I had an awful fifth grade teacher who was just the worst. She was an older woman who seemed miserable with life and took it out on the students she seemed to not like. I was the kid in class who was the chatterbox. I didn't try to disrupt the class on purpose or for attention but I was loud and it happened. Previous teachers would just talk with me and isolate me and that seemed to work. Our teacher missed the first few weeks of school for surgery. On her first day back, I went up to her to introduce myself. Before I could even get my name out she said "yeah I've heard all about you, sit down."

It got to the point where students and parents would notice that she was targeting me. I coach youth sports now and I understand that this isn't the case most of the time, but it was really evident back then. This was late 90's - early 2000s where kids weren't so much the special snowflakes they are now. My parents didn't believe the problem was with her, it was with me. She would withhold my lunch for the day if I was talking in class or didn't complete assignments and she would call me names during lunch if I was running and acting out of order for her. She would push me or grab my shoulder and pull me around if I was doing something "wrong."

One day, we were doing an in class reading about diabetes. She asked the class to raise their hand and tell us about someone they know that had diabetes. No one in the class was raising their hand to share so I decided I would. My aunt was recently diagnosed with cancer and somehow they found this connection to her cancer and diabetes that she didn't even know she had, and she was just starting to adjust to life as a diabetic. The only words I could get out were "Well my aunt was just diagnosed with cancer and..." Suddenly my teacher slams her hardcopy textbook down and screams at me for talking about cancer instead of diabetes. I tried to say "but wait!" but she wasn't having any of it. I remember exactly where I was sitting, I remember how every kid looked at me as the teacher was storming over my way screaming in my face and kicked me out of class. I stood outside of the doorway trying my hardest to not cry - because I would have been in more trouble if I had. I don't know if it was the emotion of her belittling my aunt's cancer/diabetes, or her never allowing me to speak and not take me seriously. I just remember feeling so hurt over it and I am still so bothered about it to this day when I think about it.

I saw her name pop up on Facebook recently and I wanted to message her to remind her of this, and how I'm still angered and saddened that she treated me this way. I know I was a lot to handle in grade school being full of energy and too talkative, but I think there would have been much better ways to handle it. She also thought I would go nowhere with life, so I wanted to reminder that I've done pretty well for myself so far...