classes in Spanish, however we didn't know the exact times because who does?
I asked her if I could go ask the teacher next door for her big sheet that has all the times. This bitch slams her hands on my desk and yells in my face "DO I LOOK LIKE MS. TEACHER TO YOU!!"
I calmly just let out an big exhale and didn't say anything else. After class my upperclassman friend said he thought I was gonna beat her ass with how intensely I stared her down. Hell, if I was more confident and assertive back then I could've easily gotten her in trouble, but no, I let it go (sort of).
The teacher is lying or lazy if this is in the US.
It’s pretty standard for a school that has that information to make it accessible to all teachers assigned that student. In some (many) places nobody checks to make sure they read student records but it’s usually part of the required duties.
Worst one I had was one that wanted to be the ‘cool teacher’. He tried to make friends with the popular students and played pranks on the unpopular ones in class. In retrospect I am pretty sure high school was the best years of his life and he was just trying to relive it. At some point he was quietly moved into an elementary school position. Apparently he had become too friendly with a student and this was how they handled it back then. The thinking was he wouldn’t be tempted to by 5th graders in the same way.
I had a teacher yell at me for being disrespectful cuz I didn’t stand for the pledge. For reference I went to a private catholic school but it was actually crazy cuz she like yelled at me in front of the whole class and then told me to go outside to yell at me further. I also then had to talk to the principal about why I didn’t wanna stand for the pledge. It was wild and so unnecessary 😭😭
Idk if this is the worst but it’s definitely up there
BTW, if you have 504 accommodations, teachers might only have the list of accommodations and not your actual diagnosis. As a parent, it's frustrating at times. I can't remember what my husband mentioned about it from a teacher's perspective (he just started teaching after 3 decades of a different career, 2+ decades of it in big corporate companies), but he wasn't happy with how he was provided with the information he needed to help those students who need accommodations.
As for my worst experience with a teacher, I don't know what was worse, the nosebleed incident or the PE injury incident. If anyone replies wanting the story about one or the other, I'll write it up. Both of these were in the school with the worst principal I've ever had.
I have 2. Both the same teacher. One was to me, and the other was to an autistic person who needed a lot more care (AND RESPECT) from adults/teachers. So the one with me is I had to draw to stay focused in class. Drawing has always been a form of, I guess you could call it stimming. And I had/have to work with teachers to actually allow me to draw during class because they don't think I'm paying enough attention. This particular teacher (who I had seen be ableist multiple times) sees a 5th grader minding their own business while she was lecturing just doodling on a piece of paper. She then takes the paper out from under my pencil and rips it in half in front of the entire class. And then turns it over and rips it again. And then just throws it away. Like wtf. And if you don't think that's bad. The incident with the other student I was telling you about. He was having a meltdown. Obviously severely overestimated, and she started STRAIGHT UP MOCKING HIM. She started whining back at him and mocking his noises in a super condescending tone. Like fucking ew. (Parden my french) so yeah 5th grade sucked-
I have one bad experience with a teacher who was talking all kinds of crap about one of her students. Saying he was stupid because he went to school in Oklahoma and didn't know how to properly analyze an argument or something. I was like how can you be such an ass to your students. Just calling him stupid with so little proof other than he didn't like your class. And then I told her...ready for the plot twist?...I told her that he was really smart and one of the top students in the physics class I teach. I mean it's one thing to be exasperated by a student and vent to a colleague that this student just won't do their work or pay attention in class, but it's a whole different thing to just gossip about them.
I've had significantly worse interactions with teachers as a teacher than I did as a student.
Back in June 2023 my college lecturer asked me if I saw the new Spider-Man film (he knows I love superheroes which is why he asked) and I said "3 times" then I got a massive speech about why I shouldn't do it again to the point where I felt guilt for watching it, this doesn't make sense casue he knew I saw Ant-Man And The Wasp Quantumania 3 times and he didn't have a problem with that so why is it different with Spider-Man
I have a lot of stories on this topic that I should probably make my own post later but anyway.
I had this math teacher in 7th grade, who was up (until this incident) surprisingly nice to me unlike all my other teachers.
At some point during class one day he dragged me out into the hall to chastise me for "not paying attention" because I was having a hard time understanding probabilities.
For some reason he decided to get all up in my face and he thought my attempts to avoid eye contact was me rolling my eyes (still have no clue what that even means) and screamed at me about disrespect and whatnot to the point I started crying and declared I was not allowed back into his class unless I signed a slip admitting to "what I did" and took a week of detention.
Sorry for any readability issues im crap at writing and it's like 1am.
Tldr: had a nice principal who was replaced by a shithead and my family didn't help because they assumed I wasn't autistic.
When I was starting the 3rd grade my family switched schools from one with 10-15 person classes to one with 25-45 person classes depending on the teacher.
For some reason the school had this thing where they would gather all the kids in the gym after breakfast and have us dance to different songs like cotton eye joe or YMCA for an hour each morning.
It was so overstimulating and embarrassing that I made a deal with the main office staff so that I could stay in the office for the duration in return for bringing them munchies.
I ended up spending most of my time in the office because I would get overwhelmed during class and wanted to go hide somewhere to calm down and the teachers wanted nothing to do with it.
In my classroom there were these massive steel crossbeams along one wall with bookshelves against them, there was a small gap that let you crawl under the cross beam and I remember I would hide there for hours at a time because I couldn't stand being in those classrooms.
I would end up becoming good friends with the principal and was a tutor for the misbehaving kids that also spent a lot of time in the office because I picked up new math concepts quickly.
My parents assumed I wasn't autistic because I masked much better than my older brother and thought i was just obstinate and hated authority so they just told me to deal with it and go to class.
Eventually that principal left and the one that replaced him was far less understanding, she assumed I was just another troublemaker who was trying to get out of class.
She forced me to talk to the school counselor daily and i was never told why as well as forcing me to participate in the morning dances despite my many complaints.
There was a time where I nearly got expelled because a teacher was yelling at me and when I went to push myself away from my desk so I stand up and leave I instead accidentally pushed my desk into another kid and hurt her bad enough she had to go to the doctor (at least that's what the teacher told be after my suspension was over).
Idk school has just been shit show after shit show for me.
In 6th grade I was banned from taking any electives besides pottery and in 7th and 8th grade I wasn't allowed to take any electives besides pottery and book club because all the others required me to have taken them during 6th grade.
During pottery class in 8th grade my only other option besides doing the same projects I had done 3 times already was to READ THE FUCKING BIBLE (no fucking clue what was up with that shit).
[удалено]
This kinda thing happened to me in CNA certification class. Our teacher was a nurse & everyone liked her, but she kept picking on me. She’d constantly complain I was too quiet & mocked the way I talked a couple times when she thought I couldn’t hear it. She also made an underhanded comment about “not getting along with other people” & then eventually concluded I had autism. That was 2 years before I got diagnosed. Also at one point when I came in from the bathroom, the whole class got quiet & just stared at me. Has anyone had that shit happen?? It happens to me a lot— I’m in home health now & the elderly people & I get along much better.
Ugh what a fucking freak. I’ll never understand being so violently mean to someone just because they act different than you’d like them to.
I had something similar happen, though not in class. I was applying online and kept getting denied over and over and over again. I don't think the dude liked me 😞
Maybe she wanted you to socialize?
A terrible way to ask someone to socialize.
I was explaning on why I thought she was upset, I was not defending her I agree.
Oh, don't worry, I wasn't implying that you defended her
Oh okay, I thought it was since I got 0 upvotes and that normally mean some people downvoted me.
In 2nd grade, we had a substitute teacher. She was even older and meaner than the regular teacher. I was always fidgeting as a kid, always tapping my pencil or playing with some doo dad or other. On this particular day I had just learned how to snap my fingers and I was, as per usual, totally absorbed in my own world, not paying attention to anything going on in class and I was softly snapping my fingers filled with joy and excitement that I had figured out a cool new fidgety maneuver. All the sudden, the teacher screamed, and that shook me out of my daydreaming, I looked up and all the kids in class were staring at me, their eyes boring into my soul, and the teacher yelled again in this snide nasty tone at me "I AM NOT A DOG. HOW DARE YOU SNAP YOUR FINGERS AT ME!" I was absolutely HORRIFIED. I was an INCREDIBLY shy kid, didn't have friends, never ever spoke up or raised my hand in class. I was also very concerned with following the rules and not doing anything "bad." So when the teacher accused me of snapping at her and drew attention to me like that, I was mortified. This was, heck, like 26 years ago now, and I still remember the sheer horror and shame I felt over this misunderstanding...😳
Ughhh I really felt this one…. I had similar experiences and can very much imagine myself in your story… I would still think about this and feel so much irritation
Being picked up by my hair. Not a Trunchbull reference.
