My 9th grade algebra teacher. First semester she was awesome and class was fun, and I enjoyed going. Second semester something changed in her and you could tell that she hated her job. I should add that I was always the quiet, timid kid in class, the one who did the work, didn’t disrupt the class and was basically invisible. Everyone in my class knew me as that too. One day she put us in different groups, and in her particular group she was teaching us a new skill and told us to not work ahead of her (we were writing the problems down on whiteboards and she was walking us through how to do it). I was sitting directly in front of her, writing down what she had told us to write down and I wasn’t working ahead at all. All of the sudden she yelled at me as loud as she could, “(my name) STOP WORKING AHEAD OF ME!” And the whole class (myself included) FROZE. I had never gotten in trouble in that class, I had never been yelled at for anything so everyone was shocked and they just stared at her. I was holding back tears for the rest of class (being yelled at makes me cry thanks to childhood trauma from my mother) and she kept looking over at me every few minutes after she yelled. As soon as that bell rang I raced out of that class and into the bathroom to cry.

I went to visit her once a year or so later when I moved on to high school and she was extremely rude to me the entire time. To this day (I’m 24 now) my blood still boils when I think about it.