“I Hate My Vice Principal”: What This Actually Means for Teens and Parents
The moment I heard it, I had to hide a smile. A 17-year-old student, Marcus, had just been handed a detention slip by our vice principal, Mr. Harmon. As Mr. Harmon walked away, Marcus muttered under his breath, “I hate that man.” The friend next to him nodded hard. I was standing by the water fountain, pretending to check my phone.
I’ve been a teacher for over a decade. I’ve heard a lot of teens say they hate someone. But Marcus wasn’t being dramatic. He meant it. And I knew that if I brushed it off as typical teen attitude, I’d lose the little trust we had.
Later that afternoon, I found him sitting alone in the library, not doing homework. I sat down across from him and asked, “So, what did Harmon do this time?”
He didn’t look up. “He wrote me up for being late. I was helping Coach Rivera carry the team shirts to the gym. I told him that. He said I should have gone to class first and helped after. But the bus was leaving, Coach needed me. It’s not like I was skipping.”
He was right about the details. I knew Coach Rivera had asked for help. But I also knew that Mr. Harmon had heard the same story from a dozen students before, many of them lying. That’s the thing about vice principals: their job is to enforce rules, not to interpret good intentions. By the time something gets to them, it’s usually fuzzy. They’ve been burned by too many creative excuses.
But that doesn’t help a teenager who feels they’ve been treated unfairly. Marcus wasn’t just angry about the detention. He was angry that his side of the story didn’t matter. He told me, “He looked at me like I was trash. Didn’t even ask. Just filled out the slip.”
I didn’t say “I’m sure he’s a good guy” or “Maybe you should just follow the rules.” That would have shut him down. What I said was, “That sounds frustrating. It really does.”
And then we sat there for a minute. That minute of quiet mattered more than anything.
What’s really going on when a 17-year-old says they hate a school administrator? It’s partly about power. At 17, teens are halfway between childhood and adulthood. They’re desperate for respect and autonomy. When an adult in a suit walks by and punishes them without asking for their perspective, it stings in a way it didn’t at 12. At 12, you might cry. At 17, you say “I hate him.”
It’s also about the fact that teens have a strong sense of fairness. They can sniff out hypocrisy faster than most adults. If one kid gets wrote up for the same thing another kid gets away with, they remember. They build a case file in their heads. After a while, every interaction gets filtered through that lens.
But there’s a third layer that often gets overlooked. The teen might not actually hate the person. They might hate what that person represents: the sudden, impersonal consequences that show up when you’re still trying to figure out who you are. It’s easier to say “I hate the vice principal” than to say “I’m afraid I’m being seen as a troublemaker” or “I’m embarrassed that I got caught.”
As a parent or teacher, the natural instinct is to solve it. Tell the teen to behave. Tell them the VP is just doing their job. Tell them to brush it off. But that usually backfires. They need to feel heard before they can hear anything else.
Here’s what I did with Marcus—and what you can do too.
First, I didn’t take sides. I listened. I nodded. I said “that sucks” a couple times. A lot of adults want to jump in with “Let me tell you why he did that.” But that just makes a teen feel like you’re defending the adult over them. If you’re a parent, your kid needs you to listen first. You don’t have to agree. You just have to say, “I hear you.”
Second, I helped him separate the role from the person. I said, “Mr. Harmon has a really rough job. He does discipline for the whole school. Every day he gets yelled at by kids, parents, and teachers. That wears on anyone. He probably had ten other things on his mind when he saw you. That doesn’t excuse him not asking, but it might explain why he was abrupt.”
Marcus grumbled, but he thought about it. That’s a real shift. When a teen can see that a vice principal’s behavior is partly about the job, not just about them, it takes away some of the poison.
Third, I gave him a specific tool for the next time. I told him this: “If this happens again, don’t argue. Don’t say ‘You’re being unfair’ right away. Just say, calmly, ‘I understand you have to write me up. Can I please explain what happened first?’ Most people will let you explain if you don’t attack them. If you say ‘It wasn’t my fault,’ they’ll shut you down. If you say ‘I want to give you more context,’ they’ll usually listen.”
That’s a real skill. It works outside of school too. But teens don’t learn it automatically. They need to practice it.
I also suggested he keep a small notebook. Write down every time he had a run-in with Mr. Harmon: date, time, what happened, what he said. Not as a complaint list, but as a fact record. If it ever becomes a real issue, he’ll have proof. And having something written down makes you feel more in control.
The most useful thing I said to Marcus was this: “You don’t have to like him. You don’t have to respect him. But you do need to know how to handle him. The best revenge is showing up on time and doing your work.”
A parent can adapt that. If your teen comes home saying they hate their vice principal, resist the urge to say “What did you do?” Instead, say, “Tell me the whole story.” Then ask them, “What would you like to happen?” That’s a powerful question. Most kids just want the adult to hear their side. Once they feel heard, they’re open to problem-solving.
And if they ask you to stay out of it, respect that. Of course, if there’s real bullying or unfairness, you have to get involved. But sometimes, a 17-year-old needs to manage the conflict themselves. That’s their practice ground for dealing with difficult managers, landlords, and professors later on.
A couple weeks after our library conversation, Marcus came up to me after class. He had that slightly embarrassed look teens get when they want to admit something. “I tried that thing you said,” he said. “This time Harmon stopped me about being on my phone in the hallway. I told him I was checking the time for my next class. He actually just said ‘Make sure it’s in your pocket next time.’ Didn’t write me up.”
I nodded. “How did that feel?”
He shrugged. “Weird. Not like we’re friends or anything. But I didn’t hate him as much.”
“That’s a win,” I said.
He isn’t exactly Mr. Harmon’s biggest fan. He still thinks the man has a face that looks like a scolded dog. But something shifted. Marcus learned that he could speak up in a way that didn’t escalate. He learned that the vice principal is just a person with a clipboard, not a cosmic enemy.
There’s no neat ending here. Marcus will probably hate his next principal or boss sometime. That’s okay. The goal isn’t to make teenagers love authority figures. The goal is to show them that they can survive and even influence those relationships. That’s a quiet kind of power. It builds over time, one hallway interaction at a time.
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