Parents: ever deal with a teacher who just dislikes your child for no good reason?

[bluestateguy]

As in just a personality conflict? Or some quirk in your child that rubs the teacher the wrong way? Get off on the wrong foot, and it never really gets better?

My second cousin (13) is dealing with this now, good kid, good student, doesn't misbehave, but one if his teachers just appears to not like him.

[seabeyond]

1. My oldest got it consistently enough, cause of who he was

The youngest only once so was really clear cause generally not how he was received.

[Jackpine Radical]

2. It happened to me 64 years ago.

I was a rural kid placed in a city first grade, and the only one of my classmates not to have attended Kindergarten. I was also about the youngest in that cohort since my birthday was so late in the year. My teacher decided a was a slow learner because I was neither socially or biologically as mature as the other kids, so she sat me with the group that she knew would never learn anything, the group she never attempted to teach, just leaving us in our corner where she ignored us & we ignored her.

My mother's solution was to move me from the fancy city school to a primitive one-room country school (by primitive I mean a wood & coal stove fed by student labor, outdoor toilets, & an outdoor hand pump for water). It was 1950, but the school ran on mid-19th century technology except that it had electricity.

I know of at least 3 students from that country school in my era who went on to get PhDs.

[jwirr]

18. Those little country schools did their job. My cousins were the last in our area to go to such a

school and they both ended up as valedictorians in the local public school when they graduated.

[Blue_In_AK]

39. I went to first and third grades in a school like that in SW Ohio in the early '50s

First, second and third grade in one room; fourth, fifth and sixth in another; and the seventh and eighth graders in the third room. I'm 67 now, but my brother tells me that my teacher from those days, who must be well into her 80s by now, still asks about me when she sees him.

[arthritisR_US]

3. I did when my daughter was around the

same age. I went into the parent teacher interview with my daughter and read the riot act to the teacher. I also stated I would be following matters very closely and would not hesitate to take matters to the Principal and the school board. The BS stopped immediately.

[Brickbat]

4. It happens, and if the teacher isn't actively sabotaging him, it's good practice for the real world.

[bluestateguy]

7. I think you're right

Often lost in these debates about education reform and bad teachers, holding teachers accountable, etc. is an important lesson that children will need to learn: not every teacher they have is going to be awesome, life-changing, inspirational and amazing. Most will just be average and few will be douchebags. That's what we can all expect in the working world with bosses, and we have to adapt to it.

[riderinthestorm]

29. It wasn't for my daughter at 14/15 yrs old

It was deeply hurtful and very confusing. Although she was polite and never reported it (which wouldn't have made a difference since he was the only teacher in her school for those subjects), it definitely impacted her.

The open mocking of her and another girl in class isn't a good life lesson by any stretch as she was powerless in the face of it.

[etherealtruth]

31. Open mocking crosses lines ....

... it is no longer simply about dislike, it is about inappropriate behavior

[Brickbat]

33. I feel there is a big difference between simple dislike and active mocking.

The OP said "dislike."

[riderinthestorm]

35. Open dislike by a teacher manifests itself in many ways

Mocking was just one way. The only time i spoke to this teacher about it, he said he was just "teasing".

He then retaliated the next day by having her sight read a 13th century choral piece in Latin, alone, in front of the class (she was the only sophomore in the Madrigals chorus which is typically an upper class audition only group. Like I said, she has an incredible voice ). It was humiliating (to her for whom music is a great love and passion). He never did that to any other child the entire year. Just her. He just stood there and let her flounder as her embarrassment grew for a full 10 minutes.

The ways a teacher demonstrates open dislike can be very subtle but very devastating when the kids have no power.

[Chemisse]

65. The problem is if that is the child's teacher all day long - every day - all school year

The effects on the child can be devastating.

[MannyGoldstein]

5. Unfortunately, it's a form of bullying

At least in many cases. If it is, then (as is always the case with bullies) they (and their superiors) need to understand that continuing the behavior will cause pain.

They'll stop.

[whathehell]

10. I agreee, and, at that age, I don't think

it's "good training" for 'real life'. Little kids shouldn't have to be subject to that.

[riderinthestorm]

30. + 1000

The kids are typically powerless enough in school. When a teacher takes a role in the bullying its pretty awful.

[whathehell]

38. Yep..

They may well get all those "real life lessons" from their peers via bullying soon enough,

they should be able to at least count on one adult to support them.

