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I got made fun of a lot, but to be fair, I realize I probably was a weird kid, since I ended up diagnosed with Asperger's during my sophomore year in college. That said, aside from a couple bitchy girls, most of it was never really that bad and people for the most part tolerated me. (I think a big reason for this was that my best friend all through childhood was a pretty popular, athletic girl who always totally stood up for me.) Actually, for 5th and 6th grade, the worst bullies to me were probably my actual teachers. Both teachers were spiteful hambeasts who really had no business teaching kids, because not only were they lovely at it, they had zero tolerance for anyone who stuck out as "abnormal". And as one of the nerdy, quiet kids, I seemed to be a frequent target. I remember being called stupid once over screwing up a math problem in 5th grade, which, in retrospect, is a pretty hosed up thing to say to an 11-12 year old. High school, despite being poo poo, was so, so much easier to deal with than that. Most people matured into at least fairly decent people (or at least tolerable), and while I'd've never have been called popular, I did develop a good group of equally nerdy friends.
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Aug 17, 2015 00:37
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I got bullied a lot until an understanding teacher took me under his wing. I didn't like it the first time he made me touch his penis, but the bullying stopped and in retrospect, I got laid a lot earlier than my supposedly "cooler" peers.
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Aug 17, 2015 05:51
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Adderall was loving hell and middle school was a strange haze, because of it. Still bitter about the fact that anyone/everyone had the goddamn audacity to call it "medicine." For some hosed up reason, the nurse had two 8th graders who would escort us 5th graders to and from the nurse's office for "afternoon medication." One day, one of the escorts mentioned something to the tune of "He needs to take his retard medicine." I didn't respond. When I walked into the nurse's office, I took my pill, called her an ugly bitch who is "probably poor, working here" then wandered the halls for a few hours before walking home. I told my parents about the whole situation, because I knew they'd be getting a call at some point in the near future. I have no idea how it was handled between my parents and the school, but the next day, it was as if it never happened and the escorts stopped. I'd go in, and take my pill without a single word exchanged, with the nurse. I still blame the administration. Having a pair of bros escort kids to/from the nurse's office and expecting them not to make fun of anyone is like expecting not to get sand on your feet, at the beach. I dunno, gently caress every last one of those looserly, slob spouse having, miserable pieces of poo poo from "the office." Every day was a daze through class. Neither good nor bad. I had some lovely friends who did rear end in a top hat things. Every day after school was spent alone at the skate park. Eventually, I'd feel sick on the half-pipe so I'd go home, puke in the toilet, do some homework, eat dinner, watch TV/play video games and go to bed. It's still a mixed-bag every time I re-visit that skate park. I still love the ramps and layout but hate the vibe, even though it probably saved my life. Floor hockey owned though. While I liked ice hockey and being on the ice hockey team, floor hockey was when I could really have fun running train on all the not-hockey players. Never felt more smug than when the gym teacher went to explain how face-offs work. I volunteered. The gym teacher held the stick all regular while I got in my faceoff stance. When one of the other kids in gym class dropped the puck, I had a lot more leverage and managed to swipe the teacher's stick out of his hands, while winning the puck. Nothing felt better than seeing the shock in everyone's faces when the gym teacher's stick flew across the room and hit the wall. liquorlanche fucked around with this message at 18:50 on Aug 17, 2015 |
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Aug 17, 2015 18:39
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This is the period of time when half of the kids don't realize they need to be wearing deodorant. It's most unfortunate. My school was one of those where most of the popular bully-types at 15 were failures at 25. Some of made life comebacks of a sort after that (soulless middle management job, decent apartment, no dating prospects...but at least they don't live at home and have steady income). Some haven't. I remember the slow spiral for my largest tormentor during those days: By high school, no one laughed at his jokes anymore, and he didn't have anything (smarts, looks) in reserve. By the end of high school, no college wanted him. Parents kicked him out. Went off the grid for a few years. Eventually being a snotty rear end in a top hat to people stops getting you ahead in life. Right about the time you have deans, then bosses. Who knew. "Hey, I made fun of this guy's shoes all fall this one time!" Can't take it with you, friend. My school really needed more male teachers. A lot of the women teaching made zero effort to understand the boys in their class. Openly hostile. "Most of it doesn't matter, so just ignore it" seems so nebulous, but it largely worked for me. D.N. Nation fucked around with this message at 20:11 on Aug 17, 2015 |
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Aug 17, 2015 19:59
