Bully Teachers – The Bogeyman is Alive and Well and Waiting for You at School

I spent the last 13 years of my work life in Special Ed, the whole spectrum from behavioral problems to profound disability. It was a joy from start to finish and, if I had my time over again, I’d make a career of it. Before that, I did 5 years in Regular Ed as a substitute, but I had no continuity with the kids, and few light bulb moments. Students come in all shapes and sizes, it takes a while to get to know them and I was, at best, a holding action. But once I transferred to Special Ed, I came into my own. I was mentored by colleagues who were down to earth and friendly, and who routinely went the extra mile. We had a blast. And we made a difference.

But everywhere I worked, including SPED, there was always that teacher. Bullies who wielded their power like a stick, and made the rest of us absolutely fucking miserable. During the 1950s and 60s, these hardliners were not only rife but allowed to use corporal punishment, although that was largely gone by the late 60’s. However, kids with disabilities usually stayed home or were institutionalized, and the drop-out rate for Regular Ed was off the charts. (27% in 1960, falling to 5% in 2022.)

There are less bogeymen now, and I believe that’s thanks to us Boomers. Our depression-era parents were unable or unwilling to protect us but, in the 1970’s and 80’s we fought for our children and they, in turn, fought for theirs. Some people think we went too far, that we gave them too much freedom, too much autonomy, causing good teachers to leave the profession in droves. They may be right, but that’s a subject for another post. This one is about their bully cohorts, the damage they did, and continue to do.

Bully Number 1

I have no idea what this she-devil’s name was, but from a space of 70 years I can see her as clearly as if it was yesterday: mid-height, skinny, red-haired, Scottish accent. She wore the same turquoise business suit every day, with thick lisle stockings and lace-up brown shoes. She was the Head of the lower school and carried a leather strap, which she slapped on her thigh as she walked. And, for want of anything better to do, she spent the bulk of her day, patrolling the toilets and turning away anyone she thought was using their right to pee or poo, to skip class.

Long story short, she returned a small girl to our kindergarten class, without letting her use the bathroom. The kid was so traumatized she peed on the floor, and the Scottish lady beat her with the leather strap. Made her extend her hand and struck her 3 times on the palm, with our (until then) lovely teacher holding her arm in an iron grip for the last two blows, and the whole room howling in anguish. Given that kindergarten builds the foundation for your education, and that everyone else layers on top of that, this was huge.

I’m 75, and I’m still not over it.

Bully Number 2

My first and second grade teacher. Miss B. Late twenties, attractive. I don’t know where to start with this woman so I’ll stick with two major events.

Event 1. Colin. Sweet boy, but always day dreaming and looking out the window. She ordered the boy behind him (Brian) to hit Colin on the back of the head with a ruler whenever he did it. To his credit, he refused. So, she stood behind Brian and smacked the back of his head each time Colin looked out the window, until Colin begged him to just hit him instead. ‘It’s okay, Brian’ he said. ‘Just hit me.’ So, Brian did, once, then burst into tears.

Event 2. Lenny. Another sweet boy, small and scruffy, from a very large family. Arrived in class wearing his older brother’s knee-length trousers that were so big on him they reached from his armpits to his ankles. She had him stand on a table, so we could mock his clown outfit, but no one did. Lenny was good-natured and easy going; seeing him humiliated did not sit well with us, and her joke fell flat.

However, after lunch, which many of us went home for, Lenny showed up with his mother, who came in screaming bloody murder and threatening to thrash the living daylights out of Miss B if she ever picked on her kid again. It was a glorious couple of minutes, thrilling and deeply satisfying, from which I took away 3 things.

1. A mother’s job is to stand between her children and the saber-toothed tiger.

2. There were no repercussions. Not only did Miss B not report it, she lay low for the rest of the term. But evil will out and a few years later, she was fired for gross cruelty to children and lost her certification.

3. I was 8 when this happened, and terrified of being the next target, but I was also savvy enough to know that I should’ve spoken up for both Colin and Lenny. And, for this, I have always been really sorry.

