When we think of teachers, we often think of educators, helping us and as a place of safety or trust. We are with them at least eight hours a day, five days a week and the more time spent together, the more you get to know each other. While most teachers are fair and use their job to help students, there are those who like to abuse the power they have on students. 

While most teachers treat their kids with fairness, there is a small percentage of educators who do not treat kids well and like to take advantage of the power they have over students. Why this happens? who knows. Since every answer on why will be different from one another. It could be the abusers like how they feel when overpowering someone who can’t fight back, or they abuse their students just because they can. 

Fortunately, for students and parents, this is not common among schools. Now is it starting to become a daily occurence? No it’s not, while you will see a news article here and there about this happening in schools, it is not a problem where you see this in the news daily. 

Now people may be thinking, what are ways teachers abuse their students? Well one way would be them verbally abusing their kid(s). Verbally abusing their kids can be humiliating and could cause the kid to be afraid to speak out and ask questions in the classroom in fear of that humiliation. Teachers may do this because they are taking out their anger on the child or could perhaps not like a certain child so they inappropriately talk to and about that student in the classroom. Another reason they could verbally abuse the child is because they feel satisfaction of doing it for no other reason then feeling superior and in control. 

Another way teachers abuse their power is by having inappropriate relations with a student. A teacher is someone who is educating growing kids and helping them prepare for when they become an adult; having inappropriate relations with a student is taking advantage of them and of their innocence. Students should be able to trust their teacher, not be taken advantage of for their teachers satisfaction. 

Unfortunately, this is something I’ve heard of before. My aunt is a teacher and at her school a counselor took advantage of a sixth grader and recorded what he did to her. He was arrested and had to resign from the school as soon as possible. There have also been videos of teachers yelling and shouting at kids for no reason and of teachers hitting and being forceful to their students. There have also been articles popping up more recently of teachers having relations with kids in high school, which no matter the age is inappropriate and disgusting.   

When asking a senior, who chooses to be anonymous, why some teachers abuse the power they have over students she replied, “ I think they know students are naive and will do anything to satisfy them. Also,students will do anything for a good grade which some teachers may take advantage of.”  She also says she has never experienced this type of situation and hopes to never experience it in the future. 

This is a very vile thing to hear about, especially for parents. To take advantage of a child is a horrible thing to do, especially when a teacher is someone they should be able to trust and go to for anything. Hopefully, students and parents become more aware of this and know how to protect their children from this situation.