We Need to Talk about Abusive Teachers

When I was in junior high I wanted to play sports. My parents encouraged me to because of my “athletic build,” and I was more than willing to play to make them happy. Unfortunately, at my school there was a whole process before someone could try out for sports: you had to take a year of “pre-athletics” in the 7th grade and then “athletics” in the 8th. 

When I was in the 7th grade, in “pre-athletics,” I did terribly. I won’t lie to you. I was a chubby little girl with undiagnosed asthma and running a whole mile in 12 minutes was too much for my still-developing lungs. Of course, I faced ridicule for this. But not by who you think.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve had terrible anxiety. So any time someone looked in my direction and then talked to a friend, I thought they were talking about me, and combined with the dirty looks from the two coaches, I just knew they hated me. I didn’t know how right I was until the end of the year when registration for the next year rolled around.

And I remember this distinctly.

They were about to send us off to have free time in the gym with volleyballs, basketballs, and jump ropes, that kind of stuff, and they look at me and say, “Beckley, we need to talk to you.”

I walk over terrified as they say, “We noticed that you signed up for athletics next year, why?”

Dumbfounded, I just said, “I want to play sports.”

They shared a chuckle and a look and the other one said, “What sports?”

Failing to wrap my brain around this conversation, I just said, “Volleyball, tennis, basketball, anything.”

The one in charge of the volleyball team laughed and said, “Why do you think we’d let you on any team when you don’t even try?”

I felt my heart crack in my chest. I just shrugged, looking at my bright pink tennis shoes.

“Are your parents making you take athletics?” They asked, as if they really cared. 

I nodded, wanting this conversation to be over.

“Well, you should talk to them about not wanting to do sports because we don’t have slackers on our teams.”

I nodded, saying I would, and they let me go. I walked to the corner with a whiteboard and hid behind it while I cried, not wanting them to know what impact their words had on me.

The next year rolled around, and I wasn’t able to switch out of athletics in favor of the exclusive audition-only theatre class I’d landed a spot in. I’d hoped they wouldn’t notice me. I’d hoped they would forget what they said. They didn’t.

Within the first week, they pulled me aside again.

“You parents didn’t let you quit?” One asked. I remember how irritated they were, like I was some huge burden on the whole school, like me being in their class was a fate close to damnation. 

“My schedule didn’t let me transfer to PE,” I replied.

They shared a disappointed look, “How would you feel about being the aid? You wouldn’t have to do anything but watch and do paperwork.”

At this point it was impossible not to know how much they wanted me out of their hair, so I agreed and they gave me a stack of paperwork that I had to go through and mark each girl’s name off a list. I wasn’t happy with my new job any more than I was with wheezing on the track in the Texas heat. It was a constant reminder that I wasn’t good enough. That I didn’t try, and everyone saw that I wasn’t enough. Adults knew I wasn’t enough.

I made my dissatisfaction known to my parents, who were upset that I wasn’t playing sports at all and called the school. Of course, this conversation involved last year’s “talk” about not trying. I had no idea this was going on until one day when I was sitting outside of the gym doing the paperwork, the vice principal came to talk to the coaches about it.

They stood there in the doorway to the gym with me not 50 feet away.

“Is it because she’s lazy? She’s a straight A student, you can see why I find that hard to believe?” The vice principal asked

“Just look at her,” one of the coaches said, motioning towards me at the table, my head lowered as to not look like I was listening. “She doesn’t even try, and her parents are making her take athletics.”

“Well her parents called-” and my ears tuned out everything I heard after that, I knew what direction this was going.

The next day I was assigned a locker and a set of gym clothes and earned scowls and whispered snide remarks every time I did something wrong or too slow. I was placed on the embarrassment of the intramural volleyball team. I didn’t even try out for volleyball or basketball, content to be with the third kinder coach who watched after the girls who weren’t in the current sport season. She was also the tennis coach and the only shred of kindness I received in that class. It was her who told me I was getting better at my running and that I was a great tennis player. I think she felt sorry about what the other coaches would say about me, but I still appreciated it. At least she saw that I was trying.

I’m 20 now, and those words I heard when I was 13 still stick with me; they come to me when I’m in my darkest places. 