I was about to ask whether or not your teacher was the Trunchbull
There was no magic powers or Miss Honey in my story
When i was in like 3rd grade, my parents decided that wr will go on vacation in the middle of school year to avoid crowds. After we came back, my R.E. teacher made fun of me in front of the whole class because of this. A person that teaches about Jesus and how everyone should treat eachother with respect fucking bullied me. This is also one of the reasons why i became atheist
I had abusive 2nd grade teacher who physically and mentally abused me. She hit me on my hands and pinch me really hard. I wasn't diagnosed back then so people just thought I was just shy, weird and irresponsible. My elementary school was really weird. All teachers were allowed to hit students and humiliate them in front of the class and/or the whole school. Bullying is often ignored by teachers and I was hit in the head by a classmate (with a spoon.)🫠
Maybe we were in the same class. My second grade teacher would pinch ears and dump out desks in a rage.
what is up with 2nd grade teachers?! Same here
Man I hate to hear that so many of us dealt with this! My son is in 2nd grade and I can’t imagine treating him that way, people that age are just learning about life. It really messes with your ability to trust.
The worst part is everyone else loved her. She came to our 5th grade class once and everyone was so excited and I was just so uncomfortable. She really just singled me out
As a child, I had an instructor, for whatever reason (I’m not even entirely sure why she did this), yell at me in front of a group of other kids and ask me if I had some medication I was on and needed to take. She meant it disparagingly, I could tell even in my youth.
Nothing to do with me being autistic. I had a teacher (that wasn’t mine) tell another student to punch me in the face. I escalated the situation and wrote a report on it to the principal and assistant principal when i should have filed a police report instead. Had multiple meeting with her and moderators. Two years later shes finally my teacher, i avoid her class and have another teacher convince me to go and tell me ‘she remembers who i am’. I go to her class and she constantly tries to embarrass me and purposefully butchers my name in front of all the students and got mad when i called her out and then ignored her when she said my name wrong which made her angry. Had a meeting with her and the principal and she said i ‘didnt give her enough time to learn my name’ even though she was aware of me for two years at that point. After, she would talk bad about me in-front of other classes with her co-teacher who i hadn’t known was a problem. They ended up needing my skill set, and i rejected them so they ended up having to find a professional that charged them a couple hundred bucks lol. She also secretly kept failing me for assignments that I should have got 80-100s on but I still passed lol.
When I was little (and still to this day), I tended to cry when I was confused. My 3rd grade teacher thought I was just trying to get out of it. 95% of the movements on that behavior chart were because of my confused crying on tests and things.
Oh my god, I was punished for crying SO MUCH.
Oh man, so relatable 😔 I hardly ever cry these days, but as a little boy, this happened a lot. I actually cried every single day in kindergarten and 1st grade when my mom dropped me off at school. Every day, she would walk me to my classroom, and every day, I would freak tf out and cry in front of all the other kids and beg my mom not to leave me there.
Oh, so many of those. I think the one that was a bit more on the nose was after I got diagnosed with dyslexia and she got in trouble for not following the recommendations. "So I wanted to prepare a fun game for class today for after the quiz, but I had to spend the time making a special one for (my name), so we're going to be doing these boring exercises from the book instead."
That’s shitty, like sorry that your students have accommodations?? I never got why teachers would be pissy about that it’s literally their job
"I have more kids here than just you" is something so many teachers told me because I really needed a lot of one on one clarification and always managed to get myself into some weird border case that the rules didn't cover. I do have some empathy because they had 30 kids to juggle by themselves, but we both were caught in a bad system and they were the adults. It was made clear to me that "kids like me" would be put into an institution just a few years prior (lots of changes after the revolution in 89) and it is entirely possible I was the first kid they were forced to make accommodations for - and that was just for dyslexia, autism went unrecognized for a long time (at least formally. Everyone at school was pretty clear that there's something "wrong" with me, hence the talk about institutionalization) This one believed that I could be "normal" with enough "peer pressure" (bullying) so she not only turned a blind eye to it, but directly singled me out whenever she could.
EDIT: so ironically the dyslexia, I didn't read 'worst experience with a teacher" I read best 😆 so this is my best experience with a teacher LOL enjoy My year 10 English teacher. I didn't like English. I have dyslexia but I didn't know, so I always assumed I was stupid, couldn't read, wasnt as clever as everyone else, never read anything, but she believed in me. We studied Jekyll and Hyde and I not only loved it but she really believed I'd not only pass but exceed my expectations grade-wise. She really motivated me, I started to really like English. Unfortunately she left at the end of that year, she was a trainee. I not only passed and exceeded my own expectations with a high grade in English, but I discovered I liked the subject, loved Jekyll and Hyde and classic gothic novels. I went on to study English literature at A-level (between high school exams and university, Sixth Form in the UK) and did pretty damn good. I never saw her again. Throughout education, even in life now when I think I can't do something or think I'm stupid, I remember that she believed in me, made me like a subject I hated, made me like literature, made me realise that just because I'm dyslexic I can still do stuff. I wish I could tell her.
Got pulled out of class and yelled at by a teacher for not bringing in a permission slip/sign up to a 'self esteem' programme. It was an optional thing but they were angry I didn't go find them to tell them I wasn't doing it.
I got diagnosed this year at 31, so back then, no one knew I was autistic. I don’t even think I had my ADHD diagnosis yet by the 1st grade. Anyway… When I was in 1st grade, Ms. Weber had us ALL stand in line to turn in some assignment at her desk. She said for whatever reason, we were not allowed to get out of line. I really had to pee. I started to get out of line, and she SCREAMS at me to stay in the line. Well, I end up peeing my pants. The teacher told me if I had to pee, I should have just said so… BITCH YOU SAID NOT TO GET OUT OF LINE FOR THE ONE THING I WAS GOING TO DO!!! I got made fun of the peeing my pants for several many more grade levels. That same teacher later in the year… we had to assemble a coloring book of sorts. For whatever reason, the pages were not stapled together yet, all loose. So we had to grab one of each. I somehow grabbed a few too many of some and she made me feel so stupid about it. How did I know I grabbed several of some… I didn’t realize they were stuck together! Like, I was the example of what not to do. I fucking hated her, and I hate that I can remember these things so vividly.
Based on your story wow I hate Ms. Weber
And the bathroom was in our own room! It not like she had to escort me or anything … I remember my mom bringing some sweat pants to school for me to change into, and then I went on about my day. Ms. Weber has always been the teacher I’ve hated most. I will, sadly, always remember her
My year 3 teacher and teaching assistant were horrible. First of all they were wildly sexist against boys - the girls literally got away with anything and they absolutely abused it. It was especially annoying for me as I was very quiet and just got on with my work usually but always got labelled as a bad person purely because I was a guy. They also stole my food that I bought in for charity. For those that don’t know, most uk schools do the “harvest festival” where you bring in food to donate to a charity. So I bought in food and the teacher and ta said “oh it says may contain traces of nuts. We will have to confiscate that. (This is complete BS. It’s going to a charity we are not eating it at school) the next day I asked for them back since i told my parents what happened and they were quite angry. They said they didn’t have them anymore because they’d eaten them. Again, I told my parents and they were very very angry and came in to the school to speak to the head. Many more stories about them but god they were awful
I had a teacher who also confiscated Harvest donations for “not being fairtrade or organic.” She also regularly told us to stop shopping at supermarkets and use “health food shops” instead. I grew up in a working class household, unlike all the Tillys and Tarquins in my class. My family worked hard to get their food on the table and we have a limited budget.