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Yep, middle school was hell for us all I think. Got bullied almost constantly, but only had a few fights. One of them was a kid a grade older than me named Ming who was dared to beat up the next kid who walked into the gym from the locker room. I never actually hit him, just reversed his swings into throwing him away from me or shoving him away. I tried to get away a few times, but the other kids just grabbed me and pulled me back in. The principal decided I "hadn't tried to walk away hard enough" and gave both of us lunch detention, which meant staying behind to clean up after lunch. I got in-school suspension for shoving a kid that I thought called me gay, and he got up and punched me in the jaw. One perennial troublemaker grabbed me in a headlock and choked me for a few seconds. Nothing came of it. But bullying was rampant among both genders. It wasn't just "Boys and girls gently caress with each other", everyone hosed with everyone no matter their gender or race. One of them lied about me dropping an N-bomb during World History. One girl held onto my backpack as I was trying to enter science, hung on until I was almost about to force myself out of her grasp, then let go so I fell into the classroom and faceplanted right in front of the teacher. That teacher and I got along well and he came close to a literal WTF in response, but still didn't bother actually disciplining her. In general, discipline was rarely handed out and almost never handed out properly. The principal tried to maintain a typical zero tolerance policy that caught kids in the trap for no good reason (like they all do), but actually catching troublemakers and enforcing discipline was a relative rarity. I remember that my time in 8th grade was coming to a close when the Milwee Middle School SWAT shooting occurred nearby, but I can't recall if any sudden changes occurred as a result of it. Obviously it was a topic of discussion, but we didn't suddenly get armed guards or random searches or anything. And the restrooms were awful. I can't adequately describe them because they were so visibly stained and smelly from the outside that I only went in once. My middle school is one of those open plan ones, where it's just a series of brick buildings that have nothing but classrooms and offices and all the hallways are open pathways between them. The restrooms were likewise open: they simply had one wall removed for access and the stalls were completely walled in with fully closed doors instead of the usual half-walls of public restrooms. When I went in the single time, the stench of poo poo was incredibly overpowering and I nearly vomited. The only restrooms I would use were the ones in the locker room and I would just hold it until I got home otherwise. The only real difference when I moved onto high school was that bullying was a lot more hidden and passive-aggressive. The only person who physically messed with me through those 4 years was a legit criminal who was expelled twice in a row for dealing drugs in class. Otherwise the bullying moved on to just teasing, exclusion, and other non-physical methods. Physical fights were much more rare and usually between people who had existing conflict and were both willing to thrown down over it, so generally both parties were delinquents. I think my "take no poo poo" attitude today is a direct result of how things were in public school. The environment made me pretty meek for the most part, as I spent a good chunk of it afraid of either being attacked or being severely disciplined if I did anything but run or cower. The kind of place where reporting physical harassment is useless and fighting back gets you in major trouble doesn't really engender anything but meekness when you're unpopular and trying to make it out with a relatively clean record and on time. The worst part is that I was incredibly lucky. I was a cis, white, straight boy from a middle class family. I'm surprised anyone else survives.
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Aug 18, 2015 00:26
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Justin Godscock posted:Another myth shot down: there are no "meet me at the flagpole at 3PM" like in the movies: it's a 5-on-1 assault that starts right there and finishes fast. That actually happened in my school a few times, except it was the deli across the street and usually ended when someone called the cops. Fighting in the hallways were a lot more common and more vicious, especially if it was a girl fight - they'd pull on each other's hair and earrings and leave blood spatters and clumps of hair all over the floor.
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Aug 18, 2015 01:33
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yeah we totally had duels at times, mostly cause it's sort of awkward otherwise to arrange for the both of you to be in the same place where no adults are likely to interfere at the same time, and my school wasn't so far gone that kids would be just straight shanking each other in the hallways or whatever that or someone just jumps you in the locker room and their buddies pull you apart when you give him a bloody nose and he starts screaming about how he kicked your rear end, and they back him up I definitely never saw the jocks vs. nerds thing growing up though and a bunch of people swear to me that's real and not a dumb movie thing, so different environments I guess A Wizard of Goatse fucked around with this message at 02:36 on Aug 18, 2015 |
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Aug 18, 2015 02:29
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A Wizard of Goatse posted:I definitely never saw the 'jocks vs. nerds vs. whatever' thing growing up though and a bunch of people swear to me that's real and not a dumb movie thing, so different environments I guess I don't think I ever saw hard and fast cliques. People in certain clubs would often stick together (Drama is basically its own universe), but there would never be an X vs. X kind of thing. If people had something in common they would hang out or get involved in multiple conflicting interests and everyone would chat casually if they had reason to. No rivalries of the sort. Hell, my high school Drama Club had one of the basketball players as well and he really did have to do the "Decide between basketball and acting" thing because he didn't have enough hours in the day for both. He's a model in NYC now, I think. But middle school was too chaotic to have cliques. Everyone stuck together with their own group of friends because you were essentially poo poo-flinging monkeys corralled into the same pen for 7 or 8 hours of the day, 5 days a week.
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Aug 18, 2015 02:40
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I had no hygiene consciousness, trichotillomania and dermatillomania. I actually don't remember a whole lot of super overt bullying during middle school; it was more exclusion than anything. v v Junior high/high school was worse for me. I turned super agoraphobic and looked like an acne ridden justin bieber. Dermatillomania does not help teenage acne yo. Plus I was kinda gender confused, which uh, didn't really help with making friends. I moved to a diff state at 14, and started getting prank phone calls telling me I looked like a dude with a vagina or calling me a lesbian or whatever, which was all pretty dumb. So, I pretty much stopped going to school around 13-14, and totally stopped at 16. But hey, now I am pretty cool and successful in life and much less agoraphobic. And I don't look like Justin Bieber anymore! Adulthood is cool and much preferred to teenage years. Those years are terrible and it was still lovely to get through (and I'm still surprised I got through them, sometimes), and I wish I'd had some goddamned moral support like you can give your friend's son -- it's a nice thing you're doing.
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Aug 18, 2015 07:27
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In like Grade 4, when the teacher would leave the portable, what would happen is: - The windows/blinds get closed - The lights get turned off - You grab whatever is in your desk and just throw it as hard as you can into the darkness I never participated of course. Still stunned nobody lost an eye, although I remember a few of the girls getting hurt. It was literally 30 kids in a tightly packed portable flinging crap at each other completely blind in the dark. I'm assuming all school kids had this occur. Other fond memories include groups pissing into the drain-pipe in the middle of the washroom floor despite urinals being free. Or taking toilet paper, wetting it, and just flinging it everywhere it can stick to. What is it about grade school that just brings out the inner chimpanzee?
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Aug 18, 2015 09:24
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The Cleaner posted:In like Grade 4, when the teacher would leave the portable, what would happen is: this owns
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Aug 18, 2015 10:15
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America sounds like a blast, and just like all the movies.
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Aug 18, 2015 12:55
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A Wizard of Goatse posted:yeah we totally had duels at times, mostly cause it's sort of awkward otherwise to arrange for the both of you to be in the same place where no adults are likely to interfere at the same time, and my school wasn't so far gone that kids would be just straight shanking each other in the hallways or whatever Fights by the bike rack were totally a thing in middle school. I got a bit of a rep as a fat kid who who would fight any bully. I would usually lose, and get the poo poo beat out of me, but at least I went down fighting. So some new kid came into school and started harassing me, to the point he was following me home. He was trying to impress the bullies by harassing me on way home, to the point where I just had to drop my backpack and beat the ever loving poo poo out of the new kid. So he had to go back to the bullies and explain how he got his rear end kicked by the fat kid. He had to transfer out the school system to prevent being mocked. thrakkorzog fucked around with this message at 13:26 on Aug 18, 2015 |
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Aug 18, 2015 13:20
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The Cleaner posted:In like Grade 4, when the teacher would leave the portable, what would happen is: nope your class just ruled thrakkorzog posted:So he had to go back to the bullies and explain how he got his rear end kicked by the fat kid. He had to transfer out the school system to prevent being mocked. Fatality
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Aug 18, 2015 16:04
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I had a campaign of bullying from a large group of rich popular kids go from 5th through 10th grade. It started small, with the usual passive aggressive mocking of my clothes, my shoes, my books, etc. It progressed as time went on to beatings for "back talk" from 3-7 kids with the knowledge of teachers who did nothing, to being locked in a dumpster, to being actually burned with a lighter on my back, and cut with a pen knife on the arm while held down (two seperate incidents). As others above have stated, faculty is in on it. They punish the victims if the victim fights back, but never the aggressor. Likely due to the aggressors being sports team players and rich. I was nearly expelled when I finally beat one of them with a chair until teachers stopped me. Only the intervention of my mother, who's suggestion it was (flippantly at least) to do so saved me from that much. Two things stand out (other than the cutting and the burning of course, those are permanent scars). One was when we passed my father on the bus one day with his car crashed and he in the back of an ambulance going into shock. I spent the day being mocked that he was going to die, and that they'd all have a party. The other was a constant thing, in that the older ones would force younger kids on the bus stop to fight each other or be beaten. Every day, it was two kids got paired off, and forced to fight for their amusement. It went on like that for years, and didn't stop until the police were called on me for beating a kid so badly his eye swollen shut. The worst feeling of all though, was just how lauded they all were. They were popular. Girls loved them for it. They'd be cheered on for doing things to me and others. Most of them went on to be just as rich as their scumbag parents. The worst one though, he at least is on the Sex Offender list. That's a beautiful feeling right there.
