1 min read

Teachers Demanding Respect

The kids don't have to like you. They just have to respect you.
Respect
Photo by Stillness InMotion / Unsplash Respect

There's a saying that floats around the teaching community about the student-teacher relationship. The kids don't have to like you. They just have to respect you.

While I do think mutual respect is conducive to a teaching-learning relationship, I think it's a low bar to set. Respect is literally one of the first lessons in an elementary classroom. It doesn't make sense if the lesson is not maintained in the middle or upper school classroom.

In the classroom, the teacher is the one to decide when jokes go too far, and when it's okay to joke around. Who else would it be? The teacher is literally the only adult in the room.

If you're a kid, it is characteristic of you to take jokes too far (no kids, this is not a free pass). After all, you're a kid, right?

Teachers can't build respect for them by being vocal about how kids should respect them. Heck, adults don't even really work that way. If you get bossed around by your boss every day, you might go through the motions but would you really have a favourable opinion of him or her?

So how do teachers establish respect for themselves? The answer is apparent in elementary classrooms. Teachers establish respect for themselves by establishing respect in the classroom.

The moment you demand students to respect each other and step in when someone doesn't, you're modelling what it means to be socially responsible to others. And the students will naturally model after you.

If you've maintained respect in the classroom, you're building a positive classroom atmosphere. And if you're doing that, well, chances are students (most of them at least) will like you too.

And surely we are much more likely to do something for someone if we like them...even if it is a stack of 20 worksheets on economic market structures.

How do you handle when someone is disrespectful towards you or towards someone else in front of you?