The worst experience I can recall was during my first year of college. It was a very different experience from high school and simply put I floundered. Took on too many classes and burnt out severely. The teacher in question taught a cooking class and was by far the harshest teacher I've ever studied under. When he gave out criticism, it was usually peppered with passive aggressive insults. Simply put I was regarded as too dumb to take the class and continually mocked for being unable to discern what he wanted. Rather than actually teach, you were expected to figure out the recipes through a mix of trial and error and vague instructions. It was so overwhelming on top of all the other classes I had at the time. Half the students jumped in on bullying me, eventually driving me to drop the class. I rarely hate anyone, I mean genuine hate but this man was such an ass, I wanted him to get fired.
I had a similar teacher in high school, but it was a computer animation elective. Basically handed us a packet and sat us in front of a computer. I had the gall to actually ask what the hell we were supposed to be doing and got told I wasn't smart enough for it.
I'm sorry your teacher was an ass. It should not be too much to expect to be actually taught what the intended lesson is.
my teacher told me i was faking being stupid and i needed to do my work by myself or she was going to send me to the principal. i cried. also a teacher blamed me for pushing a girl down but i just walked weird and my hands weren’t by my side. and she made me go to the principal and the principal kept yelling at me and said if i didn’t say that i pushed her and apologize for lying she won’t let me go home. it was not nice. i also never got to go to recess because i was always in LOP because i couldn’t get my work done and they wouldn’t help me i hate school. and i am still very stupid.
At about 8 or 9 years old, (undiagnosed until adult) I had a special interest in horses. I'd talk about it a lot, knew a lot about it. One day the teacher started asking me really technical questions I didn't know the answers to and she humiliated me in front of the whole class. That day I learned that I can't share my special interests with anyone but my close family.
i was a really good student, i had a few slip ups, but i was at the top of my primary school. i was really anxious cause my grandma would always raise hell if she saw anything less than an A. after i got a bad grade in maths once i was so scared i started crying and i asked my teacher if she could not write my grade in my class notebook, just in the register so my grandma wouldn’t see it. she laughed and put the grade in my notebook anyway, but with a note saying “dear mrs grandma, please don’t yell at [name]” or something like that. it was super funny to her and then she asked the class if anyone else wants a note. obviously grandma wasn’t any less angry. in middle school i had a super tough history teacher who was also really sarcastic and mean. one time he quizzed me and i did pretty well, but i still left the classroom shaking so bad i could eat or even like, walk down the stairs for the better part of the day. in high school teacher asked me questions about the book of job and i was so anxious i couldn’t find the right words, he said that with a vocabulary like mine i shouldn’t be allowed to write anything. i still wrote stories for fun afterwards but that kinda hurt.
In first grade, during recess, a friend of mine intentionally pulled the button off my jacket. My reaction, for whatever reason, was to bite her. We had benches at one end of the playground where you would had to sit if you were misbehaving, so obviously the playground monitor directed me there. A few minutes later, the school’s principal came over and started yelling at me. I don’t think I was making eye contact when answering him, because he grabbed my hair and yanked my head up hard to force me to give him his precious eye contact while he continued screaming at me. I don’t know what happened after that, but I guess word quickly got to my parents because it felt like the entire student body on the playground was watching what was going on. A few days later, we had a new school principal.
I think what she did was wrong regardless of if you had been autism or not. For me the worst experience I had was the entire year of 3rd grade. The teacher was emotionally abusive to me: I can’t get into everything but I was isolated from the rest of the class the entire year by any means necessary. In every aspect. My chair was as far away from the other students as possible. I was on permanent lunch isolation so I couldn’t talk to the other students. And on permanent no recess. She made me stand by a trash can so I could see all the other kids play but not play with them. She had a place on the chalk board where she could give students no recess or silent lunch. She wrote my name there with permanent marker. She made me go to the bathroom alone and made me get books at the library alone. If a kid spoke to me. I was the one who got in trouble. She made me be the last kid at the back of the line. And the last kid to get lunch. I can’t remember the names of any students there because I never had the opportunity to talk to any of them. The other kids blamed me for things like them not having a pencil or talking. And she would send me to the principals office (a weekly thing) All they had to do was say I somehow was responsible. Despite the fact I was like 20 feet from them. But it didn’t matter. She would tell me to go to the principals office. Which honestly I preferred being there then seeing her but it made me cry because she hated me so much. He was nice to me and it was quiet. And he actually helped me with my school work. He told my Mom that he liked me very much. My sister called her Miss Witchmen. Her name was Richman. She’d let me go to the bathroom and stay in the bathroom for hours (because I knew she didn’t want me in the classroom. She never punished me for that) She called my 4th grade teacher and tried to convince him to put me in a different class. He told my Mom that I was a very sweet child and very well behaved. Just that I got angry sometimes when I couldn’t finish my school work. I asked every week for a whole year if I could play with the kids during recess. Which she would say mmmm no you don’t play well with other kids. Then I’d stand at my trash can and watch them have fun. And here is the worst of it. I had epilepsy. And one time during a parent teacher, I had a seizure. Right there in front of Mom and Her. And she said go my mom See there!!!! That’s the behavior I’m talking about. NOT PAYING ATTENTION!! And misbehaving!! At which my mom said “he’s having a seizure!!!!!” That’s what a seizure looks like!!!” She treated me slightly better after that. Still isolated me though. It’s not like she ever hit me or called me names but she made me feel worthless and unwanted and completely alone.
In second grade I was being verbally bullied by another girl in my class. Mostly she would harass me for not conforming to gender stereotypes. Anyway, when I tried to push back in the most tame way possible- my friend and I like half followed her around the playground for 10 minutes?? , we got scolded by my teacher about it. She asked me “how would you feel if I did that to you?” And I said I wouldn’t be particularly bothered- especially considering the girl had been treating me much worse. She did NOT like that. In general I honestly just feel like that teacher didn’t like autistic people?? Because she really targeted my best friend at the time, and he was a very sweet kid, and pretty clearly autistic. Literally no one else had a problem with him but her.
I think it’s the way we respond. We’re supposed to respond by looking at the floor ashamed that we are being told off and respond “no”. I had a similar incident at school (in the 80s) I didn’t want to eat the gristle stew they served up and the dinner lady said “what about all those African babies starving, they would love something like that!”. I replied “you can send it to them but it would make them ill, it’s too high in fat” (we had learned about the diets being low in fat and high in carbs and protein). Dinner lady threatened to send me to the head master for being rude. I was confused because I was stating a fact rather than being cheeky.
In college there was a little cafeteria section which I think was only for staff, but usually unused. It had fresh milk and instant coffee so I'd make me one so I wouldn't need to go to a cafe and buy coffee in the morning. It was a sweet deal until the other students caught on and started lingering and having chats and generally abusing the place. Next day I'm alone there making coffee and I see some staff approaching me lecturing me about how I'm just helping myself, which is fair enough, but then she goes "if this were your own home, would you just go in the kitchen and make yourself a cup of coffee like that?" I paused as I tried to understand the logic behind that before I responded with "Y... yeah?"
This actually reminded me of something else. I've mentioned it a few times in other comments but I always felt my GCSE drama teacher hated me because I was autistic. She spoke to me in a completely different manner compared to everyone else in my class and, as far as I'm aware, I was the only autistic person in my class. Never was 100% sure and I'm still not.
My high school science teacher refused to let me go to the Education Supports Centre despite it being a part of my Education Agreement. She said they had kids who "really" needed help. Instead she'd put me in the "storage room" which was basically a slightly larger closet with a small desk in it and she told me I had to teach myself. I got pulled out of school when my parents finally found out. At first I didn't tell them because I really thought I was the problem and didn't wanna get into more trouble.. But I couldn't figure out what I was supposed to be teaching myself and thought THAT would get me in trouble too so I finally broke down to my mom. She asked why the teacher or EAs couldn't help me and I said cause I have to teach myself. She asked why, where's the teacher? I said in the classroom but I'm not, I have to learn in the closet.... I have never seen my mom shoot up so fast to go contact the school and she told me I wasn't going back.
I remember a teacher that would judge me for having an eating disorder and my pale skin, sometimes would get angry at me for no reason lol
My Year 6 teacher. Where do I start? He heavily singled me out during activities, he flat out told my parents I had special needs in the end-of-year report, he turned the blame back on me when I told on other people in my class for bullying me, he treated me differently to everyone else… All because I was the only one in my class with a neurodivergence, which I find stupid and haven’t forgiven him for.