Bully Number 3

My High School, French teacher, Madame M. Mid 50’s, Parisian, small and squat with a mane of unruly black hair. Again, where to begin? She was infamous, and our Old Scholars site is full of negative comments from former students and even staff, one of whom suggested that her epitaph be ‘The Evil That Men Do Lives After Them’.

She was given to rages so intense she had spit flying and students cowering, I had her daily for two of the worst years of my life, and spent most of that in dead possum mode. I stopped speaking in her classes, even when summoned. Anything I said just invited more abuse, so I kept my eyes on my paperwork and pretended I didn’t hear her. However, stress comes out one way or another and I developed facial eczema. It started on my nose and grew across my right cheek, down to my mouth. The kids dubbed me Fungus Face, and Madame M joined in.

She would loom over my desk, shake her head, click her tongue and, pointing at my cheek, say some variation of ‘What izzz that!’ ‘You look deez-gusting!’ And it wasn’t a shocked one-off. It was constant: she pursued me down crowded hallways and even into the toilets, anywhere there was an audience. The final straw was when she asked if I had leprosy. I refused to leave the house, and my GP pushed through an emergency appointment with a dermatologist, a cheerful Australian who got the eczema under control with hydrocortisone. He then spent most of our follow-up visits mocking the French morceau de merde, and threatening to call the Principal on my behalf.

Luckily, by the time I returned to school she’d found a new victim, and was looming over her desk to tell her she was fat and should be on a diet. ‘And your hair! Gree-zy! Filthy! If you come in tomorrow like that, I will make an example of you!’ This was, of course, the mid-1960s and there were still many homes in Britain that had no in-door plumbing and, even when they did, a lot of us couldn’t afford to turn it on. We made do with a strip wash at the sink during the week and bathed only on Sundays. ‘Whether we needed it or not’ as Michael Caine once joked. And, in our family at least, we didn’t have shampoo. We used dish soap.

So, inevitably, the new victim appeared the next day with her hair unwashed but, as a compromise, had it pulled back from her face and secured in a knot on the top of her head. And at morning assembly, the French morceau de merde came down from faculty seating and, in earshot of perhaps 50 students, told her how fat, filthy and disgusting she was, dismissing the top knot as ‘reediculous, like a pimple on an elephant’s bottom’. Some people laughed, but nobody moved a muscle to stop her. Certainly not me. I was more concerned with my stress levels than any moral convictions, and I left them to it. The music teacher struck the opening notes of the morning hymn, we all began to sing, and that was that.

Bully Number 4

I’d hoped we were the last generation to deal with these monsters, but my son got a couple of old war horses in the late 90’s and early 2000’s. The first was a formidable woman, whose name has faded into the recesses of my brain. One of those battle-axes the district slots into a different job every year while they wait them out to retirement. Joe had her as a First Grader; she was running the computer lab but he had limited contact with her, so I encouraged him to suck it up. I thought, it’s two periods a week; how bad could she be?

It was only when I signed on as a substitute and had to cope with her personally that I got the full measure of the problem. She stomped, she roared, she thumped her fist on desks, shoving her face into the kids’ faces and screaming until half the class were shaking and in tears. No one said a word, including me, and no one learned a damned thing except to keep their heads below the firing line and ride it out.

In the staff lunchroom I made discreet enquiries and was told that she had lost her love of small children and was completely burned out. That everybody in the building knew what was going on, but was helpless against tenure. Apparently, you can be paroled from San Quentin quicker than you can be sacked by a school district and it was more than your job was worth to discuss it with outsiders. Because — of course — there’s a code. Cops have their Blue Wall of Silence, and teachers do too.

Bully Number 5

The battle-axe could at least claim burn out, but Joe’s 4th Grade teacher, Mrs. C, had no such excuse. She was an elderly woman who’d repeated her first year of teaching 40 times, with no updates or allowances for social progress. And she was all malice aforethought. She bustled, and led with her bosom; it was her way or the highway and, as part of that, she demanded that her students bring in their own book for Sustained Silent Reading. I couldn’t see why, when each class had a rack of them, and the school itself had a packed library. But perhaps it was to force parental involvement and, if so, it worked. After a couple of fits and starts, everyone had complied, except Reggie, a hulk of a boy at the back of the room, who was given a Social Studies textbook to read.

