Recently, a video of a “conversation” between a teacher and a sixth grader appeared on the Internet. The recording was conducted by the girl's classmates. “Are you your own daughter or adopted?” ,” the teacher asked the girl Dasha in front of the entire secondary school class in Kholmsk, Sakhalin Oblast. “Do you have parents? There is one. Are they even adequate? Are you adequate? I see it's not. Are you a foster or something? Am I asking something incredible? This is now normal. Why are you crying? Stop pretending to be a seizure here, this one!” , - the teacher scolded the crying sixth grader.
The reason for this disgusting interrogation was... a hole in Dasha's sweater. It is quite obvious to me that we are facing an example of teacher bullying. The teacher uses one of the tools in her arsenal to influence children. She chose a scapegoat and significantly rots the girl in front of the whole class, showing the others what will happen to them if they break the “rules” and “norms” of behavior and are not loyal to the teacher. (Oh, that loyalty! It almost always goes hand in hand with bullying in children's and adult groups). If you ask me what influences the choice of a scapegoat in the classroom, I won't be able to answer that question. But experience suggests that none of the children can be absolutely sure that the teacher will not sacrifice him. Of course, there are children in the “risk group” in the classroom who are characterized by deviant behavior. But excellent students, quiet people, “nerds” can also become victims of such a teacher.
Sometimes a teacher chooses a child who enjoys authority in the classroom, studies well, and actively participates in the Olympics as an object of bullying. And bullying can occur not only in public emotional “spanking” with shouts. Parents whose children study from first to eleventh grades often tell me about such cases. And for years, children have been yelling and insulting teachers who no one can or wants to control. But there is also a type of bullying that I would call “silent bullying.” Such bullying is very difficult to prove and hard to resist, as she dresses as a teacher who cares about the moral and psychological health of the child and the team. This bullying is not obvious, but it is the most despicable one. Here are examples of “silent bullying”.
Fourteen years old told me that they had a boy in seventh grade who was loved by everyone. And the teacher, apparently, didn't like it for that. And when he fell ill, in his absence, she would say mean things to the class about him in almost every lesson. Or rather, they were not even nasty things, but words that ate away at children's souls, eradicating their sympathy for their classmate. For example, when they did not write the test well, the teacher did not fail to remember it, saying: “You see, Lesha is not with you, and you are no longer capable of anything yourself. I don't even have any of you to praise.” When, while preparing for the contest, the children decided to turn to a sick classmate for help, the teacher pulled them off: “He doesn't even think about you. He doesn't need you, but you call him about every occasion. If I wanted to help us, I would have done it long ago. He's not that ill after all.” The teenagers told me that even though they were accurately assessing her intention, they began to think badly about their classmate, and when he returned, they greeted him coldly. The guys said that they didn't want to follow the teacher's lead, but something changed about them: they were already happy to laugh at her jokes at their classmate; they were happy with his punctures and mistakes. The boy could not understand what had happened during his absence. And the teacher, behind him, could smirk like this: “Well, this is Alexey! He can do anything!”
After a while, the boy left school, and his classmates still annoy themselves for having to give up their friendship with a nice guy. By the way, after he left, the children began to openly demonstrate their negative attitude towards her to the teacher. They always disliked her, but during the quiet bullying of Alexey, teenagers did not engage in open confrontation with her. When Alexey left, life returned to normal, and teenagers began to bother their teacher even more than before and spoil her mood.
Emotional abuse can take many forms. It may not be as obvious as in the video from Kholmsk, but, in any case, it undermines the psyche of a child involved in bullying in any of the “roles” and, of course, causes irreparable harm to the child who was made a “scapegoat” in class. I often hear from children and parents these sad and exactly the same stories about teacher bullying. I learn that teachers often yell at children, but this scream is more a sign of professional deformation and teaching helplessness than an element of consistent and thoughtful bullying. But when scolding a child to the whole class, a teacher should be aware that he is sending a message to the children's group: “You can drive him away!”
Sometimes it can be beneficial for a teacher to channel children's energy into bullying a classmate. Bullying often brings the team together and takes their attention for a while. As a rule, bullying occurs in classrooms where children are not interested in anything: students have no hobbies or additional activities, and activities and lessons are boring. Such children themselves, without a teacher's advice, are ready to direct their energy towards destruction and bullying. And if the teacher also deliberately initiates bullying, then whoever they choose as a victim will not be happy. And in this case, it will be most difficult for parents to establish the truth. A teacher will never admit bullying in class, if he initiated it himself. Other parents will never support the victim's parents' protest, as their children become hostages to this situation. None of them would want to conflict with the teacher so as not to set up their child who has been bullied.
Most recently, a 14-year-old girl told me that when she returned to her old class from another school where she did not study for long, she began to be attacked by the class teacher, with whom she had an excellent relationship before transferring to another school. The teacher constantly finds fault with her clothes and clings to her over all sorts of trifles. The teenager is a good student and looks modest, but the teacher will always find something to “grab” her for. For example, she requires the girl to braid pigtails and make ponytails. Moreover, she also finds ways to influence the girl's parents, convincing them that she is violating “rules” and “norms”. The girl makes her parents change her mind, but it's very difficult for her right now. There is a danger that she may become an “outcast” in the classroom. For example, when she forgot her homework notebook and told the teacher about it, she heard behind her snide words addressed to her classmates: “Poor, poor Lisa!” The class laughed at the joke. They began to look at her sideways in class. And here we also need to understand the situation: the girl went to a prestigious school for several months, but had to come back because the road was exhausting her. In such a situation, she becomes a classic outcast — “a traitor who has come back to us”. And if the children took her back calmly, the teacher found a “flaw” in the teenager that allowed her to create a “scapegoat”.
This situation should not be left to chance. In my opinion, this requires absolute solidarity between parents and their child. And I advised the teenager to write down in a notebook by day all the teacher's words and nit-picking (preferably describing the situation itself). If the teacher completely disperses in his “righteous anger”, then you should try to record the teacher's words on a tape recorder. I found out from the teenager all the circumstances of the teacher's changed attitude towards her, because I always mean the situation described in the wonderful book by G. Schmidt's “Wednesday Battle”, whose main character is completely convinced that his teacher hates him, but things are not at all what he thought. Well, I can assume that a teenage girl at a tender age might think that “cool” didn't like her for something. But given that relations with her were good before she left, moreover, she tried to persuade the child to come back, I can assume that the teacher is ready to use the “friend but stranger” situation to prove to the girl how wrong she was when she left their class.
The teacher does not notice the merits of a girl who participates in Olympiads and studies “good” and “excellent” in all subjects. It is difficult to explain the teacher's motives. But I do not rule out that, among the others listed above, there is also a banal feeling of envy for a pretty girl who is popular with her classmates. I don't know how things will unfold, but parents should keep this situation under control so as not to miss the moment when their wonderful child is made a scapegoat and broken.
P.S. Two weeks after this post, I found out that the homeroom teacher made the girl's behavior at the parent meeting shameful, presenting her as a coquette who “thrills like a cat.” Not taking into account her excellent studies and participation in the Olympiads, the teacher, in front of all her parents, began to talk about the corruption of a modest and domestic child only on the grounds that the girl was letting her hair go. And the teacher makes such an unambiguous remark to the child: “Stop walking loose.” I must say that the girl has an excellent relationship with the rest of the teachers, and no one complains about her. I will be closely following the development of this story, which, unfortunately, is very typical.
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