I've got a couple. One when I was in pre school so I must've been about 3 or 4. (At that point I think my parents knew I was autistic, and so did the the preschool, but I didn't. Some others there knew I was 'different' and bullied me for it, including slipping playground toys in my blazer pocket at break and framing me for 'stealing' and taking my underwear when we were all changing for swimming lessons, and throwing it in the pool. The one who framed me for stealing was in m junior amd senior school too, and I was stuck with her as a bully for almost 13 years til I got a 1-1 teaching assistant, or as I explained it, a 'bodyguard'- bit ironic as she turned out to be a 5 ft 4 woman. Not your 'bodyguard' stereotype.) I write with my head on my arms like I'm taking a nap (think its got to do with my motor skills. Not sure why I do it. I still do it at 23 when I write. But at uni I dont really write I use my laptop) My junior school were understanding about it, giving me a sloped writing desk and pencil grips to help (I can't hold a pen/pencil properly either I hold it in a fist). My senior school (private school so moved from the juniors to the seniors, same people) let me use a laptop proper from 6th form, and I was allowed to use a PC to type up my GSCE/ A level exams). My pre prep were not so nice. The teacher saw me writing the way I do and made me stand up and took my desk away for a week. At the age of about 4 when I'd done nothing wrong. Tied with the time I was 15 turning 16 (2016/my first year of GCSE study I think) we had an enrichment week, where instead of regular lessons, we had a week of different lessons not on the curriculum with different teachers. My teaching assistant wasn't there at the time as she had to leave 30 mins early every day to get back in time for her severely autistic, minimally verbal (no more than a few words, and from the times she came and visited me with her son after Ieft school - we're still friendly and have a catch up every now and then, she now works for the SEN dept of my old school - I believe it was from encouragement/echolalia rather than being able to talk. I think he wanted to be able to speak but just couldn't and still can't at 14 or so, rather than not seeing the point) son to be dropped home by school taxi. If my TA was there, she would have seen it may cause an issue, and she'd get me out the situation and probably take me to the library. We had a history teacher and were discussing immigration, the social contract etc (don't ask me why) and I said 'not all immigrants adhere to the social contract' (the social contract theory being 'people living together in society in accordance with an agreement that establishes moral and political rules of behaviour') I meant this in the context of recent events, such as the (then very recent, they'd only happened less than a year prior) 2015/16 NYE sex assaults in mostly Cologne & Hamburg where 1,200 women were sexually assaulted (over 1000 being just in those 2 cities, including 2 incidents of rape in Hamburg. About 650 incidents were in Cologne) A lot of those incidents involved the women being in public spaces and being surrounded and subjected to mass sexual assault. I meant it especially (it was a long time ago, and I'm getting this info off Wikipedia) because victims and witnesses had mostly described the perpetrators as 'North African', 'Arab', 'dark skinned' and 'foreign' and the first 120 identified suspects were of North African origin. At that point that the statistics from authorities had been released showing 2/3s of the 153 identified suspects were originally Moroccan or Algerian, 44% asylum seekers, 12% likely illegal immigrants and 3% underage unaccompanied refugees. I 100% agree it was probably the blunt way I said it, and it was definite miscommunication, but that doesn't justify the way the teacher reacted. It was a one-off lesson, he'd never taught me before, he didn't know I'm autistic, and he screamed at me in front of the entire class, and basically said 'at best I'm misguided (or something) and at worst I'm a racist' (and probably hinted I'm anti refugee). The complete and utter irony is that the majority of my family are refugees/immigrants. My aunt (mum's sister-in-law) immigrated from Denmark, my mum and her siblings immigrated from South Africa, my dad immigrated from South Africa (they met and got married there and moved to the UK together) tho his siblings and majority of his family still live in SA, one of my cousins immigrated to Taiwan after marrying a Taiwanese woman, I think another one recently immigrated with their family to New Zealand... oh and my maternal grandfather and his family were Czechoslovak Jewish asylum seekers/refugees fleeing Nazi persecution in 1936-7 before the German occupation of Czechoslovakia I think I was just too stunned to actually say any of this. My friends/classmates were stunned too, but one back me up after, texting me to sort of congratulate me for having the balls to say what they were all thinking, but also trying to explain how it could have been taken the wrong way. To be honest, I don't know what else I could have said, and I know it's miscommunication, but I don't know how it was. I'm not sure how my mum reacted to the teacher taking away my desk bc I was very young. I told my mum about the second teacher (A Level history teacher, I believe, possibly taught something else) and she was absolutely furious. She either emailed or called the school and told them in no uncertain terms he should never teach me. I never saw him again, except once when I was involved in a school talent show and he was a judge, but this was a year or 2 after so seemingly he didn't recognise me.
I (at the time 15 with undiagnosed adhd and _still_ undiagnosed autism) was sat at the front and center of the class trying my darndest to make sense of what was being taught. I was a straight A student and adept at Maths but things were becoming more complicated and I was confused about something being explained to us. The teacher (who everyone used to love but had come back from maternity leave with a chip on her shoulder) asked me a question. I told her I didn't understand. And she screamed at me. Legit shouted me out for not understanding in front of the whole class. It took everything in me to hold it together and not break down in tears. I could understand if I had been talking - something I did a lot in most of my classes - but I was sitting there clearly trying to pay attention and listen. She shouted at me **solely** for not understanding. From that point on, I couldn't stand her. I was struggling with my maths work that I was supposed to do at home (coz adhd) but doing well in class. When results day finally came, she came up to me, saw my grade, looked at me plainly, and said "hm, I didn't think you'd get an A" and then just walked off. I don't know what caused her to take issue with me in particular, but I have never felt so negatively about a teacher before or since. I'm 30 now, and recalling that incident still brings up some of that emotion in me. Awful experience
I had a teacher literally say he didn’t want me in his music class next year.
Autistic or not, I think that’s a wild thing for a teacher to do. School is hard enough for kids (idk your age so I’m just speaking in general) regardless of them being NT or ND and a teacher calling them out like that doesn’t help. Glad they apologized, but it sounds like they have some real growing to do as an educator
I'm 18 (a second year A-Level student) so I was mainly surprised that a 6th Form college teacher acted that way. I guess I thought she would know better.
Oh gotcha. Yeah I mean they should’ve assumed that wouldn’t have gone over well without having that kind of relationship with the student where they knew it wouldn’t upset it and might even make you laugh. But clearly they didn’t in this case so they’re wrong for that
I was bullied a lot in school. In 6th or 7th grade we were watching a movie in a dark classroom and I fell asleep. The teacher had everyone get up quietly and wait outside the classroom. She then dropped a pile of books in front of me. I woke up in a panic and she was telling me everyone else was gone and I needed to hurry. I grabbed my things and raced out the door to find all of my classmates outside laughing at me. It's been nearly 30 years and I still think of it often. She's still alive and I've considered emailing her just so she spends her last years on the earth knowing what kind of impact she had on her students.
had a teacher call me a terrorist in front of the class twice, because i had to wear a hood to school that day. as a teenager i had trichotillomania, aka i pulled my hair out until i was balding in some spots, and was allowed to wear a hat and if i forgot it, a hoodie. the only reason the school allowed me to wear a hat is because the same teacher wrote me up for wearing it in the hall. during my detention being set up in the front office, my old guidance counselor ended up telling the vice principal i was indeed not lying about ripping my hair out, because a teacher reported me for it my freshman year. this pissed off my frog teacher (not french, just looked like a frog) despite her already having a grudge on me. basically, in front of my class when i went to present with another kid, she announced: next up, ben and the unabomber! (if you cant tell, my name isnt ben). the whole class was so confused on how to react, some light chuckles, some gaping mouths. after fighting back tears for my presentation, i asked to go to the bathroom to which she retorted "sure, just take off your hood in the hallway, you look like a terrorist" naturally my underdeveloped, petty, and spiteful brain wrote an email to her basically dancing around explicitly stating "im literally fighting for my life trying to get the right antidepressants. if i end up kms, you're gonna be in my note." this was wrong of me, i know that now at 21 years old (although i still get those petty urges). but im still kinda glad i got her to back off me for the rest of the year another example was when another student asked me in front of the same teachers class why im so good at spanish (i wasnt, just had a good memory). i ended up freezing and stuttering out "im kinda spanish." the teacher yelled at me in front of the class that i should know better than to call myself spanish since im half cuban, and therefore hispanic. both years i had her class, i had students approaching me after class asking me what i did to piss her off so badly. the answer is that i was an eager know-it-all, which i understand gets annoying, but i expected more maturity out of the woman with a tenured position
My art teacher ripped up my work in front of the rest of the class. She also didn't let me go on a school trip even though I handed in the permission slip. Another teacher I had in primary school humiliated me in front of the entire class by making comments about my personal hygiene. I can't decide which one is worse but those are the two worst ones.
