I just need to vent. My son is in middle school. He’s had his share of great teachers and okay teachers, but never malicious or bad teachers… his teacher this year is BAD. My oldest is a good kid. He is sweet, quiet, empathetic… but he’s also a middle school boy, who thinks fart jokes are hilarious and is disorganized and wants to do anything but schoolwork. He isn’t disruptive. He follows the rules. But this teacher HATES him. All caps. She picks on him in class. She has pulled him to the front of the class to scold him several times (he is deep in the “please don’t draw attention to me” phase, so it was humiliating.) She will write notes on his work that are nit-picky and rude. The worst is that when she gives assignments if they are not done exactly as she wants, down to word choice, she gives him an automatic “0.” The reason for this rant is that tonight I get a notification that a project my son spent days working on, doing research, putting together – he received a “0” because she “didn’t like the font used on slide 7 – please re-do project.” WTF. He was in tears when I told him. And she means it, he has to RE-DO the whole project. Because of the FONT! Not the wording, not the content, the FONT. I cannot. I’ve talked to the dean of students already, who basically said, “yeah, she’s like that.” I’ve been told that complaining to her or about her would be pointless, as she is well-connected, well-respected, and is “free to set the grading standards of her choosing.” I have told my son, “I don’t care what grade you get, you just have to get through the next 4.5 months and you’ll never have to deal with her again!” As if the pandemic hasn’t made our kids lives hard enough! Is it May yet?!
I had a teacher who hated me too. Daily humiliations and getting dragged to the principal’s office for being “rude”. I wasn’t a rude kid. I was nice to a fault, naive, willing to please, and obsessed with making As. She is the only teacher I ever had who disliked me and I never did find out why. My mom tried to help and stood up for me often, but it was a private school and no one seemed to care. She had a reputation of being a “hard” teacher, and they apparently liked that about her. I survived, but she will forever live in my head as one of my bullies. So no advice, but some solidarity.
Push this up. District level of the principal or dean won’t help. She gets away with it because they make you feel like they can’t do anything. But they can. They don’t want to but they can. Bitch, moan, push
This happened to my brother and it broke him. He hated school forever after. (Edit to add: make a list of all instances you can recall and as much detail as possible. Moving forward document everything). Send a list of examples of her behavior in writing via email (bcc yourself as receipt the email sent) to everyone at the head of the school and how this is negatively impacting his behavior. Cite previous conversation with Dean. I.e. “Per my conversation on 12/20/21 where Inshared the following with Dean F, I was told “she is like that”.No moves were made to recitdy the situation. I am sending this email to notify you that the situation has continued and her malicious, targeted attacks on my son are deteimental to his education as well as mental health. Cite the project and include pictures of the comments to redo it for font in a slide. Throw in anything you can find about school district policy that is being broken and about district vision/philosophy/code of conduct that are being broken. Ask for his teacher to be changed immediately. If they refuse, immediatkey escalate to superintendent and school board. Go to a meeting and make a comment asking how in the middle of a pandemic when.mental health is fragile, the district is allowing a teaxher to torment students over the font if a project, allowing staff to use humiliation to further her vendetta, and failing to hold the teacher to professional ethics and behavior.
If you can gather past victims (teachers like this are bullies and typically have a target from each year), see if they will speak up too.
Are classes recorded? What are recording laws where you are?
If all else fails, in many states you can drop to partial enrollment. I would do that and homeschool that single subject over subjecting my child to that kind of criticism and behavior from an adult in a position of power and authority over him.
I am so sorry your son is experiencing this and that you are watching him suffer. Good luck. Please update us.
Also, sorry for any errors. It is late and I am on mobile.
I had a teacher who hated me in elementary school and literally changed my answers on a test at one point (it was math and the way she wrote her 2’s was different to how I do it). I don’t remember the outcome but I just remember no one believing me for months. Is it possible for him to change classrooms? Could you escalate the issue up the school board?