Many teachers use dry humour as a way of getting their point across to students.  This is bullying as it tells the kids they are not respected and that other kids are allowed to speak to them in the same way.  I was one of those kids that teachers bullied.  No throwing of desks or chalk like I have known other teachers to do during my time as a teacher.  Just using sarcasm and nicknames and mockery that brings out laughter among the peers and ensures that the student will be mocked as soon as class lets out.  Teachers and parents be careful how you speak with your children.

Hello, my name is Lauren, I'm nearly 21. All through primary school and highschool I was bullied, I remember being told to "go kill myself", my brother conning home and yelling at me that he hates me because the kids at school were picking in him because his sister "is so dumb" I was constantly told I was overweight and I was ugly. It all took its toll. As I grew up I had no respect for myself, I started to self mutilate and drink and at 15 I was dating older men. I wanted to make him happy and feel loved. Before long my life was spiraling out of control til the day I took my life, so thought.. But I survived, after months in a psychiatric hospital and years if changing my ways I'm finally happy. But I just want to make a change! IF I WASN'T BULLIED.. my life would have been very different.

I hated school, every time I went someone was saying something about me. Kids would talk about my hair, face and clothes. My family did not have a lot of money so my parents could not buy the name brand clothes.   When I started taking up for myself, I would get in fights, just because I was different.   I hated how that made me feel, it was like I was not worth the air they breathed.  I now know you have to love yourself and it does not matter what other people say or think.  Just be you.

I've been bullied since 2nd grade - for being skinny- One day one of the teachers at my old school were walking by me and I dont weigh that much I'm pretty small for a 12 year old. She was like "Oh my gosh honey! Do they feed you at home?" I was VERY confused then I realized what she was saying! She then said "Are you anorexic?!?!?!?!" And i said "No..." and i told my mom what happened that day after i got home and she said "Baby..its because you have a fast metabolism thats all!" The next day at school a couple of my 'friends' were saying I was gonna die early because im so "small" I have learned to deal with it but when my crush says im anorexic it hurts... all of my fake friends and some of the teachers say im anorexic and it hurts but i dont let anyone know im hurting../:  

When I was thirteen I transferred from a Montessori school to public junior high. In Montessori, I was typically allowed to work independently and didn't have any homework -- this was definitely not the case at the school I transferred to. I had a ton of friends at Montessori but was clueless how to go about making friends at my new school. I had no sense of how junior high worked; everyone was playing an elaborate social game and no one would tell me the rules. The kids had all grown up together and I didn't know any of them. They dressed differently than I did, liked stuff I didn't like, and seemed to regard any association with me as social death. What few friends I could find were also the frequent subjects of mockery: the popular kids would make a show of acting really nice to us on the playground and then laugh about it and expect us to laugh with them. Kids made fun of my last name, my glasses, knocked my books out of my hands, etc. Their greatest weapon was sarcasm ("Of course I'll show you around!" followed by a chorus of laughter): teachers were completely tone-deaf to it, and it stung horribly because I knew that the same words said geniunely would've been an invitation to friendship.

Not only was I unclear on the social rules of the game, I wasn't clear on the academic rules, either. I skipped gym because that was where I got made fun of the most (I was "hopeless and pathetic," a slow runner lacking hand-eye coordination and the ability to perform under pressure). Skipping gym landed me in detention; skipping lunch and eating my sandwich in the bathroom had similar repercussions. If the principal hadn't been sensitive to my situation, my many detentions would've snowballed into a suspension or two.

High school was worse. I'm still convinced I could feel every second of those four years. The sarcasm continued, often in tones of disgust. There was some antisemitic stuff tossed in the mix, too. I was featured on a blog called "Kids Who Suck" -- a couple of kids started the rumor that I'd performed sexual favors for a certain English teacher in order to get into a competitive university. When I told the dean about the online harassment, he told me he couldn't do anything -- it was "outside the school's jurisdiction." Playing dodgeball or floor hockey in gym was a hellish and humiliating experience, especially since no one was above taking potshots at me. By now I knew how to play the game well enough that skipping was out of the question; I convinced the gym teacher that I had some fictional peripheral vision problem that kept me from playing team sports, forged the doctor's note, and was allowed to walk the track on my own. I graduated high school with a permanent record that included the maximum amount of excused absences and a pretty high detention count.

Getting bullied in school feels so awful because the school is your entire universe, and it's a hypercontrolled universe. As if it's not humiliating enough to have to carry out your day-to-day business in an environment where you need to ask permission to go to the bathroom, you've also got to contend with a Greek chorus that's constantly reminding you how freakish, unattractive, and unworthy you are. And while it's true that it does get better -- you grow up, move away, travel, and meet new people who will love you for the very idiosyncracies that your childhood tormentors found so objectionable -- the idea of a good future is scarcely comfort enough when you have to wake up every day and go to a brick building where other kids harass you simply for being who you are. Adults have the tendency to think of being a kid as a temporary state on the way to adulthood instead of a life stage in its own right. School is considered a static holding pen for not-yet-adults instead of a very real workplace where things can be as terrifying and dramatic as they are anywhere else. Ofentimes school administrators will dissmiss bullying as "kids being kids" because they assume the universe in which kids exist is somehow more primitive than their own. This never made sense to me -- adults don't like being harrassed by coworkers in the office, so why should kids tolerate being punched on the school bus? When bullying happens, kids aren't just "being kids"; they're exhibiting a hostility towards difference that, if left unchecked, can fester and make for some pretty intolerant adults. If you're going to make us go to school, then no act of bullying should be "outside the school's jurisdiction"; kids feel rejected and humiliated as readily as their adult counterparts, and they are just as deserving of a safe place to work as their adult counterparts are. This isn't that difficult a concept to grasp. School should be a haven, not a minefield -- I hope my experience and the experiences of others will provide school administrators the incentive to make that change.

