As student to teacher ratios increase, faced with a wide variety of student personalities, and often fighting an entrenched bureaucracy that is frequently more concerned about money than people, their job can be thankless.
I have good friends who are/were public school teachers; they are on the whole decent, caring people. After speaking with them about situations they have encountered I completely understand how they can be under a tremendous amount of stress.
However, I have also personally had several experiences with teachers who were ... less than pleasant. One, a gym teacher, stood by and observed as I was beat up by another student; another, an Algebra teacher, openly and repeatedly ridiculed me in front of the class (and, as you have learned in class, two of the requirements for bullying are that an action or behavior be repeated and have bad intentions). Perhaps I will cover those specific incidents in greater depth in another article, but those experiences opened my eyes to the fact that even people in whom we -- and our children -- routinely place our trust can be bullies, and be abusive.
Physical bullying is fairly easy to spot -- black eyes, bumps and bruises. Emotional and psychological abuse -- repeated name calling, insults, character assassination, even sexual harassment -- on the other hand, can be far more subtle. Too many children are already silent about being bullied by their peers; when such treatment comes from an authority figure, the matter may be seen as totally "undiscussable".
Our kids spend a minimum of 8 hours a day out of our sight when they are at school. We need to know they are safe.
I have provided several links to articles about incidents where teachers abused their authority. The articles also contain tips and suggestions about what can be done if such behavior occurs.
The bottom line, in my opinion, though ... is that we need to keep open lines of communication with our children. Talk to them.
Barnes Martial Arts mission is to eradicate bullying behavior in ALL of its ugly forms.
http://www.greatschools.org/parenting/bullying/5063-when-the-teacher-is-the-bully.gs?page=all
http://bullying.about.com/od/Victims/a/10-Ways-To-Respond-To-A-Teacher-Who-Bullies.htm
http://shine.yahoo.com/parenting/tween-catches-bully-teacher-on-tape-234052398.html
http://www.webmd.com/parenting/features/teachers-who-bully?page=3