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Aug 18, 2015 19:19
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Talmonis posted:I was nearly expelled when I finally beat one of them with a chair until teachers stopped me. I love these little moments in the 100% unanimous stories of being a victim who was picked on for no reason by a faceless cloud of bullies who certainly never grew up to buy forums accounts where a little nugget of unpolished history shines through A Wizard of Goatse fucked around with this message at 20:06 on Aug 18, 2015 |
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Aug 18, 2015 20:04
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When I was a kid grades 1-6 were called elementary school. It was a miserable time for me because I was literally the smallest boy in school and an obvious target for exclusion salted with bullying. For the most part I was simply left out of things but around grade 4 the bullying picked up as the other kids were getting taller and bigger. I was not an angry, violent kid so I did my best to simply avoid the kids that were picking on me. It came to a head one afternoon in home room and I got into a "fight" with the worst bullier right in the middle of the room. I put "fight" in quotes because it was mostly just heated grabbing and pushing before the teacher separated us and I had the pleasure of sitting at my desk weeping into my hands while my classmates laughed at me. I really, really hated fighting. The teacher was young and inexperienced and wound up calling my father at work demanding he come collect me because I was "out of control." After that there was much less bullying but I was almost completely isolated and I remember it being a very lonely time. By grade 7 I had grown to a normal height but I was never the same after that. If you want to know it feels like to spend most of your life invisible and unwanted just let me know!  EDIT: My only memorable fight after that was a true late 1970s moment. I was on a ferry and got in a fight with an entire softball team over who would next get to play the Sea Wolf arcade game. Unsurprisingly I lost that fight. My older brother had to push into the crowd to pull me off the ground before I got my teeth kicked out. I haven't been in a fight since. Dick Trauma fucked around with this message at 20:42 on Aug 18, 2015 |
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Aug 18, 2015 20:29
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A Wizard of Goatse posted:I love these little moments in the 100% unanimous stories of being a victim who was picked on for no reason by a faceless cloud of bullies who certainly never grew up to buy forums accounts where a little nugget of unpolished history shines through I for one am shocked that being tormented and attacked leads to anger management problems.
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Aug 18, 2015 20:55
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A Wizard of Goatse posted:I love these little moments in the 100% unanimous stories of being a victim who was picked on for no reason by a faceless cloud of bullies who certainly never grew up to buy forums accounts where a little nugget of unpolished history shines through Not surprising. There are a few ways one can respond when targeted for whatever reason. Push back, retreat, or attempt to ingratiate yourself. Most kids will pick the first option, egos being what they are at that age. Only the biggest wusses can stand getting dumped on without blowing their top eventually. Despite it having the tang of indiscretions of youth, I can't condemn kids for defending themselves. You can't let people walk all over you, especially when it comes to physical intimidation or violence. And hey, it loving works. Beat down enough asshats and the word starts getting around that you don't put up with poo poo. It won't stop your old enemies from loving with you but it sure as hell prevents new ones from stalking into the scene.
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Aug 18, 2015 23:38
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I was really hosed up in middle school, to the point where I didn't get bullied much, because I was clearly the crazy kid. But a completely different kind of horror came from 5th grade. I changed schools from montessori style to standard classroom that year. When I got to math class, I cried at the work my teacher gave me, because it was too easy. I thought she thought I was stupid. Later that year, the whole class had a special lecture from her...about her time in Auschwitz. She told us about having to use her only bowl for eating as a toilet at night, because they would be shot if they were found outside after dark. And I cried in front of her over math problems. I'm still horrificly embarrassed over that.
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Aug 19, 2015 03:32
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Jeza posted:America sounds like a blast, and just like all the movies. America is about 300 million people, which is similar enough in size to Western Europe. America has at least as many cultures but, of course, movies only show what Hollywood or New York screen writers and directors think. Where are you from and how was your middle school experience the same and different?
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Aug 19, 2015 10:37
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MartianAgitator posted:America is about 300 million people, which is similar enough in size to Western Europe. America has at least as many cultures but, of course, movies only show what Hollywood or New York screen writers and directors think. Where are you from and how was your middle school experience the same and different? The discrepancies among European cultures are a vast gulf compared to most American states. The differences just seem exaggerated because you live there. I've been to the US many times, and though clearly that's nowhere near enough to have a truly informed opinion, really the biggest differentiators are political. Almost everybody shares the same cultural touchstones, recognises the same shops, music, TV, speaks the same language etc. A person can land in Oregon, Texas or New England and have zero trouble adapting, other than to the climate. Where I went to school, middle schools essentially don't exist. Secondary school for me was from 13-18. I wouldn't call my education exactly representative, but nobody was shot or stabbed, bullying if it happened was low-key and essentially just verbal/social.
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Aug 19, 2015 11:12
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Nathilus posted:Not surprising. There are a few ways one can respond when targeted for whatever reason. Push back, retreat, or attempt to ingratiate yourself. Most kids will pick the first option, egos being what they are at that age. Only the biggest wusses can stand getting dumped on without blowing their top eventually. Middle school really does a mindfuck on people that makes them properly paranoid. Once I hit High School, I had a minor altercation with a QB. A teacher caught us fighting and we both just claimed it was harmless rassling. I had detention, so I missed my bus ride home. Some football players going home from practice offered to give me a lift home, and I gave them a double finger salute. Once we exchanged notes it turned out I was kind of the rear end in a top hat.
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Aug 19, 2015 13:15
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In 8th grade we had the TAKS science test at the end of the year, so all the 8th graders for about a week did these SUPER 8 or CRAZY 8 or whatever the gently caress it was called rotations to prepare for the piss easy state standardised test. Well, during one of the classes my actual science teacher from the next room comes charging out of the door shouting "YOU STUPID BITCH" and ramming some kid against the lockers. Apparently people were fighting outside the door or something? I'm still not sure - at the time I thought someone pissed him off in rotations. Earlier that same year I was friends with a girl - we sat together in some classes and hung out in a group at lunch. One day she broke into school at night and set fire to the library and one room and then we never saw her again. I think the day before I talked to her a bit afterschool while waiting for the bus. I remember one time at lunch someone in our group stole some of my food so I stole some of someone else's and he tried to grab my neck a bit and I was bleeding a wee bit. But when this one girl from the group tried to tell on us we were both just telling her it was okay and nothing bad happened. She still told and we both got detention/lunch duty. She was also best friends with the girl from the previous paragraph. AdorableStar fucked around with this message at 14:14 on Aug 19, 2015 |
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Aug 19, 2015 14:09
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thrakkorzog posted:Middle school really does a mindfuck on people that makes them properly paranoid. Haha. Myself, I never started anything but when people started talking poo poo to me, I talked so much poo poo back they almost had to act. Definitely an rear end in a top hat move. It was so rewarding, though. My friends older brother came up with all these butt-related insults. That was a real popular way to piss people off, then. They were pretty good too. Anal avenger, rectal ranger, that kind of thing. Oh and my favorite, flying butt pirate. It really does flow off the tongue. By high school, for me, everyone was already pretty chilled out though. I went to a public joint that was academically rigorous, and which had really good clubs. Band, football, debate, theater arts, all those kinda things were top quality and high in UIL ranks. Everyone who had a deece extracurricular was too busy getting treated like made men to start any bullshit. The admin was all about keeping that UIL and other tourney prestige up, so kids in clubs got a ton of special privledges. By sophomore year I was in a series of programming classes that lasted through the rest of my time there, with literally the biggest superjock from my middle school. And I was a nerdy as hell debate kid. He was from a super rich family that had like 14 kids all named names starting with the same letter, and all the ones that had been through before him were also megajocks. So he got treated like a loving Kennedy or Carnegie as well as being the best qb and ended up with a giant head. But by the time we were in that first programming class he was chill, and cool by my standards as well as by his own. And that was the rule not the exception. Even our grunge/punk kids, which were what we had instead of an emo crowd, got along with all the other cliques. In fact they were a nexus of activity. They had the best weed, of course, but more importantly club kids tended to eat in the clubrooms which was a privledge but could get old, so going to eat with them outside and playing hacky sack or whatever was something that a lot of kids did occasionally. So I guess what I'm trying to say is that middle school sucked and then abruptly high school owned. There was a sudden break toward civilized behavior. I guess we'd all gotten the lord of the flies out of our systems. And I swear to god, I don't blame anyone for that poo poo. I was batshit as the rest of them. Little monkeys gonna throw poo poo at each other when not properly contained and supervised. It is what it is. People don't develop that "hmmm maybe I don't give a gently caress" mentality till a little later or till they have something vaguely important to do.
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Aug 19, 2015 15:11
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I was a socially awkward misfit until the end of High School, partially because of growing up in a weird/unstable environment and moving and partially from losing all of my old friends right before Middle School.  It was a nightmare. I am a person of color who moved into a place that was surprisingly segregated and was the butt of endless racist jokes. The High School was full of jock types, as it was a feeding ground for one of the top sports colleges in the country, so nerds probably got an extra dose of hate. I was a girl, which meant I didn't get beat up, but almost no other females accepted me. Any girl who did, it turned out to be a false friendship or hangout invitation just to mess with me some more. I retreated into a world of books and video games, reading through gym class if they let me, faking sick at every opportunity to stay home and avoid the abuse, and just basically became a recluse.  High School was a lot better even though I was still Queen Nerd, but I still stayed in my shell and stayed really quiet. Turns out if you do that a lot of people just don't have enough ammo to gently caress with you, so they'd make up poo poo like I was on drugs (because I slept in class often and was really skinny, but that was because my mom decided to wake me up 5:30 every loving morning even though the bus didn't come till 8). I eventually fit in with the random misfit-but-not-uber-nerd types and the choir/theater kids. It also seems like the teenage-rear end in a top hat switch spontaneously shut off in every kid's brains around Junior year, which made everything much nicer as well. I still credit the Middle/High School hell with causing me to stay way too quiet and withdrawn during my college years, causing me to miss out on a lot of valuable friendships and business opportunities. I finally grew out of it and realized that everyone in my age group was out to get me, but by then it was too little too late.
