According to Justin, what happened to him in the 4th grade still bothers him to this day. "It’s a memory that resurfaces occasionally and I get angry about it all over again." He added that he didn't expect his thread to go viral and expected 10 to 15 likes at best.
Justin said that his teacher's actions didn't demotivate him or stop him from drawing: "If anything it made me realize even more clearly that I wanted to do something artistic for a living, because if someone hates monsters, they’re dead inside. Regarding my art these days, I have a kids book I’m self publishing in a month or two called 'The T. Rex With Fluff Who Wanted to be Tough.' It’s about a dinosaur who wants to be cool but thinks he can’t because of how he looks. It’s a book that I think will be able to help a lot of kids."
He also had some advice for people who are in school now and are having a rough time with their teachers. "School doesn’t last forever and you’re gonna deal with these jamokes in the professional world so never falter to the haters. Do your own thing always!" Justin said.
Even though we have high expectations from teachers, we sometimes forget that they’re human beings—they have flaws and, unfortunately, sometimes they punish their students for being creative or when they ‘step out of line.’ While other teachers can be straight-up bullies.
ThoughtCo. writes how an anonymous survey from 2006 showed that 45 percent of teachers admitted that they bullied a student at least once. Teachers can bully students because they lack the proper training in how children should be disciplined. Others might bully students because they are bullied in class themselves or were the victims of bullies when they were kids.
Alan McEvoy explains in a piece in Tolerance Magazine how students feel powerless and shamed when teachers target them. “Teacher bullying can also have a contagion effect, indicating to students that the bullying of a particular individual is acceptable and making the individual vulnerable to more abuse,” he adds.
You’d think that other teachers would step in and put a stop to their colleague’s actions, but this is wishful thinking. Sometimes, they’ll think that there’s nothing that they can do. While the teachers who bully their students defend themselves by saying how they’re ‘disciplining’ and ‘motivating’ their students or even try to write it off as a joke.
If you suspect that your child’s being bullied, it’s incredibly important that you support them, document all the times they were picked on by their teachers, talk to other parents to see if the problem’s bigger than you suspected.
Afterward, try meeting with the teacher and if that doesn’t work, go up the chain of command: have a chat with the principal, then the superintendent, then the school board.
