Unfortunately for the most part the teachers didn't seem to see what was going on or at least not to care (they may have just written it all off as "boys will be boys").
One of the scariest things about Stephen King's It (1990) was the way the adults just stood around and let terrible things happen. I think that's one reason that movie scared me so much--it hit too close to home. (It certainly wasn't the giant wolf spider! Who doesn't love wolf spiders?)
Quite a few teachers act like the students and fall right in favoring the popular students and allowing or even joining the “picking on the nerd” games. At least it was that way when I went to school; and my daughters complained about the same thing so I think it is still happening. In spite of all the diversity training.
My oldest daughter was an excellent speller; her 2nd grade teacher actually resented it. She never missed a spelling word, even the bonus words. He became more and more annoyed with her for her spelling skills as the year progressed for some bizarre reason. I walked into his class early one day to pick her up and he was literally yelling at her that if she was so smart she should spell Supercalifragilisticexpealidocious(sp) she was very upset, near tears and he was ragging on her for doing well. Needless to say I forced the school to switch classes for her, and would have had that man fired if we hadn’t moved shortly after.