[riderinthestorm]

43. Blue in AK gives some of the ways her daughter felt the teachers dislike (post 37)

The teachers have enormous power over the kids and have subtle and effective ways of letting that child, and everyone else, know it.

Like Blues daughter, I'm sure mine will never forget her experience with this teacher.

[whathehell]

48. Yes, it's a lousy, unprofessional thing.

Studies have shown that teachers do show bias, even in terms of children's looks -- The "better looking" kids
Wlil get positive attention, while the plain or unnattractive are more likely to be ignored or worse.

[riderinthestorm]

6. Yes. I have no answers for you. My daughter actually changed schools

Partially for that reason since that teacher played a huge part in her curriculum (music/theater teacher so my daughter had 2 classes with him and he directed all the school musicals which she was always in since she has a fantastic voice)

[etherealtruth]

8. Echoing another poster ...

... as long as the teacher grades him fairly and does not try to publicly embarrass him or single him out (unfairly) ... this is life. No matter how good or wonderful a person is .... there will be some that simply do not like them.

It is a life learning experience. It can be a hard life lesson ... but it is one he will need to learn.

With all that said .... i am sorry as it appears that this really bothers (hurts) the kid and I do not relish the thought of him "hurt"

[whathehell]

12. I don't think little kids need that "real life" lesson so early on..

It's really more like child abuse, in my opinion.

[etherealtruth]

15. He's 13 ... and the OP presented no indication of maltreatment ....?

What about this rises to the level of child abuse?

As I stated if the child was graded unfairly, singled out for embarrassment .... it would be a different story ....?

[whathehell]

26. Then how does the dislike manifest itself?

[etherealtruth]

27. One would have to ask the OP?

I have the ability to accurately determine when someone likes or dislikes me (despite the absence of any inappropriate behaviors on the part of others)

[whathehell]

40. Yeah, I'd say it's an appropriate question,

although I was actually thinking of younger kids.

As to your ability to discern who does or doesn't like you, sans inappropriate behaviors,

that's fine, but you're an adult, not a kid subject to the whims of an authority figure.

[kiva]

81. Adults are subject to the whims of authority figures all of the time.

They are known as bosses, supervisors, and other names like department chairs (yeah, my personal favorite).

If the student is being harassed by the teacher - mocking, scoring down grades, encouraging other students to make fun of them - report. For more subtle things - feeling that the teacher isn't as warm to them as other students, not feeling in synch about personalities - then go with the idea that not all people get along together and it's a life lesson that a 13 year old has probably already been exposed to.

[whathehell]

86. Yeah, but they're adults not kids -- big difference.

We'll just have to agree to disagree on this one

[bluestateguy]

77. The boy has never been a behavior problem

His other teacher have a do not presently have discipline problems with him. He gets about half A's and half B's.

[etherealtruth]

78. I understood that .... the question was r/t ....

whether the teacher is acting on his/her dislike of him (ie grading unfairly, singling him out for discipline or humiliation ...)

[bluestateguy]

79. I think it is more the latter

He is getting like a B/B+ in the class, as he tells me.

It's the mockery that seems to be directed to him that is most of the problem.

[etherealtruth]

80. Ahhhh, then I change my position

... and agree with those that call it bullying. No child should be forced to endure that.

I hope his parents can address this with the school (I have faith his parents can address, actually I hope the school is receptive).

I am sorry he has had to endure this.

[Brickbat]

17. Disike is not abuse.

[whathehell]

25. It can be when the difference in age and authority is that great.

[Brickbat]

34. Asking middle-school teachers to like every student is unrealistic and bizarre.

If the dislike manifests itself as mocking or sabotaging, then there's an active problem. If a teacher isn't warm to a student, that's not the end of the world.

[whathehell]

36. It's neither unrealistic nor "bizarre" to expect them not to show it.

[seabeyond]

20. that is how i dealt with it. a reality. and do not let that reality sabotage your success.

the kid was responsible and had the control in that. as long as fairly graded, ect...

[etherealtruth]

28. Exactly

My daughter was a super-star .... she was very used to teachers adoring her .... on the infrequent occasions where she wasn't adored she was very unnerved. It served as a good life lesson for her.

[Monk06]

9. Miss Miller, I'll never forget her

She hated my brother and failed him in sixth grade. My brother and I both ended up in her sixth grade class the next year and she made it clear that she had every intention of failing both of us. She had a habit of winding up and hitting me in the back of the head with a heavy text book for 'daydreaming'

If she succeeded in failing both of us we would have been in her sixth grade class again the following year, since hers was the only sixth grade class. I would have been 13 and my brother 15 in the sixth grade.

Luckily my dad was transferred and she didn't get her way. Put she sent a 'confidential' letter to our next school principal warning him that we were trouble makers. We read the letter and tore it up.

[TwilightGardener]

11. Happened to me, happened to my youngest son. He's had several teachers

who clearly didn't like him, just on a strange personal level. I told him to just behave, be polite, get through the day, not everyone is going to like you.

[frogmarch]

13. Yes. Every time

I met with my daughter’s high school American literature teacher at PT conferences or just happened to bump into her somewhere, she commented disdainfully on how HUGE my daughter’s teeth were, and until I put a stop to it, she ridiculed her in class. The old bag was hyper critical of my daughter’s school work too, but my daughter went on to become valedictorian anyway.

[wyldwolf]

14. your daughter's gorgeous. The teacher has a complex, obviously.

[frogmarch]

19. Maybe she did.

She had a daughter the same age as mine, so maybe she felt she had to put my daughter down to make hers seem better.

[etherealtruth]

16. People pay a fortune to have teeth and a smile like that

[frogmarch]

21. She'd like to hear that.

She got her smile and her looks from her dad, Mr. froggy.

[etherealtruth]

22. It is TRUE

(at least the smile part is true ... I don't know if the gorgeous smile is from Momma Froggy or Daddy Froggy)

[frogmarch]

23. Thanks. :-) nt

[TwilightGardener]

45. Sounds like jealousy--she's beautiful.

[newfie11]

24. 1 week in first grade I was told my son would not be promoted to 2nd grade

There was never a problem in kindergarten. Then I heard this teacher didn't like boys and held many back. I went to the principle and ask he be sent to another teacher I knew. I told him why and he moved my son to the teacher I wanted.
Several months later my son tested in the top25.
Teachers can make or break a child's future!
BTW my daughter (who wasn't born yet) is a teacher.

[shraby]

32. I ran into that in the third grade. No reason could ever be defined.

I made it through but I'll never forget having to copy the math off the blackboard (everyone had to) with my right hand cause I'd broken my left wrist and couldn't write with it..I'm totally left handed.
I was a basket case in short order.
There was no reason the teacher couldn't have given me a copy to use to do my math.

[Blue_In_AK]

37. Yes, my middle daughter's first-grade teacher didn't like her

and would frequently berate her in front of the class, make her sit out in the hall, etc. It got so bad that I almost had to force her to go to school...she would say her stomach ached or she had a headache, anything to stay home. I'll never forget a parent-teacher conference where the teacher told me that because my daughter wasn't interested in reading, she thought maybe she was "slow" and needed special ed. She only changed her tune when my daughter beat out everyone else in the class with the tangrams.

My daughter is now one of the 8 or 10 lawyers representing the 15,000+ members of the Directors' Guild in Hollywood and previously worked for two other highly prestigious firms in LA. Today, at 37, she still remembers that teacher and says, "boy, do I wish she could see me now."

[bluestateguy]

41. I'm still trying to find my old second grade teacher

I just want to tell her what a horrible witch she was, and that I succeeded in spite of her mean spirited belittling.

[PassingFair]

74. 2nd Grade....what a morass!

2nd grade seems to be the funnel, where EVERY kid has to be brought up to speed
enough in reading and comprehension to actively LEARN STUFF that they begin to
teach in 3rd grade.

For a kid that is advanced, it can be a terrible waste of time.

My oldest daughter had a terrible teacher for 2nd grade and I had trouble getting her
to school in the morning, tantrums, throwing up, etc.

My mother was a teacher, and one of her friends was an evaluator for the board
of education and had asked me the summer before if I wanted to have my daughter
evaluated. Full Woodcock/Johnson evaluation....the thing was over 60 pages.

She scored REALLY high in every subject, but especially high in language.

Well, one day I picked her up and she was crying. She told me that her teacher
had not allowed her to take "chapter books" out of the library. Honestly, she had
taken the book out and the teacher TOOK IT FROM her and told her it was beyond
her reading comprehension level.

