Disrespect Towards Teachers: How Much Should Be Tolerated?

We all know that one person, or group of people, in class that is just downright disrespectful to both the teachers and their fellow classmates. It may be in math when the students won’t stop talking, or in English when people are shouting across the room to get their point across while the teacher is teaching a new subject.

This disprespect is a real problem in classes these days, especially because we all bring our own devices and have lots of individual work time. Individual work time should not mean talking about meaningless subjects at the top of your lungs to your surrounding classmates. That’s actually extremely rude.

Along with having a lot of individual work time in class, we also have a lot of young teachers at FHC and it’s almost as though some students feel that, because some teachers are closer to our age than others, it is okay to be rude. I have witnessed students try to persuade the teacher to not make us do our homework, and talk back to them when they ask us to do something. There is really no reason to try and talk your way out of homework or a quiz, because it’s the teacher’s job to teach us new curriculum; they don’t assign mountains of homework just because they hate us.

Also, because we have so many coaches who are also teachers at our school, it seems that many students feel as though they have a greater relationship with them and that they are therefore able to have more leeway in arguing with them. Not to shame any teachers either, but some of the time, it seems like some coaches do favor their students and they allow them to turn in assignments later than the posted due date. Although these events rarely happen, it makes the other students feel like the athletes are favored.

In other classes, the students are all working hard and the the teachers do obtain the respect. But there are always those outliers that are just a little bit more disrespectful than just joking around. Joking around with teachers, and building relationships with them, is perfectly okay – if it doesn’t cross a line.