Teacher here... did I fuck up?

Depends on the style of delivery, I reckon. Tone of voice, etc.

Did you change your user name?

The phones handed in at the start of each lesson sounds like a bit of a faff, but if it’s a school rule he can’t argue with that!

Also “treat me with the same respect as X” is kind of setting yourself up for a fall- just treat me with respect is all you have to say.

Otherwise nothing wrong with the rules in principle, perhaps the problem was in the delivery? Almost as if you’re expecting them to be rude? My school is all about positive language these days. So rather than “treat me with respect” it’s “we all treat each other with respect, this is how we do it here”.

This

Part of my role is supporting and developing teachers.

My head absolutely supports staff in getting students to adhere to the rules - but he's a busy man and it's quite possible that a little troop of kids rocked up to bother him about this.

If you're going to invoke the potential wrath of the head, it would have been courteous to warn them first.

I realise teenagers (I'm assuming this is secondary school) can be argumentative little fuckers, but she said "don't argue with my instructions", not "don't argue with my assessment of whether Ishiguro's main character is an unreliable narrator / whether Beethoven is a more influential composer than Schoenberg".

And if she's a science teacher and the instruction is "don't pour ethanol over the lit Bunsen burner" then she's absolutely right that there's no place for argument.

I’m a parent with kids in primary and secondary in the UK.
Your rules are damn straight. There’s nothing wrong with setting expectations.
Anyone with an issue with them is going to have been a problem anyway.
I hope your senior leader backs you up.
If the don’t, that’s any authority problem the school may have right there.

do you have any idea how hard it is to establish boundaries after the kids have started acting up? about 10x harder than just establishing them at the start. i had a really good relationship with this student last year, sadly it was because i was too lenient withi him

It’s not a great start for relationship building but I imagine that’s something you’ll be advised on in the morning, I don’t think you need to worry but I’d look into more training on positive behaviour management.

You can't blame people for being confused when you are the one with two usernames/logins.

It’s fine. I bet they’ve misrepresented what you said because I can’t see why the principal would care otherwise. I wouldn’t worry.

My moneys on number 2.

Some little darling will probably make a point about people without a penis identifying as a male, or something gender related, and try and pull you up on it.

If I was made to change my rules by some darling child I would be adding a few new ones for the hell of it….. 😂

I mean the only one I personally dislike is ‘don’t argue with my instructions’… that’s basically saying don’t question me. Which I personally find unacceptable. But no doubt it’ll be about the phones. Edited as I see that the phone think is a rule now. I’m hoping someone took exception to the first rule but who knows.

im in the uk

How old are the kids?

If you are going to be really anxious, you shouldn’t have thrown your weight around by telling them to go to the Principal if they had a problem.

You challenged, so need the balls to back it up.

from the tone of this I’m going to hazard a guess that you’re in the USA. We have quite a different school culture in the UK and I imagine you would get different responses if you asked on an American site.

im a secondary teacher and I find it bizarre that you take an give back phones. We don’t have them in sight at all at school: in your bag, switched off from before you’re on site until after you leave!

Don't sweat it. Your head probably has a list of things they have to tick in the event of a formal complaint. As they should to prevent sweeping issues under the carpet!
Doesn't mean they disagree with you. They may ask you to confirm what you said as kids can be erm.. prone to exaggeration/ liking a little drama?
Unlikely anything you said was outside school rules as its all so reasonable!

its a school wide rule (for the 5th time)

You shouldn’t need these rules, your school should have a behaviour policy with clear routines for lessons. I don’t have ‘separate’ rules specific to me and my classroom; the expectations are the same everywhere.

Ask the principal for extra support and training when you speak to him tomorrow, it sounds like an unsupportive school.

Totally agree with this - it doesn't assume bad behaviour from the off, it's positive and no less straightforward.

Presumably you agreed your rules with the Principal before sharing them with your class? A. So that you could be clear that everything was in keeping with the overarching school behaviour code and B. So that you could clarify that the Principal thinks it is the right approach to have a threeway meeting in the event of any pushback? If you didn't do A or B then you need to have an answer for when the Principal asks you about these two elements - which presumably they will do after/before the meeting with the pupil (rather than in front of of them)?

Exactly, i'm annoyed that it's even come to this. Last year, this exact student who raised it was the one who last year sat in my classroom and beamed:

'miss OP, my favourite teacher!'

Now i have firm rules its a problem?

Sounds good to me! I think 2 is extremely important and your head should support you on that 100% in particular. Female teachers getting sexist comments from school boys literally makes my blood boil

I'm betting it's phones handed in. If that's not the general school policy, they are likely to be very nervous about it. How will you make sure they don't pick up the wrong child's phone at the end of the lesson? Some of them have expensive bits of kit.

yes

I'm really confused.

Are you the OP under a name change?