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Aug 19, 2015 16:30
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Not a horror story, but I want to give a shout out to middle school home room teacher that used his instruction time to take the class outside almost every day, 95% of the time to play touch football. Home room was the last period of the day, and we had a great time spending the 2:00PM hour running up and down the field while other classes sat inside doing mindless worksheets. The most amazing part to me was that every single kid in the class participated, mostly without complaint. Fat kids, girls, nerds, and proto-jocks alike would sidle up to the line of scrimmage and either seriously play or pretend to play football  . There was a solemn understanding that ours was a fortunate class, and that it was best to just go with the flow even if one has a distaste for sports. Dude was a Phys Ed teacher, volunteer fireman, and all-around champion of the human spirit. Malcolm fucked around with this message at 08:13 on Aug 20, 2015 |
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Aug 20, 2015 08:01
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Malcolm posted:Not a horror story, but I want to give a shout out to middle school home room teacher that used his instruction time to take the class outside almost every day, 95% of the time to play touch football. Home room was the last period of the day, and we had a great time spending the 2:00PM hour running up and down the field while other classes sat inside doing mindless worksheets. The most amazing part to me was that every single kid in the class participated, mostly without complaint. Fat kids, girls, nerds, and proto-jocks alike would sidle up to the line of scrimmage and either seriously play or pretend to play football At my school it was the first period of the day and didn't last but about half an hour or so.
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Aug 20, 2015 10:38
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I'm now a middle school AP, and my career has been centered around school behavior, and I just wanted to chime in that the awful poo poo posted here 100% has to do with adults having ineffective and insufficient systems. Middle school can be a supportive place to go through the roughest period of life, but only if the adults know how to create that environment. Middle schoolers are literally all temporary sociopaths. From a child development perspective, they have abandoned the moral and ethical structures of their parents, but have yet to form their own, so they are just constantly going "WHERE ARE THE BOUNDARIES?!" 7th grade is the absolute worst because it's the apex of this kind of behavior. Unless the adults know exactly where those boundaries are and how to enforce them, things will go to poo poo. Quickly.
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Aug 23, 2015 23:20
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Riven posted:I'm now a middle school AP, and my career has been centered around school behavior, and I just wanted to chime in that the awful poo poo posted here 100% has to do with adults having ineffective and insufficient systems. Middle school can be a supportive place to go through the roughest period of life, but only if the adults know how to create that environment. This makes good sense, and helps me realize why I was such a little poo poo all the time.
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Aug 24, 2015 00:02
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Cuckoo posted:I still credit the Middle/High School hell with causing me to stay way too quiet and withdrawn during my college years, causing me to miss out on a lot of valuable friendships and business opportunities. I finally grew out of it and realized that everyone in my age group was out to get me, but by then it was too little too late. Same here, although I'm still really quiet and reserved around new people. It's been YEARS since I've had anything even resembling a bullying experience but my default assumption of new people is still that they don't like me, and my lack of being sociable makes them think I don't like them. I've been working on it but it's definitely a thing I have to concentrate on and it doesn't come naturally. I've never been a social butterfly but the constant exclusion during my formative years definitely helped solidify the "gently caress people" mindset.
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Aug 24, 2015 01:20
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PT6A posted:This makes good sense, and helps me realize why I was such a little poo poo all the time. A lot of middle school teachers intended to end up in high school, but didn't. Not that middle school is where loser high school teachers end up, it's just what the job opening was. Most student taught in a high school, and all of their education classes focused on that age range. Especially in middle and upper-middle class places, you can safely assume that most high schoolers will do the right thing, and you can let a few losers fall through the cracks (not that you should, but this was definitely the mentality at my high school). So they are not prepared for the children of nice people being absolute loving monsters. They are less of monsters at home and in sports, because there are more rules (hopefully). They are less of monsters in class time, because it's structured and there are more rules, but at break? Passing periods? If you treat a middle school campus like a high school campus because they are both "secondary," you're basically creating Lord of the Flies. My current school is on a shared campus space with an elementary, another middle, and a high. We share a student union building with cafeteria/gym/etc. my wife went "wow, it looks like a little college!" I thought "good lord, SO MUCH UNSTRUCTURED SPACE." My primary before-school task was imagining out the structure for every minute of the day.