That was the last straw. On teacher conference day, I asked her why she had taken
the book away from my daughter, and she told me that she hadn't scored high enough
on the in-class reading test. I asked to see it, and she pulled out a one sheet test that
had 5 questions on it. I asked her if she thought that it was an accurate indicator of
reading level and she said that it was. I reached in my bag and thumped down that
Woodcock Johnson evaluation, asked her if she was familiar with it, and proceeded to
show her where Eleanor had tested to a TENTH GRADE reading level. Then I asked her if she
wanted me to call the superintendent of schools to arrange an accelerated program or
if that was something she wanted to initiate....no more trouble from her!

I still don't know why she was so awful to my kid.

Made me appreciate all of the other teachers my kids had!

[laundry_queen]

42. Thankfully

as a parent I haven't run into it yet, despite the fact my teen daughters go to my high school and have a lot of my old teachers. One of those teachers was not very nice to me for no good reason, but she was kind of like that to everyone. She just doubly hated me because I called her out on her BS and my parents backed me up. So far, the teacher has not said or done anything to my daughters (lol, because it's likely she doesn't want to deal with an adult 'me', LOLOL).

So as I said, there was one teacher for me, but my brother really had a tough time as a little kid. There was one teacher he had 2 different years. This teacher did not like him at all. My brother was generally full of energy but was incredibly smart which was a really bad combination for school. He would finish his work in half the time the other students did, then would get bored and would talk or disrupt. This teacher HATED that he did this and was constantly calling my parents in to lecture them on how horrible my brother was. The principal was also called in regularly. At one point, the teacher convinced my parents my brother was ADHD and insisted he be put on Ritalin. That ended up being the last straw for my parents. After a week on Ritalin my brother became suicidal - at age 8. My parents threw out the medicine and decided to tell that teacher that she was the professional and that she needed to find a way to deal with my brother without the meds. Thankfully, that was near the end of the year. The following year, my parents were all anxious about my brother's new teacher at the first parent/teacher interviews and were surprised when the teacher reported that my brother was a 'joy' to have in class. My parents were confused and started asking questions, "Isn't he too hyper? Isn't he disruptive?" The teacher was like, "Um, no. He finishes his work quickly and gets bored and sometimes bugs the other kids. So I give him work and other responsibilities - he's responsible every day for helping me hand out the texts and clean the board - and as long as I keep him busy, he's totally fine. He's a typical active and smart child." So, that's when my parents learned sometimes teachers just don't get along with certain kids and don't know how to treat them.

But you know what? That one bad teacher really affected my brother for YEARS. He had low self esteem for a really long time because of it. My advice - if a teacher has singled out a student, it's time to stand up for that student. My parents really regretted not demanding my brother be put in another class. Sometimes that's really the only solution.

[oberliner]

44. Maybe there is a good reason that you are unaware of

Often times a student will imagine that a teacher doesn't like them, when in reality that is not the case.

Are you certain the child does not misbehave?

The appearance of a teacher not liking a student could come from the fact that the teacher is regularly needing to address classroom issues that the student is responsible for.

[femmocrat]

49. This happens!

The kid goes home with "stories" about a teacher "picking on" him/her, when there are really other factors.

I used to "love" (not) when a parent of a mis-behaver would tell me how the child only misbehaves in my class, or how he (it's usually a he) is the perfect child at home.

[oberliner]

50. It is pretty unusual for a teacher to not like a polite, respectful, well-behaved student

I know it happens, but I also know that a student (especially 12-14 year old) can be under the impression that the teacher hates him/her for no reason when it's actually that they are just being reprimanded for their behavior.

[dhol82]

53. and, then...

there are real shits for teachers.
I was a really submissive, follow the orders child. There was a seventh grade teacher that loved to humiliate the students she had taken a dislike of. I remember several incidents where she would read something aloud and announce that she would not say which student had made the stupid mistakes but then place my paper on my desk with a smirk. This happened to only one other student in the class.

My family were recent immigrants and neither of my parents spoke English very well so they would not go to the parent-teacher conference since they were intimidated by teachers. Where they came from the teacher was queen. If I got into trouble at school I would get hit because I had obviously done something wrong.
Granted - this was in the '50's. Not sure if school is any better now.

[oberliner]

55. Agreed

And I've had teachers like that over the years as well.

But I also know that there are parents who are not entirely aware that their child may be misbehaving at school - and that said child may not always be entirely honest about their behavior.

[dhol82]

59. Agree with your point

My step-daughter is a fifth grade teacher and the stories she tells me about the parents could raise your hair.

Guess it can swing both ways.

