In the 1970s, when I was very young (I’m thinking eight years old), my school arranged for everyone in my grade to attend swimming lessons at the local pool once a week. I wasn’t a particularly good swimmer, but I listened carefully to the instructor, did my best, and had fun.

The lessons came to an end, and the instructor informed us that we’d all passed and could therefore take the more advanced class next time. We were all proud and happy (plus we got cloth badges we could show off to our friends and families, which was kind of cool).

As I was about to leave the pool area to shower and get changed, the instructor called my name. I turned, smiling, thinking she was going to say something nice like “Good luck in the next class.”

Instead, she leaned down and said:

Instructor: “You were the worst swimmer of the bunch. I was going to fail you, but I changed my mind, because I wanted to have a full class of passing students.”

I could feel my face fall. She nodded at me, evidently satisfied, and went back to what she’d been doing.

I don’t know why she told me that. If her goal was “crush a little kid’s spirit and make her cry”, mission accomplished.

My two-and-a-half-year-old son has moved to a new group at the daycare. I’m picking him up for the first time at this new group.

Teacher: “He’s had a great first day! But I was wondering: can he read already?”

Me: “Um, no, unless he’s keeping it a secret from me. Why?”

Teacher: “Well, this morning he picked up a book and started reading out loud to the rest of the kids.”

Me: ‘What book?”

Teacher: “[Book].”

Me: “Oh, we have that one at home as well. He knows it by heart indeed. He picks that one at home all the time too.”

Teacher: “Well, yes, but then I gave him [Different Book], and he read that one out loud as well.”

Me: “Yes, we have that one at home too.”

Way back in the mid-1980s, when I was but a wee thing in third or fourth grade, I was being bullied pretty relentlessly by one of the larger and older boys in my neighborhood. The bullying primarily took place at our suburban school bus stop before and after school, which was more or less a lawless wasteland of no adult supervision whatsoever. 

This was waaay before the current practice of parents walking/driving their kids to the bus stop and waiting with them until they boarded the bus. And anyway, my parents left for work before I had to leave for the bus, so no solace for me there.

The incident that was the tipping point was when my bully decided that the fun thing to do one morning was scoop up a bunch of dog crap on the end of a stick and wipe it all over my new coat. Up until this point, my parents had been kind of half-heartedly reporting the bullying to the school in a “this is a problem” sort of way and hoping it would resolve itself. But for whatever reason, this time my parents flipped out and demanded a meeting with the teacher and principal. Only to be rather primly informed that since the bullying wasn’t taking place on school grounds or during school hours, there was nothing they could (would) do. 

So, my parents did what any reasonable parents did at that time; they signed me up for Karate classes so I could learn self-defense.

A couple of months after that, I ended up kicking the crap out of my bully when he tried to play keep-away with my backpack at the bus stop. To the best of my recollection, I kicked him really hard in the junk and then punched him in the face a couple of times when he went down. He ended up with a split lip and a bloody nose. 

I’ll never forget the meeting with the teacher and the principal that followed. My Dad quietly sat with his hands folded and listened to the teacher and principal rage on about how they were going to punish me; I was going to be suspended, this would go on my permanent record, etc.

Then when they were done, he quietly leaned forward…

Dad: “It is my understanding that you have no jurisdiction over anything that happens off school grounds and outside of school hours, and can’t punish students for anything they do that isn’t at school. Isn’t that correct? That’s certainly what you told me when I complained about how [My Name] was being bullied by [Bully’s Name] at the bus stop.”

Teacher/Principal: *Dead silence.*

Dad: “Yeah, I think that we’re done here. I certainly hope this is the last I hear about this.”

He took me to Baskin-Robbins for ice cream and told me that while he never ever, ever, ever wanted to hear about me starting a fight, he was proud of the way that I had finished that one.

We’re in tenth grade (fifteen to sixteen years old).

Female Classmate: “Mr. [Teacher’s Name], I need the hall pass.”

Teacher: “Why?”

Female Classmate: “For the restroom.”

Teacher: “Class is over in five minutes. You can hold it.”

Female Classmate: “I really can’t.”

Teacher: “You’re not a little girl anymore. You can hold it for five minutes.”

Female Classmate: “You’re right. I’m not a little girl. I’m a young woman, and my tampon is full.”

The look on his face! He stopped questioning why the girls needed to go to the restroom after that.

It’s the early to mid 1990s, and I’m in fourth grade. One of my teachers has recently started to focus on our handwriting (it was all cursive back then) – he sets homework where we have to write an essay that he will then grade for content AND looks. I generally enjoy this type of homework (nothing pleases me more than to talk about the stuff that interests me), but this teacher nearly manages to make me hate it.

Our teacher does not collect the homework but instead walks around the room and looks at everyone’s work, reading a paragraph here and there. He stops at my desk, takes out his red pen and – without even reading a single word – crosses out the page.

Teacher: “Unacceptable. How is anyone supposed to read that chicken scratch? You need to write more legibly – I will not check your homework until it is up to my standards.”

So, I go home and write out the whole essay again, trying really hard with my handwriting. It is very much legible (not that it wasn’t already), which I know because I took a survey of all my classmates who could read the essay without problems. But to no avail – the next day the same thing happens. He takes a look, crosses it out, and tells me to redo it.

After nearly two weeks of this, I am incredibly fed up because I’ve copied this essay so many times, I nearly know it by heart, and on top of doing the regular homework for this class. Still the same thing happens.

Until one afternoon when I am copying that essay yet again, and I am so frustrated that I burst into tears and throw my notebook to the floor. My mom, of course, notices this, and I tell her the whole story. She takes my notebook and flips through the past two weeks. She tells me I won’t have to write it again and that I can go play.

Happy again, I head off to play, and when that teacher later comes into the room for the lesson, he doesn’t even come near my desk. He doesn’t ask to see the essay (or the current homework), doesn’t speak to me, doesn’t look at me.

That evening over dinner, my dad asks about everyone’s day, and my mom says, casually:

Mom: “Oh, I prepped dinner and then went to the elementary school to ream out [Teacher]. Did you know he was making [My Name] copy the same essay for two weeks because he thought her handwriting was too ugly? Like that has any bearing on the quality of her homework! Anyway, I told him and the principal that if he has trouble reading, he should take a refresher course or maybe consider changing careers instead of taking it out on a ten-year-old little girl.”