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Aug 24, 2015 02:18
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Riven posted:Unless the adults know exactly where those boundaries are and how to enforce them, things will go to poo poo. Quickly. "Yes, I understand he hasn't turned in any work these last two months... but when he gets home he starts playing his Xbox One Minecraft and says he has no homework, so maybe you need to do a better job of making sure he remembers there's homework." This makes things harder to keep locked down because it imbues the little shits with an air of invulnerability and entitlement. Also, the newest hip thing is Restorative Justice for students... which I can understand to be a powerful thing for high schoolers, but good luck getting 8th graders to be self reflective or empathetic.
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Aug 24, 2015 06:42
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We don't really have a middle school here. We have 6 years of primary school and then 6 years of high school. Early high school is probably the equivalent of American middle school, it's definitely the time where people are at their most cuntish. I was always an awkward kid in primary school. I came from a poorer family who couldn't afford to spend money. So as every fad rolled around with some new toy or thing I never had it and was always hung poo poo on. At my primary school there was a little clique of teachers kids and their friends who mercilessly made my life hell all the way through. I finished primary school and went to high school hoping to put all that poo poo behind me. Early high school was where it got really bad though. I went through some of the worst years of my life there. One day in year 7 at high school I out of nowhere got attacked by a group of kids from year 10. They beat me up pretty badly and one of them who was the ring leader kept saying things to me like, "I know what you've been saying oval office" and "You should watch your loving mouth", etc. I had no loving idea what the hell he was on about. From that point started an ongoing campaign of assaults and bullying from this guy and his friends. I would get randomly punched in the head from behind. Cornered and beat up or verbally abused. I had no idea why this was happening, but it was a daily occurrence and it made my life absolute hell. I eventually found out why it was happening. To cut a long story short back in primary school when I was in grade 4 one of my few friends in the world died. He had a seizure and drowned in his bathtub while his parents were downstairs watching TV. The ring leader of these guys making my life hell was his older cousin. A couple of the kids who bullied me in primary school and now went to the same high school had told him that I had said his little cousin had committed suicide. So naturally he hated my guts. It got so bad that the coordinators at the school tried to do mediation with him, me and our parents. It didn't change a loving thing. Life only got better for me when we moved and I had a fresh start at a new school. It left it's scars though, for a long time I had a hard time trusting people. The funny thing is though, now I'm doing my dream job, starting a family and generally winning at life. Last I saw those little cunts who did that to me back then have landed flat on their asses in life.
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Aug 24, 2015 08:39
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Riven posted:A lot of middle school teachers intended to end up in high school, but didn't. Not that middle school is where loser high school teachers end up, it's just what the job opening was. Most student taught in a high school, and all of their education classes focused on that age range. Especially in middle and upper-middle class places, you can safely assume that most high schoolers will do the right thing, and you can let a few losers fall through the cracks (not that you should, but this was definitely the mentality at my high school). So they are not prepared for the children of nice people being absolute loving monsters. They are less of monsters at home and in sports, because there are more rules (hopefully). They are less of monsters in class time, because it's structured and there are more rules, but at break? Passing periods? If you treat a middle school campus like a high school campus because they are both "secondary," you're basically creating Lord of the Flies. So you don't think kids should have free time in school?
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Aug 24, 2015 09:18
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Crystal Geometry posted:So you don't think kids should have free time in school? Unsupervised and during that phase of development? Hell no. Teachers should also be held accountable for bullying that's done under their watch if they do nothing.
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Aug 24, 2015 14:06
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I went to a Catholic K-8 school and around the beginning of the 6th grade the "psycho" switch seemed to get flipped on in everyone's head. You basically had to constantly be on guard because someone could sucker punch you at any time. Things eventually calmed down a bit once enough parents complained and the administration kicked out the two biggest assholes from whom the majority of all trouble flowed. This fixed a lot of things, but it didn't fix everything because the majority of the people there were just jerks. You still had to watch out for a flying shoe when changing for gym class, having your pens and pencils taken and thrown across the room if you let your guard down or being pushed into the urinals when using the restroom. My mom ran into one of my 7th and 8th grade teachers years later and she remarked that my class and the one ahead of me were, for some reason, the worst she had ever seen as far as bad behavior. I later found out that one of the expelled kids was quickly kicked out of the next school they sent him to after he threw a girl's books out of the bus window and ended up in one of those schools for kids with behavior problems. Last I heard, he's now typical white trash with 3 kids from 3 different girls, a lovely house with a yard full of trash, a police record and neighbors who all hate him. The other guy, who, even in grade school, considered himself some kind of gangster badass (I remember him telling me that he and his "crew" were going to shoot up my house at one point), killed himself about a year ago after he was caught dealing drugs while possessing a firearm. I looked him up in the court records after hearing the story and he was already arrested once several years prior for drug possession and received probation. Since this was a second offense and it had a firearm charge tacked on it looked like he was facing several years in prison. Seems that Mr. Tough Guy couldn't face that and killed himself instead. High school, comparatively, was really chill. I don't really remember anything being really clique-y aside from the divide between the smart kids and the future dropouts. There were some assholes, but aside from gym and a couple of classes that everyone had to take to graduate they spent the day in the back hall with the other illiterate bad-attitude types so they never caused problems for anyone but themselves. After 10th grade all of the stoners, flunkies and assholes seemed to either drop out or were at the tech school learning to pump gas so the last two years were pretty nice.
