MY TEACHER NEARLY RUINED MY LIFE

It took Lizi Jackson-Barrett, 43, decades and an unexpected health condition to get over her teacher’s cruel comments

- FRANCES LEATE

Thrusting my hand up into the air enthusiastically, I smiled at my teacher, hoping he’d pick me out of a handful of other girls in my class. It was the late 80s, I was 11, and for weeks, we’d been feeding worms as an experiment to find out about them and, always curious, I’d enjoyed every minute.

My teacher had asked who wanted to feed them, and I hoped he’d pick me. He looked over, his bushy eyebrows furrowed into a mocking frown. ‘No, Lizi, you’re not feeding them, we need someone pretty to do it, or you’ll scare the poor worms,’ he chuckled, before asking my classmate, Katie, to do it instead. Everyone erupted into laughter and I did my best to laugh along, pretending I wasn’t bothered.

I sat there, my mouth forced into a fake smile, as I watched Katie stand up and walk to the front of the class, her long, shiny dark blonde hair swishing behind her. I kept thinking about my own frizzy hair, my big patterned glasses and my broader figure, and I couldn’t help thinking that my teacher was right - I was ugly.

It was the moment everything changed. Suddenly, I was no longer just Lizi who liked science and playing with my friends. I was Lizi, an ugly girl who wasn’t good enough. My confidence plummeted, and it started a chain of negative thoughts about myself that would dictate the next 30 years.

I didn’t tell my parents about my teacher’s comment. Instead, I just did everything I could to look like Katie. I asked my dad Robert to buy me hair bands so that I could scrape my hair into a ponytail. And I hassled my mum Sue to buy me hair straighteners.

But that cruel comment had a deep, psychological effect on me and I became withdrawn and quiet.