Nearly 30% of secondary school students report being bullied by a teacher. Not a classmate. A teacher. An adult who chose, presumably voluntarily, to work with young people. But it gets worse. Almost 64% of young people report being bullied by a teacher at least once during their school years.
A frankly breathtaking 93% of high school and college students say they could identify at least one teacher in their school career who qualified as a bully. Which means that if you're sitting there thinking, "I didn't have a toxic teacher," there is a very strong chance you simply didn't notice, or you were the favourite, in which case, congratulations, and also please reflect on that.
#4 I Really Like His Teacher (She’s Great) And Can Understand Why She’d Want To Minimize Chaos In A Classroom
#5 Apparently, My Teacher Thinks That This Is "Insufficient,” "Unreadable," And "Demonstrates A Lack Of Attention During Her Classes"
She even dared to say that I lack memory and that IF I have "psychological problems," I should solve them by myself, as she, quote unquote, doesn't care at all.
I'm sitting at the back of class (a place I absolutely despise), and for this reason, she automatically thinks that I'm a cheater (fun fact: I'm not - straight 90% average on most subjects).
On test day, she kept her eyes on me ONLY, and I did get a 87% with the valuation table.
A couple of days later, same exercises, and she gave me 50, which is 10 points below sufficiency.
I'm genuinely trying not to fail, but it's just hopeless. Class ends in June, and I can't drop it at this time of year.
#6 This AI Slop Cake, My Food Teacher Wants Us To Recreate
Everyone was excited to see what we were supposed to make, and then it ended up being this. This teacher also praises AI constantly, and even encourages it to be used for “help” on assignments.
Here's what separates teacher bullying from the garden variety playground variety, and why it does damage that tends to stick around well into adulthood. When a peer bullies you, it is painful, it is wrong, and it absolutely needs to be addressed. But somewhere in the back of your brain, you know that other kid doesn't have actual authority over you.
When a teacher does it, the entire framework collapses. This is the person who is supposed to be safe. The person who represents knowledge, fairness, and the adults who are meant to have things figured out. It teaches a child, at a deeply formative level, that authority cannot be trusted, that safety is an illusion, and that the people placed in charge of you are not necessarily on your side.
#7 The Teacher Grades Assignments Before They’re Due. Sometimes Even On The Day She Assigned It
“Email me when you finish the assignment.” Yells at our class for sending her too many emails.
#9 The Teacher Messed Up Our Attendance, And Now It’s “Already Uploaded,” So We’re Stuck
After seeing this doc, we confronted her, and she just kept saying, “Oh, Wispr must’ve heard it wrong.” Yes, but she was the one using it. Like, at least check it before finalizing it?
The worst part is that this is our final semester, and she says it’s already uploaded on the portal, so she “can’t do anything now.” So all of us who were present are actually finally marked absent for no reason, and now, instead of studying for the finals, we have to deal with this mess first and have to run around trying to get it corrected.
It’s honestly so annoying. Tech is fine, but if you’re relying on it, at least double-check things instead of blaming the app and leaving us with the mess. And we're not even sure if she is still going to stop using it or not.
So how do you know if what your child is experiencing crosses the line from "strict teacher" into something more concerning? ThoughtCo says teacher bullying can include yelling, deliberate humiliation, and the deployment of sarcasm as a weapon, not the fun kind, but the kind specifically designed to make a child feel small in front of their peers.
On the home front, the signs tend to show up physically before they show up verbally, because kids don't know how to say "my teacher is targeting me," but their bodies will absolutely say it for them. Sudden dread of school, stomach aches on Sunday evenings, unexplained headaches on Monday mornings, and a general personality shift around the topic of education. These are the signals worth paying attention to.
#10 I Let My Son’s Teacher Borrow The Penguin Sculpture I Made, And She Left It On A Windowsill For 6 Months
I worked so hard on this thing and was so freaking proud of it. How it looks now is exactly how I feel: deflated.
think this is all just tough love? Think again. The argument that harsh teachers are actually doing students a favour, toughening them up for the real world, building resilience through discomfort, is baloney. High school vice principal Jessica Stephens says it doesn't work. What "tough love" actually relies on is fear and control, which produces not resilience but compliance.
Compliance has a habit of coming packaged with suppressed emotions, chronic self-doubt, and a quietly growing disengagement from learning that can take years to undo. The argument that cruelty builds character is one of those ideas that sounds vaguely plausible until you look at what it actually produces. Struggling students don't need more pressure.
#13 An American Teacher Thinks Every Country Shares The Same Federal Government
#15 My Teacher Slammed My Laptop, And It's Like This. So I Go To High School, And I Was Using My Laptop While I Wasnt Supposed To Do And Then My Teacher Slammed It
Thomas Edison was twelve years old when a teacher decided to tell him, with full adult confidence, that he was "too stupid to learn anything." A teacher looked at the future inventor of the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a practical electric light bulb, and concluded, "nothing here worth investing in."
Edison's mother, Nancy, who was herself a former teacher and apparently made of considerably sterner stuff, promptly pulled her son out of school and taught him at home. The rest, as they say, is the kind of history that's been printed in the textbooks of the very establishment that gave up on him. It is one of the more spectacular misfires in the long and storied history of adults underestimating children.
#18 The History Teacher Used ChatGPT For My Assignment. Half the questions didn't make sense, and none of the links went to where the information is
Kate Winslet was told by her drama teacher that she should make peace with "fat girl" roles and plan accordingly. This was a casual, crushing dismissal that a person in a position of authority handed out in passing and that the recipient carries around for years. Winslet carried it, alright. She carried it all the way to an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, a BAFTA.
She gave us an acceptance speech in which she directly credited that dismissal as one of her greatest motivations. She famously called her success the "best revenge," which is a deeply satisfying thing to say from a podium holding a golden statue, and we would like to believe that somewhere, that drama teacher saw the speech and had a very uncomfortable evening.
#20 The Teacher Marked My Son’s Homework As Incorrect. I Disagree
I am so irked by this because I feel like when you look at the example at the top of the page, it’s clear that this is how you’re supposed to do it. Not to mention that the size of the blank spaces beside the red and yellow counters clearly insinuates something longer belonging there than a one or two-digit number. I know it’s a stupid hill to die on, but... Am I crazy here?