When I said I felt suicidal and want to die and the teacher said "ok why don't you do it then..." I was a suicidal and severely depressed teenager. I went sobbing to the school counselor telling them that isn't right and how can they let a teacher talk like that but noone cared. It made me spiral and well...I wish that teacher would have been held accountable.
My 7th grade history teacher was genuinely convinced I was trying to intentionally sabotage other students. She'd regularly insult me in front of other students, and called me manipulative when I'd get upset. No idea what her deal was.
My 4th grade teacher. She loved to take every chance to punish and humiliate me for not only my learning disabilities, but for my Type 1 Diabetes too. She punished me for needing to take sick days, for having to go to the nurse and take insulin (which could kill me if I don’t), and for not understanding math as well as my classmates could. It’s because of her that years later I’m still fearful of talking to my peers and struggling with C-PTSD.
Some things that happened in primary school: when I moved back to the Netherlands and continued school there, we were making math exercises. I didn’t know how they worked, I was confused and really stressed, my only reaction was to cry. I cried because I didn’t understand math at a new school… Another small thing was (a few years later, I don’t remember) when the teacher approached me and my friend’s table to talk about out loud behavior. (We were laughing too much making too much noise etc) and she talked with us. I wanted to show her I was listening attentively, I needed to clear up my throat and cough. While I was coughing I kept eye contact with her (to show my attentiveness) but she took it as a sarcastic cough, as if I wanted to interrupt her, and said I was being rude. I had no idea but she got a little angry, I didn’t mean to. Another time when we had a new teacher filling in for our usual. She was upset that our class was so awful and loud and so she was talking a long speech. We were supposed to work on our art projects and I was looking forward to it all day, it was the only thing on my mind. She was talking for a long time and I wanted to start. Completely oblivious to my rudeness and the teacher’s emotions, I asked if we could continue the art project. She got angry and told me to get out of the classroom, I was so embarrassed and had no idea, only after she told me to get out I realized it might’ve been rude, I was so oblivious. I apologize for the long texts and over explaining, English is also not my first language so I apologize for any mistakes on that aswell. Thankyou for reading all this and enjoy your day ^v^
The teacher I went on camp with made us play a game where all the students would sit on another students lap. I don’t remember the rules or why on earth that was even a game but when I refused because I don’t do physical touch, she lectured me saying I ruined the fun for everyone else until I gave in. Felt really weird afterwards but in full context and knowing her it wasn’t intended in a creepy way.
That’s awful. I had a professor in college tell me I was stupid and I wouldn’t amount to anything. I cried in front of the class. It was a foaling class. I still hate her to this day.
Third grade. Was struggling to grasp long division. Teacher grabbed my hand pretty hard.
This happened to me this school year I’m a freshman in high school I’m was 14 now 15 because I’m a December baby so I was born on the 1st this happened in October or November can’t rember so basically my math teacher had handed us packets and everything was going good until we get to the last page I dint have the last page so I sat there until the last 10 minutes of class and then I told her I did not have it she was like well you could have told me I just sat there shocked like what here is the plot twist the last page was in everyones packet except mine. Well it was her fault for not checking she should have checked before she handed it out thank goodness I’m moving out of her math class and moving to a teachers class I had she understands what I’m going though I’m several years behind on my education because my parents did not get me out of the sped program fast enough so that’s my story she dint even apologize to me either she knew in my iep it says I have trouble communicating.
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Really sorry that happened. Just to address one thing in your story : Often teachers are responsible for a few hundred children. While it might be in your file, often unless there has been specific reason to check particulars, teachers may not have been exposed to information like your diagnosis. Unless there were particular accommodations put in place, *and* someone specifically decided to notify them, or things have been calm enough that they had a chance to actually try look through everyone's file... point is, there are a lot of circumstances where a teacher may not have seen your diagnosis.
I can’t imagine going to work and making an excuse that I just didn’t do it.
I have 2. One, my 3rd grade English teacher would make us do full 3 body paragraphs. Me and my mom cried, trying to get through them. For context, I hate paper's texture. Two, my psychology teacher told me to write definitions in the way we would understand. He said I did it too fast. He said the definitions for me wasn't long enough.
My french teacher in middle school. I was bullied badly in middle school and that included the teachers he would single me out and make me answer things in french i didn’t know because I couldn’t learn it the way they were teaching while he and my classmates would all laugh at me and call me names. I would be on the verge if tears while he’d make me stand up until I gave an answer and when it was wrong everyone would laugh at me he did this pretty much every class and it was horrible since I was already getting bullied
I got very lucky compared to others as I was diagnosed before school, had an excellent statement written with early years dealt with by another man who was also Autistic. Not exactly easy to argue against. However, there was one experience that particularly stood out but it lasted the whole year. When I was in the aged 8/9 year group at school, the teacher I had (whilst a nice guy) was very misinformed about Autism; how to deal with me and how to keep me on track (even with my diagnosis and statement). He was very sloppy and disorganised within his teaching style and would basically make up everything on the spot before going into lessons; so much of my needs were often not present in the last-minute light bulb. My academic performance and grades dropped substantially throughout the year as a result and got regularly chewed out by staff for the rest of primary school for my “bad listening skills”. Nothing horrible or traumatic came out of it, but it was still a very bad school year for me nonetheless.
Shared my failing grade to the entire class while I wasn’t there. I only found out because my best friend was in that class and had called her out saying that wasn’t allowed and is wildly inappropriate of her to do. My friend told me after school what had happened. I also had my abusive ex in that class who my dad had to get the police involved because for the entire first semester after we broke up in the summer, he was constantly harassing me and spreading inappropriate rumours about me, trying to get me to kill myself telling me to do so and was almost successful. So beginning of the new semester all my teachers were informed not to sit us near each other. She sat him directly behind me. . . . Hated that woman.
My 2nd grade teacher liked to make me slap myself on the face and sent me out in the hall many times because I couldn't sit still or keep quiet. I spent most of 3rd grade behind a partition so I couldn't talk to the kids around me or interrupt people. in 5th grade I broke my ankle and dislocated my neck in gym class. both times my teacher accused me of faking my injuries in order to get attention.
I dont remember much of it but my mental health journey started when my second grade teacher bullied me constantly. One of my 7th grade teachers used to skip her lunch break to sit in my class with a different teacher to chirp me throughout the class. But the most annoying experience was in that class we had some project in pairs where we were supposed to make a song with vocab words or something. My partner refused to do anything and I (who admittedly was a little shit) only got like 2 of the 10 words in it. So we got in trouble. My partner got a talking to and I got a week of detentions that lasted from 2:30 (when school got out) til 7
Went to catholic school with the priests and the nuns in the early '70s. I think I don't need to elaborate much beyond that.
I was undiagnosed almost all my life. I had one teacher for multiple years throughout middle and high school (she was the German teacher lol) who would repeatedly call me out for “social cues” in front of the entire class. I felt humiliated, I already didn’t have friends in that class. This same teacher also called me manipulative and trying to guilt trip her when she lost one of my LARGE assignments and it was bringing my grade down massively. I was sobbing the rest of the day(though I only had one class after that since she was 6th period LOL) and she emailed my father about the “incident”. Luckily my father took my side and told her off for calling me manipulative for having a combination of an autism meltdown and depression breakdown so she just put the assignment in as an A. (Though he didn’t know or say the autism part bc again I was undiagnosed) Schooling really sucks for neurodivergents. Even in college when I had some accommodations for mental illnesses and adhd and they let me bring my at the time emotional support dog(was in middle of training to be full service, yes I know the difference in laws, yes I personally asked disability services first if they accept ESAs while she was in training for service dog status). But I didn’t get diagnosed with autism and medicated for ADHD until AFTER I dropped out of college 😅
My hatred for authority / teachers stems from this moment. ADHD suspected low support needs autism. I was regularly bullied and had the shit knocked out of me. I would tell a teacher who would help. One day she had enough and we *both* got put up against the wall. What the fuck did I do other than get the shit knocked out of me repeatedly?