I don’t know and will never know how grown women could look little 13 year old me in the eyes and tell me that I wasn’t enough. I don’t think I’ll ever know because even now, looking back on it, I can’t see why I was such a burden to them (me, who believed myself as nothing until about a year ago; me, whose depression kept me so far in the ground and so full of self-hatred that I would have jumped at the opportunity to put myself down).

And that isn’t even half of it.

At the same junior high I had an emotionally manipulative theatre teacher. 

I was in theatre for my entire junior high career and had always looked forward to the 8th grade where I would be able to audition for theatre production, a special third-period class where all the participants were a part of the One Act Play and used that 50 minutes for preparation. Can you see where this is going?

My entire junior high career, I was encouraged personally by the theatre teacher to keep trying out, the teacher going out of her way to tell me I was a great actress and that there were roles in mind for me. And when the time came and I made it into theatre production, I was understandably ecstatic.      

(I should probably note at the time that I still aspired to be an actress when I was older, this was known to everyone in my class and the theatre teacher herself. I wasn’t shy at all about it and after her repeated encouragement I was confident in theatre class. A normally shy kid, I came alive during theatre.)

However, our teacher decided that she didn’t want to make theatre production a small class anymore, and admitted 15 instead of 10 students. Because of this, certain students in theatre production wouldn’t be able to participate in the one act play and against all odds, I was one of those students. 

That wouldn’t have been so bad if the class wasn’t what it was: rehearsal time. Every day I would go to theatre production where the theatre teacher would talk to the play kids (in front of all of us except for the rare times that she would remember we were there and tell us to go sit in her office for 10 minutes where we’d inevitably be forgotten and have to let ourselves out and follow them into the auditorium) about the play, and then we’d go to the stage to practice and I would sit in the audience, encouraged to watch for the first month and then little-to-no mind was paid to me after that, and I took to doing my algebra homework and reading Harry Potter in the dark auditorium.

She never once said sorry; she never once expressed regret or sympathy for what she was doing to me. She continued to tell me to audition for the next production, but at this point I saw her as the liar she was. I was no longer interested in acting. All the light faded from me. I dreaded going to my once-favorite class. All my friends were also part of the play, so it’s not like I could pretend it wasn’t happening. 

Once she made the four of us who were forbidden from the stage to make a little skit to introduce the actual play during the public performances (these would happen on Friday and Saturday). And we did, but when the time came for us to get the information about when we should come to the school, what we should bring, etc, it never came. So I didn’t go, and they didn’t try to contact me despite more than 4 people in that classroom having my phone number. They just replaced me and played my part off as their own (despite me writing most of the skit).

I won’t pretend like this was traumatic. I mean, people in the world are dying, and here I am griping about the old wound of never getting a part in the play I thought was made for me. But it was cruel. If she had no intention of letting me in the play, why even let me in theatre production in the first place? And why couldn’t I touch the precious play with a 10 foot pole? Why was I banished to the cold reaches of the auditorium while all my peers lived out what was my dream, what was known to be my dream, and what I was borderline promised on multiple occasions?

At the end of the day, she went out of her way to bait a child into thinking she’d get something she genuinely looked forward to and was passionate about. Something that I was adamant about making a career out of. And then damned me to the fate of watching it go on without me. She told me I was good enough and then showed me I wasn’t every chance she got (and combined with the brute force of my coaches telling me I wasn’t enough, what was I supposed to believe? That three full grown adults were wrong about me? That’s impossible for a developing brain to comprehend. I barely had a sense of self and they ripped away every shred that I believed belonged to me.)

I know for a fact that my mental health suffered from both of these circumstances because of teachers who decided to abuse their power and humiliate a child who was just trying her hardest. It took me until I was 19 to realize that I was depressed and until just a few days ago to realize what an impact those interactions had on me, as I reason it was about the 7th grade when my depression started and 8th grade when it took over my life.

Teachers have a huge impact on the students that they teach. They’re supposed to encourage us and nourish our dreams and instead they degraded and neglected me. And I’m just supposed to pretend like it didn’t play a role in the degradation of my mental health? No. Not anymore.

• abuse
• mental health
• power imbalance
• school