Will My High School Senior Get Bullied For Their Senior Backpack? A Teacher’s Perspective
It’s 3:15 on a warm September Tuesday, and I’m shoving a stack of ungraded college application essays into my tote when Javi lingers by my classroom door, one shoe scuffing the cinder block. He’s twisted the strap of his new navy senior backpack so tight his knuckles are white, the big white Class of 2024 logo staring right at me from the front. When I ask if he needs a late pass or an extra copy of the study guide, he shifts his weight and mumbles, “Ms. L… you think I’ll get bullied for this?”
He got the backpack at the senior orientation assembly the week before, part of the PTA fundraiser. His mom paid extra to get his first name embroidered under the logo—he’s the first kid in his family to make it all the way to 12th grade, and she wanted it to feel special. It fits his 18×24 art portfolio and his three AP textbooks, which his old beat-up skate backpack couldn’t do without splitting the seam. But last night, he saw a thread on the school’s Instagram story asking people to send photos of seniors wearing their senior backpacks “for the cringe compilation.” A lot of the kids in his grade are already carrying them only from the car to the building, switching to a plain bag once they’re inside. Some are even covering the logo with iron-on patches.
I’ve been teaching 12th grade for 12 years, and this question is more common than you’d think. Three years ago, our PTA switched from custom senior t-shirts to custom senior backpacks as the main fundraiser, and every September I get at least three or four kids hanging around my door asking the same thing Javi just did. I’ve seen it all: kids who refuse to wear theirs at all, kids who get teased so much they hide them in their lockers by second period, and kids who wear them every day and never get a single comment.
I sat down on the bench by my door next to him, because the worst thing you can do is brush off this worry as “silly kid stuff.” A lot of parents and even some teachers will say “it’s just a backpack, no one cares that much,” but that shuts the conversation down right away. Instead, I said what I always say: “Teasing about stupid small stuff stings way worse than adults remember. It makes total sense to worry about that.” That’s the first concrete tip for parents and teachers, by the way—never dismiss the worry just because the thing they’re worried about seems trivial. The worry is real, even if the trigger is a backpack.
Javi and I talked through the options I’ve seen other kids try. I didn’t tell him he had to wear it, and I didn’t tell him he had to hide it. I just laid out the low-lift choices: some wear it for a day and see what happens, keeping a cheap $5 drawstring in their locker just in case they want to switch. Some cover the logo with a patch of their favorite band if they don’t want to draw attention. Some decide they don’t want to deal with it at all, and use the senior backpack for carrying gear to practice instead of for school. Javi picked the first option: he’d wear it the next day, and keep his old drawstring in his locker just in case.
This is where a lot of parents go wrong, from what I’ve seen. A lot of parents email me this time of year, asking if they should buy a whole new plain backpack because their kid is worried about bullying, or if they should force their kid to wear the one they paid $40 for to “teach them not to care what people think.” Both of those moves are unnecessary. Forcing a kid to wear something that makes them uncomfortable just to toughen them up doesn’t teach anything except that you don’t take their feelings seriously. Buying a whole new backpack immediately without asking what they want skips the chance to let them problem-solve on their own, which is what seniors need to practice before college anyway.
It doesn’t always work out neatly, anyway. Last year, I had a student named Mia who got a senior backpack with the logo, and she posted a photo of it on her TikTok her first week of school. It got shared around the school, and people left comments calling her lame and try-hard. She stopped wearing it after that, kept it under her bed for the rest of the year. When we talked about it a few months later, she said it wasn’t even the comments that bothered her that much—it was that she’d been so excited to graduate, and suddenly she felt like she wasn’t allowed to be excited. That’s the core of this whole thing: senior year is weird. You’re supposed to be excited to leave, but you’re also supposed to act like you’re too cool to care about high school milestones. The backpack is just a visible marker of that excitement, so it becomes an easy target.
A week after our chat by the door, Javi came to class wearing the backpack, no drawstring needed. He said a couple of freshmen snickered at him in the hallway between classes, and one of his friends made a dumb joke about him being the “class mascot,” but that was it. No one posted him to the cringe compilation, no one said anything else. Most kids are way too busy worrying about their own grades, their own crushes, their own college apps to care what backpack another senior is wearing. The people who tease do it for five minutes, then move on to the next dumb thing to make fun of.
Last week, I saw Javi in the parking lot after school. He was leaning against the fence, waiting for his mom, his art portfolio sticking out the top of his senior backpack, his embroidered name bright in the afternoon sun. A group of freshmen walked past, one snickered and pointed, and Javi just grinned and waved back. He told me last period that he thinks it’s worth it—he worked hard to get to senior year, his mom saved up for the embroidery, and it fits all his stuff way better than any other bag he’s had. He still keeps that old drawstring in his locker, though. Just in case.
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