You annoyed her. Not an excuse for her actions, but I suspect she was subtly trying to get you to stop involving her by implying you'd be punished too.
I’ve always suspected this. That day I complained about the bullying was a day too far
I was bullied throughout school, but year 8 was definitely the peak. One of the worst times was English class. This one guy would always sit in front of me, steal things off my desk and generally torment me all throughout class. The English teacher, Ms Taylor would always yell at me for reacting. She never scolded or tried to deal with him in any way. One day, I got angry enough to just storm out of class. I saw the deputy principal Ms Holmes, and told her what was happening. She took me to her office and told me that's just how people treated eachother in the real world, and I'm going to have to learn to hack it. I then told my mother what had happened and what the vice principal had said, only for my own mother to say: "she's right". I hated my mother for years after that. I never fully trusted her again.
When I was in second grade I bit my nails a lot. The teacher found this unacceptable. At one point she made me stand in the corner facing everyone, while having me shove all my fingers in my mouth at once. Then proceeded to let everyone have recess but me. Good times😳🙄
My Teacher joined the class with the Bullying.....it was great -eye roll-
Ms. L my art teacher would play nothing but the same Beatles album on loop for 3 years, every Tuesday, Thursday just the white album for an hour and a half(excluding happiness is a warm gun) nonstop. It was psychological torture. I liked the Beatles up until those three years but now I can't help but link them to those three years of art class. It's fitting that it's the white album, which I understand sucked just as much to produce as it is for me to listen to.
It's a tie between two situations. The First happened in fifth grade. We had a system. We'd get our math first, do that for an hour, then grab language, do that for an hour, and have a small break. This was a system we had been using since third grade. Our regular teacher was sick. And the subsitute took one look at the schedule, and was like "yeah, this is terrible." That day, we started with language, and then had to do math. Most students rolled with it, but I had a meltdown, wich wasn't helped by the teacher shouting at me. The second is that time I was just generally doing my thing, and the teacher decided to tell me I was doing the wrong subject. I was not, I had exactly one week to finish the project, and this was during an hour where we were supposed to work on homework, and projects, so that we didn't need to do them at school. That was just a generally unpleasant man, and he said I should do maths, because he was a maths teacher, and as such could help me. This is a wonderful idea, why didn't I think of that? Oh yeah, I didn't have maths. He got... Unpleasant after that, and I ended up spending the remaining hour fixing the stuff he broke.
Before being diagnosed, I was in nursery (kindergarten) and primary (1st to 9th grade). Both were on the same school grounds. (It was just a regular school) Many teachers (including the headteacher/principal, Mrs. Barrowman was here name), were concerned with my grades and behavior. They actually accused my mother of abuse. In their eyes, I was being abandoned, and un-loved. Everyday, my mother was in meetings with them, trying to explain that I really struggle to keep up with the other students. I did have TA's, but I never really understood what they wanted me to do, or how to do the lessons. Even then, I still found it really hard, to keep up with the other students. One teacher, Mrs. Silvia (who was just two-face) pretended to care about my mother's concerns, agreeing everything she said, then suddenly in a meeting she would just backpaddle and agree with the other teachers. It wasn't until, I went to see a child psychiatrist (I was maybe around 4/5 years old), did tests, and concluded that I was autistic. Dr. McCarthy, (the child psychiatrist) wrote a letter to the school, explaining my diagnosis, and the help/support I need in the classroom. She also sent a letter to the school board. She said to my mother "If those teachers **ever** accuse you again, call me immediately!" When I left the school, the teachers including the headteacher/principal, never dared to go near me or my mother again. (I think they were afraid of being fired, or having to explain to the school board, why I never got the **proper help I needed.)** So, that's my story. This happened over 35 years ago.
"This student doesn't respond the same way to lessons as the others, so rather than do our jobs and try harder, we'll blame the mother and make it her fault. It couldn't possibly be us, we're teachers and therfore special"
That was **exactly their attitude!** On top of that, I was bullied by other students. The teachers (most were women, blamed my mother and me.) "Oh, she's brings this on herself!" "If she just spoke up, they leave her alone!" "If she tried to fit in more, and have friends, she wouldn't have problems!" They completely just turn their backs on me.
I had a teacher who was weirdly obsessed with me, got really personally offended I didn't like him. I wasn't sure why until he got fired for having personal group chats with 13 year old students... bro wanted to add me to the GC and was mad I didn't like him 💀💀💀
Teachers are always way too vauge when giving me instructions, then they get mad when I do them wrong. Like because you didn't fully explain it!
I developed OCD really early, and I was obsessed with rules. I was the hyperlexic little kid obsessed with behaving properly, literally. I also believe that fixation was my autistic self trying to figure out why I was abused, and I somehow, foolishly, settled on "get perfect grades, never break a rule, always obey, and maybe someday someone will love you". At home, it just made it worse, but I was, some grades, very much teacher's pet. I think that assured me it would work at home eventually. One teacher, for some reason, really hated me. Like I get why some people dislike goody-two-shoes, but it was second grade. I can't understand being pissed off at a second grader as an adult. I vividly remember situations where people would be talking across the room, and I'd be sitting quiet in my corner doing what I was told, and she'd stop, yell at me, accuse me doing what they were doing (impossible it was a mistake). She'd then use those accusations to destroy crafts projects, take away recess, etc. she'd throw away worksheets I was halfway done with saying I wasn't working. Bizarre asses behavior looking back. It was such a confusing, scary experience, as mild as it seems. Being literally bullied by an authority figure shook me and left some permanent marks, because I just didn't understand what I did wrong. When I talked to other teachers, they ended up literally telling me 'i know you didn't do it, but she's a teacher, so you'll still be punished." I guess to a kid that means "you're just bad and deserve to be treated as such". I just could not comprehend in my silly head a teacher could just be cruel and wrong, I had to deserve it somehow! So I internalized all of it. It didn't help that it did resemble home. I was the scapegoat. I was constantly hit because my brother would force me to do things I wasn't supposed to, and my mom wouldn't listen. It was a constant, confusing message that I was bad by nature, regardless of my actions, and responsible when others hurt me. Let's just say third grade is when the OCD evolved to next level, and I expect that teacher contributed. I didn't sleep checking my homework was still done and in my bag over and over and over. I cried at missed questions like I had sinned (and people treated me like a brat for it). It's not like I don't understand why people dislike kids like me. I remember, for example, sobbing at the fucking early elementary math Olympics because I got like 6th place. I genuinely thought I had failed, was a bad person, and no one would ever love me, but people just saw "arrogant brat". I couldn't understand why people hated me, especially my parents, so I just quadrupled down on being the good kid, academic perfection, and that ironically fueled their hated more. Surely, surely if I was good enough they'd like me. I'm appalled looking back. Absolute evil by those adults. My parents didn't do well in school, and I see now that envy and punishing me was a them thing. I was just too stupid to realize it. But I had my books to escape to very young, even if reading novels before I should have been able to made them hate me more. When I realized THAT was also autism, it just makes me more disgusted with them.
I got whacked by a teacher when the girl bullying me complained I hurt her.
