The following was sent to me by a student teacher. Some of the details have been changed for annonymity.

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My stories about the children in the primary school where I did my student teaching are much like your story about JW, but rather than bringing tears to my eyes it makes me feel aggressive and angry. I find it maddening that this could be allowed to happen, but hopefully repeating it for others will make some difference.

These children were 5 years old. Only 5. They sat at their long desks and were expected to be almost completely silent. Speak in whispers, if they were allowed to speak at all. They did a lot of cutting and pasting activities, and many of them were so frightened of the teacher that if they were cutting something "tricky" they'd want to call me over to help.

Sometimes when I walked by, one little boy would cover up his work. I didn't see this as "cheekiness", but abject terror: he was afraid I'd tell him it was wrong, and bad, and that he'd not listened to what he was meant to do. These were things their teacher told them all on a daily basis.

The outstanding times I can remember are these:

A. Teacher walks into the room and sees the computer. Calls out "Who's switched the computer off?" The children go wide eyed and point at one little girl, T, who looks like a rabbit in the headlights. "I've told you time and again that if you do that we'll lose all our games and have nothing to play with! You're a naughty, naughty girl!" At this point, T shakes and breathes loudly, tears streaming down her face. She seems to me to be trying not to cry, and hyperventilating in the process. I kneeled down, to T's level, and put my arms around her shoulders.

"I think she's hyperventilating!" I tell the teacher. "Yes, well it won't help! She has to learn," the teacher says to me. A wide eyed smile comes across the teacher's lips: The message I get is, You are inexperienced, young, and only a guest here.After the ordeal is over, the head teacher comes to speak to me. "Don't challenge the teacher in her own classroom." She smiles pleasantly. A smile like warm honey, which now I think may have been more demeanor than anything. "If you think she's been to hard on them, come and speak to me later." Then I'm left to face the Dragon by myself.

B. Later on that same day, I'm making my rounds around the class, seeing if the children need help and know what to do. One little boy, F, looks up at me with big shining eyes. "She threw my cat in the bin." He says. I kneel down to look straight at him. "How did that make you feel?" I asked. "Not good," he said, then thought: "Bad."

The children had been drawing "things outside that can be dangerous" for a display; this boy had chosen a strange cat. That was fine. He'd taken extra care to give it all four legs, ears, even claws. And this teacher threw it straight into the trash. Why? "He'd coloured it purple," she would tell me later, with that same plastic smile.

C. Regularly, the teacher tells a little girl named N "You're not funny, you're not smart." I wonder what this particular girl has done to get singled out in this way. She seems, really, no worse to me than any other kids in the class. (I suspect the teacher simply felt threatened by her, possibly because the girl was a little more sensitive, aware and expressive than the others. The little girl might very well have been more emotionally intelligent, in fact. S. Hein)

D. The children have been told to make houses for the Three Little Pigs. One group of 2 children come to me asking how to do this with the materials they've been given: Round, plastic discs with wedges taken out of them. I'm told not to help by the teacher; "They know how to do it." So they try building it as high as they can. "NO! I told you to build a house, not a big high tower!" The teacher dashes over and dismantles the disks quickly. "Do as you're told!" The little boy in this group starts to cry, and is told to get on with his work. At the end of the day, they have no house for the wolf to blow down, and the teacher tells them off for not doing their work.

E. For three days, we have a subsitute teacher for the class. I personally find that she is kind, but able to keep control. Rather than yelling "Be quiet! Who is making all that noise?", she has a routine of having the children put one hand in the air and the other over their lips, effectively quieting and calming the room. When upset, she says "I am going to get very angry, and I don't want to yell at the five year old children. I do not like it." I feel that the children are reacting much more positively to this. I also feel more free to interact with the children in ways that seem natural, such as acting like a wolf in it's den.

F. On my last day in the school, the teacher finds a tray of papers in the sink. It is soaking wet. "What happened to these?," she yells. It seems to me that she always yells. The children tell her that one of the older children, who come in at lunch time to keep order, put the tray into the sink. I am sent to call him over from his classroom. When asking for him, the male teacher raises an eyebrow at him in what seems to be a "Good luck, hope you survive" message. While walking back, I ask the boy how his day has been, but try to say nothing more. I want to be comforting, but don't feel there's anything I can do. Back in the P1 class, the teacher sits facing her computer. "Look in the sink," she says in low, dangerous tones. "What happened to those?"

"I had to move them while doing something," he says. I can't remember now what he had to do. "I just turned my back, and M went to water her classroom plant." The teacher sits, still absorbed in her computer. "...All right, you can go back to class." The boy leaves respectfully and I basically back into a corner. The teacher stands, turns around and walks over to the sink. She picks up the tray of wet paper and looks at it. I can understand her frustration. "I guess we can't do this now." She says in an almost contemplative tone. "I worked hours on this!" Her voice seems to raise in tone like a gradient from one extreme to another.

"I'm sick of this class! You ruin everything, you can't do what you're told!" She seems to be raging at the whole class. "No more stickers, EVER!" Stickers are their main form of praise & encouragement - obviously, they get very little from direct contact with their teacher. A little girl, who has been working very hard all day, starts to cry softly at her desk. "Stop that, J! Nobody's said anything to you!" screams the teacher and thunders through like a freight train. For the rest of the day I wander around, very quietly, sneaking compliments and gentle shoulder-touches to the little ones. I hardly give the teacher eye-contact at all. My blood feels like it's run cold, and I don't feel I can or will take any more bullshit today. Next thing she does, I will probably hurt her badly.

During my time with this teacher, Mrs. X, I rarely felt respected or understood at all. I often felt that rather than being a future teacher in training, I was her servant. She seemed completely unable to admit her own errors, mistakes, or failures without blaming and guilt-tripping others. Even when asking her about her own humble beginnings, all she can say are things like "I couldn't have done anything else." and "Oh, it was 30 years ago. [I can't recall]"

I didn't mind much that she invalidated and devalued me - I didn't feel warmly enough towards her for it to matter. But her absolute emotional assault on the children made me physically sick, sleepless, and teary each night when I went home, and I never wanted to get up and go in for her class again. I wanted to speak to the head teacher, but Mrs. X was always lurking and I felt afraid of her, afraid of what she might think and afraid that she may take it out on the children.

One that holds the power to harm the things you love holds the power to control your life, and everything you have influence over. I want to learn not to be frightened of people anymore so that someday, I'll hold the power to put people like this out of business.