I also became a teacher partly in reaction to being treated poorly by a teacher. I can remember when I was a little girl thinking that when I grew up I would be a *nice*teacher.
Her name was Miss Gong, and she must have been an incredibly unhappy person. She specialized in making her first and second graders stand beside their desks while she yelled and ridiculed and *balled them out.* Any child who made a comment in self defense was yelled at more. For some offenses the child would be subjected to this more than once a day over a period of several days. Her comments[interrogations] were cutting and cruel. I remember being reprimanded for things my *brother* did, for goodness sake. At some point in my teens I read about living in a totalitarian society, and realized that Miss Gong's classroom had been like that.
There were no controls on this woman, as she was also the building principal of a small school. The other teacher in the building was basically kind, but Miss Gong tended to enter her classroom and do the whole sadistic routine for many of the "offenses" committed there. Unfortunately I was in that small school for five years, grades 1 - 5, and thought of teachers as enemies when I left.
I did do a mischievous thing to get even with her *pet* when I was in second grade. There was one little girl who was a family friend of Miss Gong, and used to call her Aunt Gert even though they were not blood relatives.
After our Art class we were required to clean up the little scraps of paper and blobs of old fashioned paste from the floor around our desks. Then we had to *sit tall* and straight with our hands folded. One day I cleaned my area and sat in the approved way, only to be yelled at for leaving scraps and paste under my desk.
As Miss Gong yelled at me that day I realized that she was fallible, that she could be wrong. The little pile under my desk was in the exact shape that a child's hand uses when scootching a little pile of scraps and paper together to pick up off the floor. I was really surprised that Miss Gong didn't realize this, but didn't dare tell her. It was obvious to me that someone had planted the mess under my desk.
Her favorite pet, Harriet, sat beside me. As I stood there being yelled at and ridiculed she sat very tall and didn't look my way. I decided, rightly or wrongly, that Harriet had set me up.
The next time we did cutting and pasting in Art I waited until Harriet was done cleaning her area, and was sitting tall with her hands folded looking straight ahead. Then I carefully tossed all of my paper scraps and paste blobs under her desk, being careful to distribute them evenly in case Miss Gong had figured out about the hand shape thing.
Harriet did get reprimanded, but not nearly as hard as everyone else always did. I can still remember her saying, "But Aunt Gert....."
Miss Gong finally did get some just desserts, of a sort. When I was in college a little boy was in her classroom who came from a very sad background. When he used inappropriate language she literally *washed his mouth out with soap.* I don't know all the details - the whole situation ended being headlines in our small town newspaper. Miss Gong apparently washed his mouth out several times. One morning the poor little 5 or 6 year old decided not to go to school, and he started walking the other way. Someone who sighted him on the highway several miles out of town was concerned enough to stop and check on him, and the whole terrible story became front page news.
Miss Gong didn't lose her job immediately, but she did retire at the end of the year. I never did hear any backstairs gossip about the whole thing, so I don't know what all of the repercussions may have been for the school district.
