School Principle Overreacts

[IT Grunt]

Ugh.. yeah, my sister encountered one like that back in her high school days. The assistant principal was a real piece of work, and as the OP said, a grade A bitch. Setting the story:

My sister was in middle school at the time. During gym class, a girl's $2 el cheapo ring vanished. She immediately accused someone in the class of taking her ring. Naturally, all the kids denied it. Threats were made, stern warnings, the usual spiel, and the assistant principal is called.

Her solution?

Make all the kids in class (all girls fortunately) unbutton their pants and drop them to their thighs and turn their pockets out. The principal then proceeded to pat down each pocket to try and find the ring. It wasn't found. Where was it?

The middle of the gym floor. That's right, our accuser had dropped it when it slipped off her finger playing volleyball.

No search for it had been conducted prior to accusing the rest of the class of theft, and the teacher nor the principal thought to have a look around first before treating the students like criminals. Needless to say, lawyers got involved and there was a class action suit filed. A settlement was made and that principal isn't at the school any more.

[Mr Hero]

THANK YOU! I was going to compare this to Mathilda but you beat me to it

Glad to see other members appreciate fine classic literature.

[stephenr]

I was a bit of a pest in high school. The kid that would do funny things and try to make people laugh. The principal that took over for my final year of high school was a nightmare. She didn't like me one bit because I wasn't a model student. Yeah, I stayed back a year. So what? I graduated and almost didn't walk because she supposedly lost the money I paid for my class dues. What a smile I had on my face when I pulled out the receipt and bank statement showing I had paid them. She is currently pushing for a uniform in my school. I wish her luck on that. It's not gonna pass in a public school.

[MoonCat]

Patiokitty, that's so sad. And it makes me angry. The crap that teachers got away with then! And it affected your cousin's whole life. I hope karma bites that woman's ass damn hard - I won't call her a teacher because she doesn't deserve the title. She sounds demented - choking a kid like that - ugh.

[Teysa]

I had some teachers I liked better than others but none were really over the top bad. My mom, however, had a doozy. Keep in mind this was back in the 50s so teachers were able to get away with even more.

My mom's fifth grade teacher caught her tracing over a map in the back of her textbook with the bottom of her pen. Not paying attention to the fact that she wasn't actually marking the map, the teacher whacked her on the ear with one of those old style really thick dictionaries. To this day, she has trouble hearing out of that ear. She did get her revenge. When the teacher later went on a missions trip to Africa with her husband, Mom spread a rumor that the teacher had been eaten by cannibals.

[PepperElf]

That principal wasn't a nun, was she? With a very very common Irish name? 'Cuz that insanity sounds familiar...she was young at the time so she could still be around and be a principal by now...

And then there was my 5th grade teacher. He would scream, yell, call kids names, throw chalk, books, blackboard erasers, yardsticks, you name it. Once he threw a yardstick at the kid behind me (I ducked, but the stick got caught on something in front of my desk anyway). He used to smash his pointer against his desk when he was angry. He'd throw board erasers at the wall - there was a chalkdust print on the wall for months. I don't think he ever actually hit a kid, but he came damn close. If he did this now, he'd be under arrest.

Yes, that is VERY abusive behavior.

He's pretty much telling the kids that as easily as he can break stuff, he can break them too.

[Kogarashi]

I'm incredibly grateful that while I had teachers throughout grade school that I disliked for one reason or another, we never had anyone at Trunchbull-level.

She is currently pushing for a uniform in my school. I wish her luck on that. It's not gonna pass in a public school.

Don't be so sure about that. About half the schools in our city's public school system require uniforms. Not sure why it's only half, but I do know that they require them. Luckily for me this year, Oldest is going to Kindergarten in one of the ones with a much more accomodating dress code. It was bad enough being told last-minute that she needed a uniform for Preschool last year (at one of the other schools in the same system as her Kindergarten school). The only saving grace then was that the "uniform" consisted of "top this color, bottoms that color, no designs on the shirt unless it's the school mascot."