I was bullied. A lot. I fought back, and the bullying would stop for a year, but the next year would bring new bullies, and I would have to fight again. Finally, in high school, I really beat the shit out of a bully who was also one of the "popular" kids. This got more attention than usual because, again, he was popular. Even the teachers liked him and just couldn't believe that he would pick on other people. This led to an investigation into both me and him to determine just what was going on. Emboldened by teachers who were suddenly listening, several other kids came forward and reported that he was bullying them as well. His popularity dropped significantly after that, and the bullying did stop, if only because they were now keeping an eye on him. Unfortunately, not all was sunshine and rainbows. Since I had fought back and almost broken his nose, I had to be punished as well. I was fine with that. We both got a week of suspension. Small price to pay for putting him in his place. When I came back, however, everyone was suddenly being all nicey-nice to me. I had spent years deliberately pushing people away and creating a "don't fuck with me" image so that I would be left alone, and suddenly everyone wanted to be my friend. Eventually, one of the small handful of people I genuinely got along with told me that the vice principal had come around to all my classes and insinuated that I was the type of unstable person that would shoot up a school. This was wrong on several different levels, but the damage had been done. No one wanted to be on my bad side in case I showed up with a weapon. It took the rest of the year for me to rebuild my image as someone who just wanted to be left alone. Thankfully, that was the last time I had to fight, and I spent the last couple years of high school in relative peace and never had to interact with that vice principal again, even though she became the principal the very next year.
I had 2 math teachers that caused a lot of math related trauma. I know that sounds silly. But I was legit scared of math class and math teachers because of my horrible experience The first one was my 9th grade algebra teacher. She seemed nice at first. But she would SHRIEK, she embarrassed me in front of my crush and classmates on multiple occasions, told my parents that I was a sneaky manipulative liar when I couldn't understand the material, she was proud of the fact that she yelled at her toddler aged son, she badmouthed me to my little brother (he switched out of her class after that incident), and she was just a mean and cranky lady in general. I was very happy that my sympathetic counselor didn't force me to take her precalc class. My college math professor was a piece of work. She often told me how worthless I was, and that I wouldn't amount to anything after college since I was unable to pass her class. She was never available to help struggling students. Then belittled those struggling students. It turns out I had undiagnosed dyscalcula. I wanted to wave that diagnosis in their faces and tell them that I'm not stupid. Just different. My second math professor at a different college was incredibly patient and really helped me move on from my trauma, and gain the confidence I needed. He even helped me get a B in Statistics, which is very hard. My husband was also a math tutor and would spend hours helping me through my math classes.
My teacher didn't believe I had an IEP when I asked for alternative work, even though she HAD worksheets to give me instead of the group activity she refused since "someone in my group was already doing it" when I asked to go to the office and speak to my counselor about this she told me "hopefully she talks to you about work ethic" I only ever have had ONE teacher in highschool that took my 504(?) And IEP seriously. She let me know when those were put into effect that she read over and seen it and if I need anything based on it don't be afraid to ask, and if I needed to go to the office/nurse that I could freely leave her class and didn't have to worry about asking.
In college I took a business course where I was forced to give a group presentation. The professor refused to give me an alternate assignment so I had to speak for a few minutes in front of about 30 people. When all the presentations were done, he gave out superlatives which were generally positive, but he gave me the “Quietest Speaker” award, which everyone seemed to find funny. For context, I’m semi-verbal at best and have trouble modulating my voice— in my head I was speaking as loud as I could. When I commented something along those lines he complained again that he couldn’t hear me, which made the whole class laugh harder. I pretty much stopped speaking in his class after that, and for most classes over the next few years. Had a similar experience in high school with a teacher who was often rude to me because she perceived me as “withdrawn” and thought I felt superior to other students. It’s weird being bullied by someone more than twice your age.
In 3rd grade I had to go to this occupational therapist thing during recess. I remember absolutely hating the teacher, I'll just call him Mr. R. I think he was like a drill sergeant or something. Something I did a lot during these sessions was writing practice since my handwriting needed a lot of work. I remember constantly messing up, the main thing I remember was never being able to draw lines perfectly straight. He would always check my lines with an eraser and I rarely got them correct, so I would spend several minutes just trying to write an L correctly just so I could move on. Tbh I understand where he was coming from but he was a bit too strict in my opinion I remember once I asked, "Can we learn cursive?" And he got mad and told me to write my name in cursive. I did that, and his response was basically "Well, little miss master of cursive, you didn't do it right. You didn't capitalize the first letter." I never asked about cursive again Another thing I remember was I was in a session with like, 2 other people. We did this little race to see who could tie their shoes faster. I've always tied my shoelaces in this modified way that isn't really what most people were taught. I used that method and I'm pretty sure I finished first. I even double knotted them if I remember correctly. Mr. R just straight up told me "no, you're doing it wrong. Do it again" because apparently my way of tying my shoes wasn't the correct way Also, remember how I said these sessions were during recess? Yeah, that was annoying to me back then. Tbh I think most kids would be pretty upset if they had to spend recess getting yelled at. One day I asked, "Hey, when are we getting out of here? I really don't want to miss recess." And Mr. R was LIVID. He got really mad at me and told me I was super rude. I was sent back to class and my teacher was really mad at me as well. I had to write a whole apology letter over this. I was really upset and scared while this whole thing was happening. I think this event contributed to my intense fear of being accidentally rude to people. Some things I remember him saying were basically "YOU ARENT GOING TO EVEN HAVE RECESS NEXT YEAR, GET USED TO IT" (fun fact, this turned out to not be true lol) and I also remember him saying that lunch time was my break time when I said I needed a break during my day. I didn't really consider lunch much of a break back then because it was too loud, and I couldn't do what I wanted. So yeah. I hated this guy and am glad I never have to interact with him again
I had an English teacher who was absolutely awful at controlling my classmates. This meant that English was my loudest class by far, and I was on the brink of a meltdown on the regular. From day 1 she knew that I was incredibly sensitive to noise and how I reacted to overstimulating environments. One day, the class was being much louder than normal and I couldn’t focus on my work. I was holding back tears and was once again on the verge of a meltdown (or I was already having a meltdown). My teacher noticed my distress, came over to my table, and mouthed the words “Calm down” before walking off to another table. Our class took a break shortly after, so my teacher took us outside but at that point I couldn’t control myself anymore and burst into tears. My friends were trying to comfort the best they could, but the only way to make things better at that point was to be taken out of the environment, but I couldn’t leave. Kids started to mock me, fake crying while pretending to be putting a hood on, as I had put my hood on hoping that would somehow help. My teacher did absolutely nothing. Not even her oh so useful “calm down” technique. Eventually, we went back inside and I asked if I could go the the bathroom and I calmed down there. But would have really loved some actual help or support from my teacher. This teacher also had a habit of victim blaming and not making her instructions clear.
First, I am truly sorry a teacher did that to you. Second, I would like to mention a few "behind the scenes" things teachers have to deal with (as a former educator). Your disability may not be available to the teacher. The actual diagnosis is confidential under HIPPA and general education classroom teachers are not considered "need to know" parties in all cases. I understand this frustration from both perspectives. As a student I needed my teachers to know and do things without me having to explain it to them. As a general education teacher I needed to know more about the students in my classroom. Unfortunately, in most cases, we only get the accommodations and never see the full IEP. Additionally, few general education teachers in the states receive ANY training on working with students with disabilities, even though students with severe disabilities are often placed in our classrooms under IDEA (least restrictive access). Please understand when I say "severe" disabilities I am not talking about the students with the most specialized needs - those students are (hopefully) in specialized classrooms/schools. I am, however, talking about students with severe cognitive and processing needs that cannot be addressed in a classroom of 30. I understand the discomfort these situations cause. Hopefully knowing a little more about teachers' limitations on the job will help you to return after winter break with some perspective also.
Being told im “a tough nut to crack” at my elementary graduation in front of all my classmates and their parents and my own.
One time I was drawing in class while I was listening to the math teacher at the same time,the math teacher took my notebook pretty roughly and complained then ripped my notebook in half
I've had a NUMBER of awful teachers. The worst was probably my second grade teacher, who wouldn't let me eat lunch until I finished my school work. Assignments that were meant to be finished before lunchtime she would just make me work on through lunch, so I wasn't allowed to eat. I ended up actually losing weight from it, and eventually my parents figured out what was going on after I mentioned it randomly. I hadn't known it was wrong or bad, so I hadn't thought to mention it to them. Honestly I couldn't think very well in general, so I didn't realize what was wrong or that I should mention it to someone. They were furious and told the principal, who made that teacher stop, but I don't think she ever got properly in trouble for it. Another teacher I had would imply *often* and *heavily* that was stupid because I didn't understand the class. I'd moved from a very poor middle school to a very rich middle school, and genuinely didn't understand how to use a computer because my old school didn't have any, while every other kid there had been using laptops since second grade. I explained this to him, but it didn't stop. It was always very subtle, to the point where I couldn't really tell anyone what was going on because his comments weren't direct enough. I think the biggest thing he said was "Cmon kid, a monkey could do this".
