Reply to Does anything still bother you from your middle school/ high school days?

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[quote=Anonymous]Okay, I'm going to bring us back to the original point.  One thing that still bothers me from high school, that I just can't get past, is that I had a teacher who had serious boundary issues with his students.  There was a small group of boys in my class that this teacher hung out with on the weekends.  They would drink together, go on road trips together, etc.  I became a favored target by these boys (my peers) for ridicule, and it was vicious.  They would torment me in this teacher's class because they knew they would get away with it.  Things finally got to the point that other students in the class encouraged me to go to the teacher and ask for help -- mind you, these were kids who didn't even know me very well!  They were just freaked out to see fellow students acting out to this extent in class and the adult in charge doing nothing.  When I worked up the courage to do so, my teacher essentially shrugged his shoulders and encouraged me to grow a thicker skin.  He then sort of shamefacedly said he couldn't really do a lot about it, since these guys could really get him in trouble if the principal found out about their out-of-school activities.

There are two aspects of this that absolutely drive me insane as an adult.  First, that any adult -- especially a teacher -- could find themselves in this position to begin with.  (Not to mention my sinking feeling, as a grown-up looking back, that the inappropriate behavior I was aware of from the outside may only have been the tip of the iceberg).  Second, that as a teenager, I was so ashamed of being an outcast -- of having been chosen for humiliation -- that it never once occurred to me to go to my parents or a guidance counselor or someone for help.  I was so ashamed of _myself_ that I couldn't bear to tell anyone in authority -- even though every kid in my class knew exactly what was going on, and many of them felt sorry for me, even tried to protect me.

There's a lot I would change about high school, in retrospect.  This is way up there among them.[/quote]

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