Remember being embarrassed by a teacher? I do…
It was in 10th-grade math class. I tried to cultivate an aura of invisibility so I wouldn’t get called on, but it didn’t always work. One day I was assigned a problem at the blackboard (that ancient precursor to whiteboards). I struggled through it and stood like a flagpole at the front of the class. Dead silence. Then a fusillade of chalk ricocheted around the room. (Throwing chalk was this teacher’s trademark.) The teacher launched into a tirade against stupidity—mine for the mistake I made, and the class’s for not detecting it.
Amidst the teachers we adored, there were other teachers who, intentionally or not, made us feel afraid and humiliated. To gather information for the “School Rules” chapter in How Rude!, I asked teens:
Has a teacher ever embarrassed you in front of your peers?
The majority of students (57%) responded “yes.” So I asked them:
What did your teacher do?
“Announced my failing test grade to the whole class.”
“Said I was irresponsible and undeserving.”
“Held me up as an example of what not to do.”
“Called me out when I got an answer wrong.”
“Called me out for doing well on a test everyone else failed.”
“Told me to get out of the room because I didn't understand the topic and was delaying the learning process.”
“Continually ridiculed me about my Italian heritage.”
“Patted me on the head condescendingly and told me that I was ‘in another world’ when I forgot to read instructions on the board.”
“Called me a liar.”
“Called me an idiot in front of everyone, and I went home and cried.”
“Told me she was shocked I ever made it all the way to grade 12 math.”
“Claimed that all black people were English Language Learners (since black people spoke Ebonics!).”
“Made a fat joke about me to a teacher behind me while I was receiving an award on stage.”
“Commented on my clothing (skirt with sneakers) and said I could never go to private school looking like that, or be a debutante. (The fact that I don't want to be a debutante was irrelevant as was the fact that I had gone to private middle school, but the fact that he commented on my nice outfit in such a way was not appreciated.)”
“How about the teacher who wouldn't believe I didn't know my ethnicity? We had to choose a country of origin for an essay. I only know I have Spanish and Mexican for sure (I know there's a lot more but I don't know what exactly). Those two countries were taken but she continued to argue with me until I basically had to lie and choose Puerto Rican!”
“I didn't understand a topic in algebra, so I was asking a lot of questions. My teacher told me to stop asking so many questions because all my questions were garbage.”
“One time, we got these ‘who's most likely to -blank- in my class,’ and somebody wrote for me ‘most likely to pick oranges’ because I'm Hispanic. The teacher gave me a certificate that said ‘most likely to pick oranges’ in front of the class, much to their amusement. I confronted her about it, and she said she had no idea it was a racial thing. How could nobody pick that up?”
“My teacher thought I was cheating on a test (I wasn't) and came over and slammed her hand on my desk really hard and yelled at me and took my test and my calculator and my face got really red.”
“I told my geometry teacher that I wanted to go to Harvard and he told every class period that whole week. That disappointed me and I did poorly in his class.”