[ozcatbug]

I was lucky with my experience that when my mother found out what was happening, she dealt with it. Now for the wall of text.

My problem was my grade 5 teacher. She shouldn't have been a teacher since she had no idea how to deal with kids. Basically it started with everyone in the class being allowed to choose who they sat with at the two person desks we used. Everyone except for me. I wasn't allowed to sit with anyone that I wanted, but had to sit at a desk by myself. Why, you may ask? What had I done to deserve this punishment? I was the quiet kid that never spoke out, always did her homework on time, and got the best grades in the class. But then why weren't you allowed to sit with anyone? Well this teachers screwed up logic was that by making the bad kids sit with me as punishment for their bad behviour, then maybe they would become a good kid like me. Yeah, that's going to work. So basically I was being punished and made to sit with the worst kids for being good.

Then there was the screaming. She wouldn't yell at kids, she would have screaming fits and order kids out of the room when she couldn't handle them. Bear in mind these are 9 and 10 year olds. If you can't get them under control, they will run all over you. As an extreme introvert, even when it wasn't me being screamed at, I would take it to heart. Especially since the screaming would be typically directed at whoever my deskmate happened to be at the time.

But the final straw happened one day when the class was being really unruly. I started getting pains in my stomach and asked, politely I might add, if I could go to sickbay. The teacher screamed at me that I was just trying to get out of doing whatever it was we were doing, and that she knew I was faking. So I went back to my desk and tried not to burst into tears. Twenty minutes later with the pain getting worse, I tried again, to receive a very similar outburst. Half an hour later when the pain had gotten excrutiating (sp?) and I was in tears, my friends at another desk asked the teacher if I could go to sickbay as I was really sick. Luckily I was in too much pain to really remember everything she said, but it essentially amounted to "get the hell out of my classroom. I don't want to hear any more of your lies, and the principal will hear about this." At that point I didn't care and rushed to the sickbay. The school nurse took one look at me and called my mum to pick me up. Two days later when I was recovering from getting my appendix out, the teacher came into my hospital room and said to me "it appears you weren't faking it. Sorry." I refused to look at her, and luckily my mum walked in at that point and ordered that she stay the hell away from her child.

After my recovery, when I flatly refused to go back to that class, of which my parents were in complete agreement, we went to a meeting with the school principal and my teacher. Everything came out at that meeting. The teacher couldn't see she had done anything wrong. Apparently this teacher was sooo clueless she thought she was rewarding me when she made the bad kids sit next to me, and was shocked I saw it as some kind of punishment! As for not letting me leave when I was sick, she thought I was faking, so it was a simple mistake. At this mum said that I would not be returning to this teachers class. Either the principal could transfer me to the other grade 5 class, which had my grade 4 teacher who I still think was one of the best teachers I ever had, or my parents would pull both me and my brother out of the school and we would go to the one that was 10 minutes walk from our house. The school I was attending was the nearest Catholic school, but mum was threatening to transfer us to the local public school. The principal thought she was bluffing and told mum that he fully backed his staff. There would be no transfer to the other class for me so it was all on mum. Mum looked at him, told him to get her son from his classroom, get all my brother's and my property together as we would not be back. He really didn't think she would do that, and tried to convice my parents that our education would suffer. Mum just looked at him and said nothing could be worse than ending up in a hospital after being called a liar. My mother is the total mumma bear when her kids were threatened. Dad didn't need to speak up, well with mum there he couldn't get a word in edgewise, though going to the meeting in his police uniform was threatening enough.

So my brother and I transferred to the local public school, where there were 23 students in the school, total. Loved it. Ended up at the nearest public high school, instead of ending up at the local Catholic high school, which was better for us. I have a bachelor and masters degree, while my brother has just finished his masters and is currently studying for his doctorate. I don't think our education suffered much.

[Kogarashi]

I don't think our education suffered much.

Seriously. Private school does not necessarily equal five-star education, nor does public school necessarily equal "bottom of the barrel."