[riderinthestorm]

60. My teen (who had a bad experience) graduated valedictorian of her class

Like I said, polite and clearly a good student but this teacher heard the rumours about my daughter and clearly disliked her, with real actions designed to show his contempt.

He was part of the reason she transferred to a different school.

He's pretty notorious at her old school for being a dick. Unfortunately as the only music/theater teacher you either lived with it, or quit.

[oberliner]

63. What do you think that was all about?

Why do you the teacher had it in for your daughter? You say his behavior was notorious - so I guess there were other students who were treated the same way. It is really unfortunate that there are some teachers like that out there.

[riderinthestorm]

64. My daughter was/is very wild. Sex,drugs and rock and roll

This teacher was/is the local Youth for Christ leader.

My daughter was the target of a vicious slut shaming attack by the folks in his group and it spread throughout the school unfortunately. This teacher played his part.

We all understand her behavior played its part in how things worked at her old school but the bottom line is that teacher was/is a self-righteous ass. She's done nothing that 99.9% of the other girls her age didn't eventually do - she just was precocious and did them earlier and had a reputation.... There's tons of material now on the demographics of slut shaming and I won't derail this thread about it.

If there's an analogous story to hers I don't know it. I just know his methods of humiliating the students he disliked are notorious and rampant year to year.

Oh, and he's the assistant dean...

[oberliner]

75. Understood

And I certainly know that there are teachers like that out there.

I only meant to point out that students who are in the 12-14 range do have a tendency to mis-perceive that a teacher doesn't like them when in reality they are just being reprimanded for their behavior.

In the case of the OP, there would obviously need to be more information given to get an understanding of the totality of what is going on.

I wonder if the drama teacher your daughter had would admit that he was judgmental about her if asked about it or would he claim he treated her the same as everyone else.

[bluestateguy]

83. "Are you certain the child does not misbehave? "

Actually, yes I am.

This is a teacher who is well known for picking her favorites early in the school year, and if you aren't on that list, you've got a long year ahead of you.

[oberliner]

84. How has this come to your attention?

In what ways has the teacher's favoritism manifested itself - especially in regard to this boy? What has the teacher done?

[whathehell]

46. How does the teacher express his dislike of your cousin?

A decent teacher doesn't let that kind of thing show.

[LeftInTX]

47. At 13, he may have a team of teachers

Most middle schools teach in teams. Best thing is to have parents meet with the other teachers. They may be able to give the parents some insight. Sometimes changing a teacher is an option. Sometimes the rest of the team can advocate for him. Maybe the teacher is quirky.

[Dont call me Shirley]

51. The parent needs to discuss this with the principal, immediately. If they don't fix the problem

then move up the food chain. But it has to be dealt with right away. The teacher needs to be adult enough not to allow his/her feelings toward the child to affect their grade.

One bad teacher can wreck a kid's life.

[Warpy]

52. I think it happens to many of us

and I've observed it happening to schoolteacher friends, too. I have not been too polite to tell them what has been going on since I experienced it from the shitty, powerless end, myself.

Anyone who deals with other people needs to learn how to take one step back from the situation and observe how other people deal with the person they can't stand. Most often, they'll find that they share many of the same friends and are both fully accepted.

It's something I'm afraid few people have learned how to do. I've been able to do it and clue in the person who was driving me around the bend and we've both worked to defuse the situation because it was always mutual. Oil and water and all that.

It happens and usually means nothing and isn't anyone's fault. Someone needs to have a talk with the teacher about personality conflicts.

[lumberjack_jeff]

54. Not since I ran for school board. n/t

[tabbycat31]

56. I had two that hated me

First grade-- Mrs. G. Not a nice person to start out with (she retired when I was in 10th grade and they wanted all of her former students to throw her a huge party. Most would not even sign her card.) (IMO it takes someone warm and fuzzy to teach 1st grade, and this woman had ice running through her veins). She constantly singled me out for things I did not do. I can remember one incident where there was a basket of (shared) pencils on the table for reading and when it came time to hand them out, she insisted that since tabbycat chews her pencils, that I get the chewed up one. (I never chewed on pencils). Another incident came in November and haunted me until HS graduation-- I asked about four times to go to the bathroom and kept being told no. Long story short, I ended up pissing on the floor and she gave a lecture about how we should not piss on the floor. Well dumb bitch, if you let me go to the bathroom I would have pissed there. 6 yo children do not have adult sized bladders.