That worried me. I knew nothing of Mrs. C’s history with Reggie and why he sat there day after day with a set text rather than ‘Jurassic Park’, or something equally exciting. I considered that he hadn’t learned to read, in which case the content made no difference. But surely, he would’ve been referred to a reading specialist by 4th Grade? And didn’t the word ‘textbook’ suggest an advanced reader, so why not tempt him with a small selection of adventure novels?

But what bothered me the most was that a child would be publicly humiliated over an item the teacher had instantly available. And, 2 months later, Reggie was still slumped at his desk staring into space. According to Joe he was ‘Very quiet. Doesn’t answer back. Just sits there.’ Others told me he was an easy-going kid, slow to anger, and no trouble. So, I gave my son a novel to take in for him. I made sure it was one I’d bought at the school’s book fair and age appropriate, but Mrs. C took it away and reinstated the textbook.

If she’d left it there, I might’ve let it go. But no good deed goes unpunished and the response was immediate. I lost my substitute teacher job. Nothing official, but I was never called to work there again. Fair enough. By her lights, I’d questioned her authority, and I wasn’t short of offers elsewhere. Reggie continued to ‘read’ the textbook, but now both he and my son were kept in during the after-lunch recess, in my son’s case to re-write his cursive more neatly, in Reggie’s… well who knows? Perhaps just for being Reggie. I complained to the Principal. I said, ‘My son is not Bart Simpson!’ and I demanded he be moved to another class. They refused, saying it wasn’t policy and, that under state law, Mrs. C had discretion over recess.

Deprived of his play period, Joe begged to stay home, cried every morning in the car, and started licking one corner of his mouth. Inevitably, this grew into Lip Licker’s Dermatitis that stretched a tongue length across his cheek, black against his brown skin and impossible to explain to outsiders. ‘Oh that? Isn’t it obvious? He’s being bullied by a 62-year-old woman, for something I did.’

We took to disparaging the 62-year-old woman at the dinner table, laughing at her, calling her rude names, and encouraging him to give as good as he got. But he was too afraid to even make eye contact, and one day I couldn’t take it anymore. In my efforts to help a kid I barely knew, I’d put my son on this old bat’s radar.

I made a second trip to the principal’s office, but this time I channeled Lenny’s Mum and freaked-the-fuck-out! I told them I would stand in the parking lot at drop-off and pick-up, with a placard telling everyone what was going on inside. They said they would have me arrested, and I said I would call the local TV station to film that. And while they were at it, they could film my son’s face! And that’s when the room fell silent and the whole damned mess stopped on a dime. The crazy lady being carried out by police, they could survive. A small boy morphing into The Creature from the Black Lagoon? Not so much.

In the end, both boys stayed in Mrs. C’s class but they got recess back, Reggie was escorted to the library to choose books, and my son was ignored for the rest of the semester. I was worried she’d kick the harassment up a notch, but she didn’t. She simply looked right through him as if he was glass, which was fine with us. Within weeks he was lick-free, had aced the standardized testing, and in September moved on to Middle School.

But her legacy lingers. A few years ago, we went to renew our passports and my son had to sign his name in front of the Registrar. He couldn’t do it. To this day he can’t write in cursive, and his passport signature is written with the painstaking inkblot of a 9-year-old boy with his tongue between his teeth. And, in case you’re wondering what happened to Reggie, I called Joe to find out. ‘Still really chill. Married. Has a daughter. Lives in those apartments up behind the Walgreens.’

Still really chill. Indeed. He didn’t wind up with a gross rash on his face and, even after he got books, he didn’t open them. Perhaps he was dyslexic, needed glasses, or preferred to doze over the Social Studies textbook and never mentioned reading material to his parents. But whatever his motivation, he beat Mrs. C at her own game, and more power to him.