Teacher Calls 6th Grader a Loser

United States
March 12, 2010 4:30pm CST
I could not believe this story! I just watched the news report on this story and it's terrible! A 6th grade teacher would right bullying notes on one of his female students papers. He wrote stuff like "-20% for being a loser" and when he marked two points off a question he wrote the word loser next to it. The mother reported him and the nasty notes stopped...for a while. After a while they resurfaced. The teacher says he writes these notes to relate better to his students! The girl also told her mother that one day her teacher threw her pencil box into the hallway, and SHE got in trouble from another teacher by disrupting his class for the incident! THIS IS AWFUL, ABUSIVE behavior. Of course I mean verbally abusive, no reports of the teacher hitting the girl, most physical thing may have been the pencil box incident. But this little girl is so beautiful and sweet looking!! How can the school allow this teacher to continue working there and torturing this poor little girl!?!??!
5 people like this
23 responses
@rmuxagirl (7548)
• United States
12 Mar 10
I was appauled when I read this on yahoo. How can the teacher say calling students losers help him relate to them? It discourages them and lowers the esteem. I think part of a teachers job is to reinforce postivie esteem. A know a young man who gets called out in class and pick on by teachers and it makes his day at school worse. its sad that the school is going to allow the teacher to still go on teaching!
@fattymc (140)
12 Mar 10
It's bad enough that the teacher is being biased. But not stopping when dealing with a parent is just worse. -20% for being a loser? Is that what you typed because a teacher is supposed to mark fairly. That's their job, and getting in trouble for doing what she didn't do is just terrible Poor girl. She deserves better. It's okay to not like somebody but they should at least get along. Fire the teacher I say.
1 person likes this
@clocks123 (1225)
• United States
12 Mar 10
i think this is terrible for this 6th grader or any student for that matter. there are teachers out there as well as employers who bully and get away with it. at work, if it is you and them alone and they say something inappropriate, it is your word against theres. when that happens, it is time to leave. for students, i would go straight to the principal and report this. i hope something would be done rather than be ignored. i remember as an 8th grade student a teacher went around the class to each of us and stated, you are a pleasure or you are not a pleasure to have in the class. i think that was uncalled for, right. i don't recall anything being done about it either
• United States
12 Mar 10
Well, it wasn't a "he said she said" issue because he wrote it write on the girls paper for everyone to see! Yeah, that is no good!!!! If I was told I wasn't a pleasure for the classroom I would feel really bad about myself and probably not do as good!
@writersedge (22563)
• United States
17 Mar 10
I would be switching my daughter to a different teacher. I've put Excellent, Very Good, Great Job, Nice Try, Poor Handwriting, A, B, C, D, E, F, Do Over, You can do better, What happened?, What did you write, I can't read it, but never looser and I taught INMATES! That Teacher is messing with the kid's head and her self-esteem and shouldn't be allowed to continue.
@writersedge (22563)
• United States
17 Mar 10
Oh yeah, I'm sure I forgot a few, like "Follow Directions" and circled the directions.
@cupkitties (7421)
• United States
13 Mar 10
Evidently this teacher had the idea he could easily get away with this since it took so long for him to be reported. Kids need to be taught its alright that its ok to speak up when things like this are happening.
• United States
13 Mar 10
Sorry. I didn't catch the last part there. I wonder if the parents of this girl and the other students have gone to the school board on this matter because it looks to me like they need to go a step up.
@lelin1123 (15595)
• Puerto Rico
13 Mar 10
OMG that teacher should not be teaching at all. He has some definite mental issues. First of all how do you write "loser" on a childs paper. The damage that he could be doing to this poor girl mentally. How is that relating better to his students. Then to throw her pencil box out in the hall. Has anyone reported him. This is a total disgrace and if she was my daughter I would be fighing to get this teacher out of the school. I am so upset right now with this story. Do teachers have to pass a physiological test? If not, they should.
• United States
14 Mar 10
The mother has reported the teacher but apparently he has not been fired! If I were the girls mother I would DEMAND that she be switched to another class-since the school, for some reason, won't fire him.
• United States
13 Mar 10
If they do have psychological tests they defiantly need to up the standards, and this guy does have some problems, he was probably picked on as a kid through middle and high school, just because he's bigger doesn't mean hes any better than he was when he was picked on before, the sicko.
• Canada
13 Mar 10
There are actually more teachers out there that do this sort of thing than we realize sometimes. My sister was victim to one of these bullying teachers. In 4th grade she had a teacher that would tell her she would never amount to anything in life and she would verbally abuse her on a daily basis. She was called stupid and dumb by the teacher. I would never put up with this type of behaviour from my childrens teachers and I would have gone farther than that mother did. In my opinion if you cannot treat people(even children) with respect then you shouldn't be a teacher or work with any one that is either a child or has special needs.
