What to do when students mock your appearance
Students will target everything from your weight and height to how you walk, creating a toxic environment that compounds trauma over time. This relentless bullying causes constant rumination at home and leaves teachers crying in their cars at the end of the day. The intense emotional distress makes it impossible to continue working, pushing many to quit the profession just to escape the harassment.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1Practicing mindfulness to stop ruminating and leave thoughts of work at school.Did this help you?
- 2Focusing energy and bandwidth only on the students who are kind and respectful.Did this help you?
- 3Transferring to teach younger elementary school students who are generally nicer and still see teachers as authority figures.Did this help you?
- 4Leaning into the joke and making fun of yourself before the students can to take their power away.Did this help you?
- 5Going on auto-pilot to finish out the school year to avoid breaking a contract or losing a license, then transferring.Did this help you?
- 6Turning the insults into daily classroom mini-lessons about personal boundaries and empathy.Did this help you?
- 7Talking to admin and involving parents to get the student's schedule changed.Did this help you?
- 8Attempting to defuse the behavior by leaning into the joke and performing magnanimity.Did this help you?
- 9Relying on embarrassment and peer pressure from other students to chill the behavior.Did this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“There are apparently multiple posts about how fat I am. Not that this is anyone’s business or concern, but I’m 5’8 at ~210lbs and I’ve been on a weight loss journey and have lost upwards of 35lbs already within the last 6 months, but this just feels like such a slap in the face. I’ve had body image issues my entire life to now be bullied by a bunch of 12 year olds.”source ↗
“Am I pathetic for quitting? I’m just fed up with everything. This is the straw that broke my back. To top it all off, I have OCD and ruminate constantly when I come home.”source ↗
“I’m sorry this happened. I’ve experienced it too, also after some weight loss. To kids, we are huge.”source ↗
“I remember a few times my first year I went and cried in my car at the end of the day because my first period class was just awful.”source ↗
“I’m 6’ and weigh like 140 and off the top of my head I can remember being made fun of for how I walk (?), for being “too tall,” having a side part, and for wearing a backpack once (we were going on a field trip to a ropes course.) So I mean, anything.”source ↗
“Kids used to do almost that bad to me. The longer you stay in that toxic environment, the more trauma is compounded in your brain.”source ↗
“If a student dresses as me without permission and in a disrespectful way, is there any recourse? Could I claim harassment? This kid is obsessed with me, but in the out-to-get-me way. I already have documentation of when I got called a pedo.”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 50How to handle disrespectful student micro-aggressions and boundary-crossing
- 7What to do when a student physically attacks you
- 3How to handle a toxic community as a teacher
- 8Why teachers can't break up school fights
- 24How to help an autistic child handle playground name-calling
- 3How to handle yelling and verbal fights at work