She also singled people out when they got in trouble and wrote their name on the board (all day) and they'd miss recess. My name was always on the board, and I was usually the first one there. Most of the incidents were things other kids did not get into trouble for. The day I pissed all over the floor, I had a double whammy of getting in trouble--- first for asking to go to the bathroom too many times and second for pissing on the floor.

Sixth grade-- Mr. W. Looked like a cartoon version of Adolph Hitler (complete with the same style mustache). The year before me, he used to get out a rubber chicken and hit kids with it for speaking out of turn. (The chicken never made an appearance so I'm guessing he got in trouble for it). If someone was dozing off, he would whack their desk (really loud) with a yardstick. My desk was hit with a yardstick on an almost daily basis (I was never one to doze off in class). Another singling out of me that he did was when we had projects/posters displayed in the hallways. I would frequently look around and see everyone's but mine there.

The yardstick incident alone scared me almost every day since this was a man known for hitting people with a rubber chicken.

I'm 34 years old and still remember these two like it was yesterday. A bad teacher is remembered years later.

[dhol82]

61. It is so true

that you remember the bad teachers forever.

I am now 68 and I still remember my second grade teacher that made me stand facing the corner with a dunce cap on my head for the entire school assembly. I was talking too much to my neighbor.
The seventh grade teacher that made my life hell by humiliating me whenever she got a chance, and my homeroom teacher in eighth grade who asked me why I was bothering applying to 'gifted' high school since I was just such a dumb fuck.

Got into that damn high school and loved every minute of it. It was such a pleasure to be with other girls that knew all of my obscure references.

[salib]

57. Nope. No problems for my son.

Or me either, for that matter.

Had a real tough teacher who I thought had it out for me. Mostly, though i was just following in my sister's footsteps (she was always an "A" student) and not living up to expectations. She pushed me hard and I have to admit I was forced to learn a great deal. Do not know if it was the best possible motivation, but it did do something.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

58. My parents pulled me out of a school over it

Although the woman was probably just more mentally ill than anything else.

[tallahasseedem]

62. Yes.

Quite honestly, it haunts me to this day. I'm not sure why she had such a vendetta against my daughter, but it made her first grade life hell.

[womanofthehills]

66. Super uptight teacher

When my daughter was in 4th grade, she came home crying because she got a 0 on her math quiz. Every answer was right so I went to speak to the teacher. It was simple addition & subtraction. He said the numbers were not exactly lined up under each other so he failed her. I went to the principal and demanded she get another teacher. The principal said there are only 2 weeks left in school - I said I didn't care (the guy was beyond anal retentive) and I would not let her return to that class. Her last 2 weeks were with a different math teacher.

[LWolf]

67. Yes.

Twice. I raised two kids, who, between them, had somewhere around 50 - 60 teachers. Two fit your question; going with the conservative number, that's about 4%.

The first? My oldest child's first grade teacher, who didn't like the simple fact that he already knew the content, and had the skills she was teaching and needed her to provide something different...he was bright, curious, eager, and needed to be busy, and by the end of first grade he'd lost some of that confident, eager love of learning and trust in teachers. With my help, and his second grade teacher's help, he recovered.

The second? My younger child's freshman health teacher. She 1) had philosophical differences with the district and school he came from before high school, and regularly criticized all students from that system, and 2) taught by assigning chapters and end-of-chapter questions, and giving weekly tests. When my smart-ass son refused to do any of the book work because "I get at least a 90% on every test at the end of the week...I read the stuff. I learned the stuff, without any help from her. The rest is busy work and a waste of my time," she failed him. We met with the principal, where we got to listen to her talk for 20 minutes about how he was a lazy student without study skills because of the system he came out of. Then we agreed on a solution and he made up all the skipped busy work. She still failed him, because we'd had the nerve to call her into a meeting to resolve the situation. He ended up having to retake the course, with a different teacher. He had no trouble passing.

I'm a teacher. I love all my students. All of them. In my almost 3 decades of teaching, I've worked with more teachers than the average family is going to encounter while raising their children. I have almost never met a teacher who treats a student differently because of personal differences. I have worked with a very small percentage of what I consider to be substandard teachers...a much smaller number than you'll find in most professions, and vastly smaller than the conventional wisdom of the general population assumes.

[riderinthestorm]

68. As a teacher who knows the backstory your input is valuable

All too often the blame is put on a student when the reality is a teacher just simply dislikes that kid for whatever reason.