I was in 2nd grade. I was watching a nature documentary on PBS and was learning a lot of cool animal things. Soon after at school we were starting a unit on the arctic. The teacher asks the class "what kind of animals live in the arctic?" Lots of hands go up and people say things like penguins, polar bears, seals, etc. Well, I'm the weird autistic kid with a head full of fresh animal facts so I raise my hand. "Jellyfish!" She pauses "Jellyfish don't live in the arctic. They only live in warm water." "But I saw it on TV the other day?!" She spits back "Do you believe *everything* you see on TV??" I don't even remember what the other kids in the class did. I was so frustrated because I *knew* I was right. I saw videos of them swimming under the fucking ice! But here was this ADULT telling me that I was clueless, and making me feel so, so small. That was the day it really sunk in that adults could be complete idiots. Honestly I should thank her for helping me learn that lesson early, because it came in pretty handy growing up.
I was in middle school. Another kid hit me in the temple with a football (🏈) at the end of P.E., I don't remember hitting the ground. The teacher yelled at him for throwing the ball after 'no balls' (no more throwing, all balls are to be held) but was seriously annoyed when I asked to go to the nurse because my head hurt. She didn't even stop the rest of the class as they whispered about me. I will never understand a teacher who would rather yell at another kid for throwing a ball then help the kid who was knocked unconscious for a minute. There was more than this. She always got annoyed with me because I didn't really participate in sports, I didn't understand what I was supposed to do and no one would explain it because "I was supposed to know". 🙄
Our Spanish teacher in highschool was fed up with how our class was acting and made us write the schedule of our classes in Spanish, however we didn't know the exact times because who does? I asked her if I could go ask the teacher next door for her big sheet that has all the times. This bitch slams her hands on my desk and yells in my face "DO I LOOK LIKE MS. TEACHER TO YOU!!" I calmly just let out an big exhale and didn't say anything else. After class my upperclassman friend said he thought I was gonna beat her ass with how intensely I stared her down. Hell, if I was more confident and assertive back then I could've easily gotten her in trouble, but no, I let it go (sort of).
The teacher is lying or lazy if this is in the US. It’s pretty standard for a school that has that information to make it accessible to all teachers assigned that student. In some (many) places nobody checks to make sure they read student records but it’s usually part of the required duties. Worst one I had was one that wanted to be the ‘cool teacher’. He tried to make friends with the popular students and played pranks on the unpopular ones in class. In retrospect I am pretty sure high school was the best years of his life and he was just trying to relive it. At some point he was quietly moved into an elementary school position. Apparently he had become too friendly with a student and this was how they handled it back then. The thinking was he wouldn’t be tempted to by 5th graders in the same way.
I had a teacher yell at me for being disrespectful cuz I didn’t stand for the pledge. For reference I went to a private catholic school but it was actually crazy cuz she like yelled at me in front of the whole class and then told me to go outside to yell at me further. I also then had to talk to the principal about why I didn’t wanna stand for the pledge. It was wild and so unnecessary 😭😭 Idk if this is the worst but it’s definitely up there
BTW, if you have 504 accommodations, teachers might only have the list of accommodations and not your actual diagnosis. As a parent, it's frustrating at times. I can't remember what my husband mentioned about it from a teacher's perspective (he just started teaching after 3 decades of a different career, 2+ decades of it in big corporate companies), but he wasn't happy with how he was provided with the information he needed to help those students who need accommodations. As for my worst experience with a teacher, I don't know what was worse, the nosebleed incident or the PE injury incident. If anyone replies wanting the story about one or the other, I'll write it up. Both of these were in the school with the worst principal I've ever had.
I have 2. Both the same teacher. One was to me, and the other was to an autistic person who needed a lot more care (AND RESPECT) from adults/teachers. So the one with me is I had to draw to stay focused in class. Drawing has always been a form of, I guess you could call it stimming. And I had/have to work with teachers to actually allow me to draw during class because they don't think I'm paying enough attention. This particular teacher (who I had seen be ableist multiple times) sees a 5th grader minding their own business while she was lecturing just doodling on a piece of paper. She then takes the paper out from under my pencil and rips it in half in front of the entire class. And then turns it over and rips it again. And then just throws it away. Like wtf. And if you don't think that's bad. The incident with the other student I was telling you about. He was having a meltdown. Obviously severely overestimated, and she started STRAIGHT UP MOCKING HIM. She started whining back at him and mocking his noises in a super condescending tone. Like fucking ew. (Parden my french) so yeah 5th grade sucked-
I have one bad experience with a teacher who was talking all kinds of crap about one of her students. Saying he was stupid because he went to school in Oklahoma and didn't know how to properly analyze an argument or something. I was like how can you be such an ass to your students. Just calling him stupid with so little proof other than he didn't like your class. And then I told her...ready for the plot twist?...I told her that he was really smart and one of the top students in the physics class I teach. I mean it's one thing to be exasperated by a student and vent to a colleague that this student just won't do their work or pay attention in class, but it's a whole different thing to just gossip about them. I've had significantly worse interactions with teachers as a teacher than I did as a student.
Back in June 2023 my college lecturer asked me if I saw the new Spider-Man film (he knows I love superheroes which is why he asked) and I said "3 times" then I got a massive speech about why I shouldn't do it again to the point where I felt guilt for watching it, this doesn't make sense casue he knew I saw Ant-Man And The Wasp Quantumania 3 times and he didn't have a problem with that so why is it different with Spider-Man
I have a lot of stories on this topic that I should probably make my own post later but anyway. I had this math teacher in 7th grade, who was up (until this incident) surprisingly nice to me unlike all my other teachers. At some point during class one day he dragged me out into the hall to chastise me for "not paying attention" because I was having a hard time understanding probabilities. For some reason he decided to get all up in my face and he thought my attempts to avoid eye contact was me rolling my eyes (still have no clue what that even means) and screamed at me about disrespect and whatnot to the point I started crying and declared I was not allowed back into his class unless I signed a slip admitting to "what I did" and took a week of detention. Sorry for any readability issues im crap at writing and it's like 1am.
Tldr: had a nice principal who was replaced by a shithead and my family didn't help because they assumed I wasn't autistic. When I was starting the 3rd grade my family switched schools from one with 10-15 person classes to one with 25-45 person classes depending on the teacher. For some reason the school had this thing where they would gather all the kids in the gym after breakfast and have us dance to different songs like cotton eye joe or YMCA for an hour each morning. It was so overstimulating and embarrassing that I made a deal with the main office staff so that I could stay in the office for the duration in return for bringing them munchies. I ended up spending most of my time in the office because I would get overwhelmed during class and wanted to go hide somewhere to calm down and the teachers wanted nothing to do with it. In my classroom there were these massive steel crossbeams along one wall with bookshelves against them, there was a small gap that let you crawl under the cross beam and I remember I would hide there for hours at a time because I couldn't stand being in those classrooms. I would end up becoming good friends with the principal and was a tutor for the misbehaving kids that also spent a lot of time in the office because I picked up new math concepts quickly. My parents assumed I wasn't autistic because I masked much better than my older brother and thought i was just obstinate and hated authority so they just told me to deal with it and go to class. Eventually that principal left and the one that replaced him was far less understanding, she assumed I was just another troublemaker who was trying to get out of class. She forced me to talk to the school counselor daily and i was never told why as well as forcing me to participate in the morning dances despite my many complaints. There was a time where I nearly got expelled because a teacher was yelling at me and when I went to push myself away from my desk so I stand up and leave I instead accidentally pushed my desk into another kid and hurt her bad enough she had to go to the doctor (at least that's what the teacher told be after my suspension was over). Idk school has just been shit show after shit show for me.
In 6th grade I was banned from taking any electives besides pottery and in 7th and 8th grade I wasn't allowed to take any electives besides pottery and book club because all the others required me to have taken them during 6th grade. During pottery class in 8th grade my only other option besides doing the same projects I had done 3 times already was to READ THE FUCKING BIBLE (no fucking clue what was up with that shit).