@vivasuzi (4127)
• United States
15 Mar 10
Well let's hope that now something happens since the news was involved. It is sad that people have to go to the news in order to get justice sometimes! I can't imagine any teacher doing any of these things. It's just wrong. Teachers are supposed to be encouraging and supportive, not put students down. Let me know if you hear anything further. A lot of times it takes a news story for a teacher to receive real discipline.
• United States
14 Mar 10
This is awful behavior and this person has no business being a teacher. You don't call children losers. You don't bully them. You're an adult, not a kid and that is not bringing you closer to your students it's just showing people how much of a loser you are yourself if you have to subcumb to the level of 6th graders.
@cher913 (25782)
• Canada
13 Mar 10
that is really horrible. we know a few teachers and i know they would never do this but if they did, they would be fired in a heartbeat in our public school system.
@dawnald (85129)
• Shingle Springs, California
12 Mar 10
Sorry, how the heck can the teacher possibly consider this "relating". It's bullying pure and simple!
• United States
12 Mar 10
The only students he's relating too are the cruel kids that are always in detention!! He should not behave like that and better stop before he gets whats coming to him (a good, old fashioned firing!)
• Philippines
13 Mar 10
That is so horrible. Though there is no physical abuse, there is verbal and in some way psychological abuse too. The latter two are actually more destructive than just the physical abuse. I don't understand how writing "loser" on his student's paper is actually relating to students. Yes, he does relate to the student...in a way that he is that girl's bully. The school should have seen this behavior before he even got hired with the psychological tests and such. I hope the school does something about it.
• Philippines
28 Mar 10
Oh, how come this kind of teacher is still in profession. It is not good that he is acting this way. I hope the principal would fire him.
• United States
13 Mar 10
This is why we need higher level mental evaluations for teachers, and it's getting harder and harder because the people who are smart enough to go to school for long enough to get the job were usually picked on and abused in school to the point of mental conditions like this same teacher has, just because your bigger buddy....doesn't mean that your different.
• Philippines
13 Mar 10
Gosh I could not believe this! I'm a soon-to-be teacher myself and I can't believe that there are teachers who are like that! I'm not proud of it since the teacher could be one of the reasons why a student don't go to school. Just here in my country, I know few teachers who don't do their job well or extraordinarily. Teachers are expected to behave in a certain way that they will be seen as role models, and I could not believe those teachers would be qualified professionally for doing those abusive behaviors. I think the problem is in employment of teachers. I think constant supervision to them is very important. Sad to say that students are suffering for their misconduct behavior!
@sid556 (30960)
• United States
13 Mar 10
Hi LilyoftheThorns, If I were that girl's mom, I'd be relentless in my pursuit of that teacher's job. I would be that teacher's worst nightmare! I'd go over and beyond the principal and the schoolboard if I had to to see that this teacher not only stopped hurting my daughter but never got the chance to hurt any other kid.
@BlueGoblin (1829)
• United States
13 Mar 10
I wish my teachers wrote 'loser' on my homework instead of drawing lame smiley faces with a frown. If they really disapproved of my work then they shouldn't have wasted their time creating artwork on my paper. Being called a loser would have actually motivated me though.
@timhinyy (1652)
• United States
13 Mar 10
i was on yahoo earlier and came across that story that was pretty awful i mean is that really the best way to try to relate to a child. That is the best idea a teacher could come up with really that is pretty sad. Who is the adult here they go to school to become teachers and then treat the students this way. I really don't see how that helps out the student in any way at all and that should not be allowed by a teacher to be able to treat a student that way. Now that this story has gotten some national attention it will be interesting to see what happens to the teacher at that school. Most schools don't like this kind of negative attention.
@RawBill1 (8531)
• Gold Coast, Australia
13 Mar 10
That is incredibly bad! How could a teacher do such a thing? This teacher should be stood down from teaching and be forced to sit through an enquiry into their behaviour. They should be at the very least suspended from teaching for a year in my opinion. We have had both our kids complain two years apart and very independent of one another, of the acts of bullying from a stand-in teacher who was filling in for their regular teachers. This teacher was apparently taken off the list of emergency teachers that the school uses after my wife confronted her and then reported the behaviour to the principal. We found out a few days later that other parents in the same class as my son felt the same way about this teacher. Our kids now go to school with a note in their bag every day saying that they have permission from us to come home if this teacher turns up to teach them at all!
@shello (964)
• United Arab Emirates
13 Mar 10
A so called teacher in the right mind should not call a student a loser for whatever reason he may have. It would be undeniably disgusting for the mother upon knowing that and at the same time it would be a total blow on the girl's emotional and mental struggle. How can that school allow such incident to happen to their student?