When I was in 5th and 6th grade I was bullied. I was poor and didn't have money for the clothes and shoes that my peers did. I would be called a "hillbilly" or a "hick" if I showed up for school in ripped jeans or old stained shirts. I was criticized by how skinny I was, kids said I looked anorexic yet teachers never heard these things.

What I learned later in life was that people make fun of you because it is what they don't like about themselves. They treat you as they've been treated and its a reflective of them, not you. When I was older I started buying my own clothes and I gained some weight when I hit puberty.

I realized that being made fun of was incentive for me to never bully anyone else. I was molded into a better person.  Somehow I found that I liked myself enough to be the better person even though it would have been nice to lash out.

It hurt but I'm grateful it ended when I moved schools.

When I was in 7th grade, I experienced bullying from both genders. I had girls whom I thought were my friends making fun of me for the way I dressed (which continued on throughout HS), and I had boys making fun of me for the way that I looked. I was told that my teeth were yellow, which caused me to come home crying to my mother begging for teeth whitening materials. I was told I was a freak because I have webbed toes, again resulting in me coming home crying and begging my mom for toe separation surgery. As I said earlier, it continued on throughout high school, but not as badly as it was in middle school. By the time I was in high school, I just didn't care what people thought about me, because it was supposed to be the best years of my life. I wore what I wanted, did my hair/makeup however seemed fitting to me, hung out with whoever I felt comfortable with. Still, I had people ridiculing me for my appearance. I buried myself in books, indulged myself in old movies and music, let myself escape and become "cultured" as my mom called me. It helped me out a lot. It has made me who I am today. If I were made fun of for wearing a certain outfit, I would just tell myself that it was similar to something a character from a movie I just saw wore, and that was that. And so on and so forth. 

Now, I have a somewhat steady career doing local commercials, and modeling gigs. I don't let the people that hurt me throughout my youth bother me because I came out doing what I wanted to do. I'm a happy person, and I convinced myself that their ridicule was based on them disliking themselves. And that's the key; like yourself. I know it's said a MILLION times a day, by everybody. But it really, really, REALLY is true. Who cares about what other people think. Do you think David Bowie cared what other people thought of him wearing platform boots, glittery one-pieced suits, and lots of facial makeup? Or what about Madonna or Lady Gaga, if they cared what people think, we wouldn't have to extremely influential "who-gives-a-crap" role models for people like us! 

EMBRACE YOURSELF. 

It started when I went to Seventh grade. I went to a very multicultural school and only being used to going to a private one ethnicity school I was interested. Sadly it was very hard to find any type of young girl or boy that would sit and hang out with me even talk to me. So one day during lunch I was sitting by myself when a boy walked up to me and said can I sit with you. He was nice to me all week at lunch, but Monday when we came back to school, I seemed to be the joke of everybody. I had never been bullied for me but I understood what they were doing to me right away. Everyday it was something new "White Trash", Rich Kid, Slut. This happened for about  six months till I finally decided to tell someone.  The bullying stopped but when I started school again I was known as the snitch the reason why these kids are not aloud back to this school. The bullying did not follow me to my new school but I do feel that someone has started something again, I just hope it is not true.

So I will start you off with something, my mom died last year on April 8th 2012. She had recently found out in January of 2012 that she had stage 4 pancreatic cancer that had traveled to her liver and one of her lungs. My whole family and I were devastated. Anyways, because of that I had missed a lot of school and had just been really down and depressed lately. I had lots and lots of support from school faculty and what not. Nothing had really happened until about a week or two ago. I had gotten 5 prank phone calls under a restricted number. The first few were all haha funny joke. Then the last two were just horrible horrible things. They had mentioned that they knew my mom was dead and proceeded to pick on me about it, bragging that they had a mom and that I didn't. They told me over and over that they hoped I'd die like her and that if I found out who it was they were going to beat me up. I never did find out who did it, but it did hurt. It hurt a lot. I have kids who tell me the whole thing about my mom being dead is getting old, but I just don't care. I have been called every name in the book. You just have to hold your head up, and walk like a queen, nothing will ever get you down then. 

-best of wishes. 

Caitlyn

I was bullied ever since i entered school. I was called "fat" "loser" "worth for nothing". And the truth is it hurt, a lot. I cried for hours a day. Thats when i decided i would become a bully. It was the worst decision i have ever made. I hurt people. I returned the favor. Then I moved away, because i knew what i was doing was wrong and i wanted to start over. When I got to the new school, the bullying started again. I was bullied. Much worse. I almost committed suicide. But then i somehow figured out to look past that. And realize what is important in life. Friends, love, family. Sometimes it feels impossible to get through, but look at yourself now? Have you gotten through hard things? Did you think you would never get through them? Well you did.