Bul­ly­ing teach­ers - is this a joke? Not in this so­ci­ety. We have seen it on the tele­vi­sion and in the news­pa­per. It is as re­al as sex in schools. Bul­ly­ing caus­es the vic­tims to live in fear and a con­stant state of vi­o­la­tion. But what hap­pens when the sit­u­a­tion moves from be­tween stu­dents to where it in­volves the teacher? Yes, you heard me, when the teacher gets lev­el licks or a ver­bal so­lil­o­quy. This phe­nom­e­non of stu­dent teacher vi­o­lence in the form of both phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal abuse is on the in­crease. So who los­es when this hap­pens, teacher or stu­dent.

The teacher stands as a role mod­el away from home. They of­fer guid­ance and ed­u­cate the next gen­er­a­tion. They even lend them­selves as a lis­ten­ing ear to many of our teenage is­sues that we can't dis­cuss with mom and DEF­I­NITE­LY not with dad, be­cause well, you know why. Sure there are a few teach­ers that we don't get along with be­cause as we like to say, 'yuh blood ent take them'. That is an is­sue of dif­fer­ing per­son­al­i­ties. But let's get re­al; this is busi­ness, noth­ing per­son­al. The busi­ness is your ed­u­ca­tion. Teach­ers are not here to be­friend you since they are nei­ther your age or (in most cas­es) your size. In my opin­ion, this out of con­trol be­hav­iour start­ed with the re­moval of cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment. Stu­dents be­gan to jump out of them­selves, not re­al­is­ing that they were caus­ing more dam­age than de­stroy­ing an ego or caus­ing bod­i­ly harm. Let's do dam­age con­trol, step by step.

En­gage with this sit­u­a­tion. Mrs. Smith has been a teacher at a sec­ondary school for 15 years and has just de­cid­ed to take on a form five class. She has seen her share of 'rude' chil­dren, but noth­ing that a stern warn­ing wouldn't cure. Meet Kizzy and Ja­mal, the Mr and Miss of the class. They dis­re­gard all warn­ings and just like Sue on Glee, when they walk the halls, teach­ers scam­per in fear. They have man­aged to cul­ti­vate a 'rep'. That is, a rep­u­ta­tion as the in­sti­ga­tors of mass may­hem and fear.

In all her years of teach­ing no amount of coun­selling or even sus­pen­sion seems to work on this dy­nam­ic duo. As a re­sult of their ac­tions the whole class be­gins to feel stigma­ti­za­tion.

Teach­ers call in sick on Mon­day's, be­cause 3S has a full day of class and NO ONE wants to teach the class with those two in it. Im­me­di­ate­ly we see that their ac­tions are not on­ly dis­rupt­ing their ed­u­ca­tion but that of their peers as well. Teach­ers as well be­gin to lose re­spect for the stu­dents and elim­i­nate them from any list that may be cho­sen to rep­re­sent the school. School ac­tiv­i­ties are com­plete­ly out of the ques­tion and the rec­om­men­da­tion you want­ed for the Au­gust va­ca­tion job, don't waste time, just for­get about it.

The thing is, every ac­tion has a re­ac­tion or a rip­ple ef­fect. In this in­stance, bul­ly­ing a teacher caus­es more harm to you. If a teacher does not feel safe and a sense of re­spect the en­thu­si­asm with which they teach is lost. Stu­dents will suf­fer since if they are not ed­u­cat­ed they can't get in­to uni­ver­si­ty, to get a bet­ter job and do loads of shop­ping, as­sum­ing that's the nat­ur­al or­der of things. In the fu­ture, do the right thing, re­spect the or­der. Teach­ers are in con­trol, show re­spect and obe­di­ence.

Leah Lewis

Press Pass Cor­re­spon­dent

Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies