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To Sam

my school PE teacher

hi, i may be overreacting but i feel weird about what happened at school today, i had pe and im a girl and my pe teacher is male. We are playing tennis in pe right now. I tried to serve the ball but missed and then he came up behind me and said hed help me, he then stood behind me and put his hand on my hand holding the ball and lifted it up (i was confused to why this was neccisary because i knew how to throw a ball) then he put his other hand on my hand with the racket and showed me how to hit the ball. i felt really uncomfertable and looked at my friends like 'what the hell is he doing' and they just stared. then he walked off. i dont know what to do and wether this is ok for a teacher to do, i felt really uncomferable and hes never done that to any other students so i dont know. thankyou
Ask Sam

Sam

Hi there,

There are boundaries between a teacher and a pupil and if you’re unhappy with the way that a teacher is behaving it’s important that you can talk to someone else at school about it.

If you’re being touched in a way that you don’t like without giving permission it’s important to let someone know. You have the right to say no to any touching that you don’t like or to something that makes you feel self-conscious and uncomfortable afterwards.

Sometimes people don’t realise what they have done and it can help to let these people know how their actions have affected us. Your teacher might not know about the problem until he is told about it. It’s important that everyone is treated the same way and that boundaries are kept.

Thinking about how he might respond might be a worry for you and if you don’t feel able to talk to your PE teacher you could think about speaking to another teacher or an adult at home first.

It’s natural to feel worried if you don’t understand something that has happened and talking to an adult can help you to see the situation more clearly. It can be hard to know how someone might react when you tell them something. They might even suggest that you’re over-reacting or that you got it wrong, but your feelings are real and are worth talking about, no matter what they think.

There are counsellors at ChildLine all through the day and night if you’d like to talk to someone here about how you’re feeling.

Take care,
Sam

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