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Aug 24, 2015 15:33
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When I was growing up, we had just grammar school to the 8th grade and then high school from 9 through 12. I was a nerd growing up, got called names and was given verbal poo poo, but rarely was physically bullied because I fought back and won. I had no verbal jousting skills whatsoever, so I had no comebacks when people called me a human being or made fun of my lovely sneakers and not-so-popular clothes. I was in school before the whole "zero tolerance" bullshit so I could physically defend myself if I was attacked, but my parents had a strict "no punching first" rule so I just had to sit there and meekly accept the name calling. But when I did get into a fight, all the anger from constantly being a target would come out on whomever had attacked me so the result was overkill. The best revenge was going to a military academy for college, working out a lot and going back to a high school reunion not long after I graduated college and having nobody recognize me. I had changed that much. I think the best advice is: don't take bullying. If someone hits a kid, that kid should be able to fight back. My kids won't get in trouble even if they hit first, so long as they're truly being bullied by some jerkoff. Sometimes, the bullies aren't horrible people, they just either get bullied at home or just enjoy the power they have over other kids and a bloody nose, stomped toes, whatever reminds them that there are consequences to their actions. My wife was homeschooled though, and she didn't experience bullying in the home school program and they hung out with other kids. Maybe it was because older and younger kids were mixed together, it wasn't 30 twelve year olds in one room. Moral_Hazard fucked around with this message at 15:38 on Aug 24, 2015 |
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Aug 24, 2015 15:34
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MoraleHazard posted:I think the best advice is: don't take bullying. If someone hits a kid, that kid should be able to fight back. My kids won't get in trouble even if they hit first, so long as they're truly being bullied by some jerkoff. Sometimes, the bullies aren't horrible people, they just either get bullied at home or just enjoy the power they have over other kids and a bloody nose, stomped toes, whatever reminds them that there are consequences to their actions. I think you're correct about some of the negative influences that zero-tolerance has, but there's another issue that I have with it that I don't see discussed nearly as often. As zero-tolerance rules expand and punishments get harsher, incidents will often be ignored entirely because there's no way to punish a bully beyond a long-term suspension or, in some cases, expulsion. In cases where the bullies are the popular kids, good students, athletes, etc., probably with support from their parents, this can be very dangerous. All of a sudden, these bullies learn that there really are no consequences for their actions until they do something really, really hosed up. You can get away with a lot of low-level poo poo for a long time, because teachers and the administration do not have the tools they need to deal with it appropriately under a zero-tolerance system.
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Aug 24, 2015 16:18
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| # ? Apr 23, 2024 14:36 |
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MoraleHazard posted:When I was growing up, we had just grammar school to the 8th grade and then high school from 9 through 12. I was a nerd growing up, got called names and was given verbal poo poo, but rarely was physically bullied because I fought back and won. I had no verbal jousting skills whatsoever, so I had no comebacks when people called me a human being or made fun of my lovely sneakers and not-so-popular clothes. I was in school before the whole "zero tolerance" bullshit so I could physically defend myself if I was attacked, but my parents had a strict "no punching first" rule so I just had to sit there and meekly accept the name calling. But when I did get into a fight, all the anger from constantly being a target would come out on whomever had attacked me so the result was overkill. how are you planning to assess whether your kid is 'truly being bullied', I've seen parents furiously defending their kids for assaulting children years younger with a rock or attempting to burn down the building, you have literally only your kid's version of the story to go by and parenthood involves a certain inherent unwillingness to countenance that you have spawned the Antichrist parents are why schools have the dumb policies they do, zero tolerance lets them mete out a punishment that'll hopefully deter some low-level shittiness without invoking a campaign of hatred from helicopter parents convinced their precious baby darling is being officially discriminated against
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Aug 24, 2015 16:47
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