[PepperElf]

and as a reminder... if a teacher does something horrible to a student, don't rely on the school to punish that teacher. as shown in some of these stories they might try to excuse the behavior...

but there's not much any school can do to stop a police officer from making an arrest.

[blas]

My last couple of years in elementary school, and my brother's first couple of years (so we were together in the same school), the awesome principal had retired and another awesome teacher had retired, and to replace them were these two awful women. The progressive, overly liberal new age power women types. One was the new first grade teacher, the other was the new principal. My parents swore she only got the job because she was a woman and would have cried sexism if she hadn't.

The stupid teacher got huffy because my brother had described his hobbies as "hunting and fishing", and she was "worried" that he was going to become some violent young man addicted to guns or something. She called my parents and tried to criticize them for allowing my brother to be a part of those activities. My father told her off in so many politically uncorrect and horrible ways, but she had it coming. After that, she avoided my dad at parent/teacher conferences and there wasn't a problem.

The principal changed pretty much the entire way the school functioned, and the way it worked out, to me, it began the era in my life where I noticed that all the worthless kids got away with everything and the good kids were punished for the most minor of things.

[Ironclad Alibi]

This discussion reminds me of the scene where Uncle Buck meets with the school assistant principal.

[TopEndDave]

One of my Nephew's teachers recently sent an email around the school criticising my older sister (who is separated) for leaving my nephew at home alone while she left town for a business trip. I could understand the overreaction if it wasn't for the fact that me nephew is 18, has been cooking meals since he was 13 and his grandparents live a ten minute walk away. The email implied that a child had been abandoned but he is now an adult finishing his last year of High School. Plus, my sister could not get out of the business trip unless she wished to be sacked. I believe a few stern words were said to that teacher.

My younger sister had a bad maths teacher many years ago. She had just had growth spurt and the other kids where calling her long legs. Her male maths teacher joined in calling her long legs as well. One day she had enough and punched the teacher in the middle of the class. My parents were called and the principal was standing by the teacher. There was talk on sister assaulting the teacher. My father wasn't happy that a male teacher was calling a 15 girl by names that could be taken in a sexual way. If they were going to talk assault to the police he was going to talk about child abuse. In the end my sister and school parted ways.

[rageaholic]

This discussion reminds me of the scene where Uncle Buck meets with the school assistant principal.

HAHAHAHAHA!!!! That was awesome!! I dealt with people exactly like that bitch in the movie.

[taurinejunkie]

I've only had one horrible teacher, who was generally OK but on one occasion, crippled my self-esteem. Details may be hazy as I think my brain worked very hard to not remember anything.

I learned to read and to love it before I was even 5 years old, I loved grade school, I had many friends because people liked to talk to me and learn all the odd stuff I knew from all my reading. Heck, in a previous school year the teacher had me read out the words and then write the correct answers on the board for a spelling test while she was correcting some other work, because she knew I'd get 100% anyway.

The horrible teacher incident: We were working on something new, some math problems if I remember correctly, but something I was already able to do; so while we were practicing, I did a few problems to prove my ability, then asked the teacher something to the effect of, "I can already do this stuff, can I just help those who are having trouble with it?" -- but the way it came out, I think she interpreted it as "I'm better than all the other students" for some reason. If she had bothered to take a look at her grade charts, she would have seen that I was if not the best, then certainly one of the best. So, basically, she blew up at me about how he who thinks himself the best is actually the worst, and how bragging is bad and I shouldn't say or imply that I'm better than anyone... kept going and going until I was crying with my head down on the desk, and beyond, and swallowing and believing all of it about how bad I was, because she was my teacher and therefore the one supposed to tell me what and how things were. I don't remember much coming out of that incident in particular at that point in time, but when I got to high school the next year, bullies were quick to finish the job and leave me without self-esteem; even now, ten years later, there is a part of me that works against anyone trying to help me with my self-esteem.

Uh, sorry about the wall of text/life story telling threadjack.