[LeftyMom]

69. I had one of those myself years ago.

She was far closer to retirement than she was to college, to put it nicely. She'd been teaching a long time. She had routines.

I was the kid who messed up her routines (I already knew the things she was supposed to teach me, I was out of class part of the day for gifted enrichment, I was the "wrong" age for her class because I'd started school a year early) and it pissed her off. She didn't make any effort to hide it. It stressed me out, I started getting constant nosebleeds, then she was pissed at me for that. At the end of the year she gave out awards to the class and gave one to all but five kids. Needless to say I was one of the five. So twenty five kids she gave an award to got to do a special art project (painting a ceramic vase to take home) and the five kids she didn't like sat at our desks and twiddled our thumbs all afternoon. That's fucked up to begin with but it was especially fucked up to leave me with the four legitimate behavior problems she wanted to single out.

Did I mention this was the first grade and I was five? And that my horrific crime against educational efficiency was already knowing how to read? She was needlessly shitty to me but I really should have been in another class. She was taking my incorrect placement out on the least powerful person in the situation, which was grossly unprofessional and not even close to okay.

Long story short after that year we moved to another neighborhood, and the next year I went into an all-day gifted class. For THIRD grade. Problem solved.

My point being sometimes there is a combination of an underlying issue and some adult deciding to be an asshole, and those situations can be the hardest to address because you have to fix the structural problem and often the asshole stands in the way of finding a real solution.

[Baitball Blogger]

70. Usually, you have the option to go to the principal to ask for a reassignment.

[bluestateguy]

87. Unless

the teacher is so bad that there is a waiting list of kids to get out of that class !

[dsc]

71. I had one teacher that I still remember who just plain hated my guts

I had him for PE in K, and 1st grade. He would literally make fun of me for being unable to play the games well. When I was finally able to play something well (kickball) he changed the way he pitched to me and only to me, so that I no longer could kick the ball well (he would bounce the ball so I had to time my kick to be able to make it go straight). Then he would make fun of me for no longer being able to kick. I took his crap until he accused me of cheating when we took a quiz on keeping score for bowling. I had kept score for my parents who were in a league and knew how to do it before he taught it. I told my parents and he wasn't back the next year. I will admit I was a very bad athlete and still am but I have no clue what his problem with me was (unless he could tell I was gay even back then).

[Tikki]

72. Yes, I was stunned by his innuendo of my son's certain behavior. I should have taken it further

up the chain of command, I didn't and I certainly never mentioned it to my son.

This man was an ass...and Karma ended up getting him good and plenty and I privately gloated.


Tikki

[greatlaurel]

73. Yes, and my advice is to get that kid out of that situation

We were always supportive of the teachers and told our kid to just behave and deal with it. Ended up with 3 bad teachers in a row and he had a difficult time recovering. We should have intervened the first year. Now the teachers he had before and after those bad years were wonderful and helped him tremendously.

It is very bad to leave a kid in that situation. Our kid ended up with a physical illness that was made worse due to the mental stress. The age of 13 is a very impressionable age and a bad school experience can be very damaging. Middle schoolers are in a very difficult transition. There is no reason to add to the stress of that age by having to deal with a teacher who does not care for the kid.

Please help the family get that child out of that situation. Everyone will be so much happier. Life is tough enough without dealing with that sort of additional stress.

[truebrit71]

76. Happened to me in high school. Mr. Roberts.

He was the geography teacher and for some reason fucking hated me. Always marked my homework down. Hyper - critical of field reports I did. Made my life a living hell. Made me hate geography so much I dropped it the next year.

I will never forgive him for that, I loved geography, and I have always vowed that if I ever ran into him as an adult I'd kick his teeth in. Fucking arsehole.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

82. Personality Conflicts. It happens. Best to just admit it by both parties and consider moving the

child to a different classroom, imo.

[Starry Messenger]

85. I think nearly all of my teachers disliked me from 3-7th.

I went to a private school notorious for teachers being allowed to have favorites. My 8th grade teacher turned it all around by treating me like I was visible and had value.

I make a real effort now as a teacher myself to help all my students feel part of the team. It takes a real anti-social student to get on the outs with me, and even then, every day is a new day, as far as I'm concerned.

[bluestateguy]

88. Epilogue: my cousin said that he is going to tell this old bag off on the last day of school

Should be interesting.