Should school staff have to earn a pupil's respect before expecting politeness?

[Sweetchillysource]

Hi everyone

I am absolutely raging about a situation that happened at work last week. I am a secondary school teacher. I have recently taken over a year 7 tutor group. One of the boys in my form is behaving very poorly; not only towards me but around school in general. I am an experienced teacher so I’m not phased by this however I invited his mum in for a meeting last week to discuss my concerns, and to try and nip it in the bud.

During the meeting his mom made the comment that he was behaving poorly as the staff had not yet “earned his respect”. I can’t accept this. I explained that I appreciate that he’s new to the school and therefore he’s still in the process of establishing relationships with staff, however this does not mean that he could behave poorly and speak to staff rudely. His mum wasn’t happy with me saying this and stormed out. Later that day she logged a formal complaint.

My headteacher has now spoken with me and suggested that my comment about staff not having to earn this hisrespect was not appropriate. I refuse to accept that and maintain that this is a ridiculous expectation,

Surely the expectation is that we’re all polite and respectful towards each other when we first meet each other as opposed to having to wait until we’ve earned each other’s respect?? My headteacher wants me to call her and apologise but I am refusing to do that.

What are other peoples thoughts on this?

YANBU. Respect should be from day 1 to those in any kind of authority. It's madness for people to think they don't owe someone any respect until they've "earned it".

You are right. Your head teacher is a fool.

Well the apple didn’t fall far from the tree there, did it? She’s a twat so unlikely he’ll turn out much better.

You are completely right. Can’t believe you have to put up with this absolute nonsense!

Stand your ground. You are totally correct.

I doubt the school behaviour policy states "staff will wait until they have earned respect of children before upholding high behaviour and safety expectations"

As soon as they walk in to the school and are on roll in September, they are agreeing to abide by school policies, as are staff. You cannot keep him or other children safe if he will not comply with instructions so your meeting and comments were totally justified.

Start your job vacancy alerts because this Headteacher sounds dreadful.

JFC!
This is part of the Manosphere, cocky little gobshites demanding " respect" when they treat others and women particularly like shit
I would be raging
Respect for aquaintances/ teachers/ co workers is a given

I would make a formal complaint about the HT
No wonder kids are rude and disrespectful

No one has to expect anything from me or my children for us to polite to someone. It’s automatic and inherent.

Hope you're in a union. The head sounds very unreasonable.

Moronic response from your head teacher

YANBU - this kind of thing is why so many teachers are leaving. What sort of chance do you fhave when the parent comes out with that kind of bullshit!
So many of the issues in school are parenting issues! Or rather lack of parenting.

Respect is something you give.

I am obviously not condoning school staff being rude with my previous post but respect being earned is a totally different thing to a child following instructions and complying with policies that are made to keep them (and others) safe. In an ideal world, all children and staff would build an excellent rapport in the first few weeks but that is not an excuse to misbehave in the meantime.

Ridiculous and unfortunately far too common in schools. Everyone is entitled to common courtesy. Beyond that, your experience, knowledge and skills as a teacher are worthy of respect. You are demonstrating respect to him by teaching a well planned, appropriately pitched lesson which enables him to learn.

I would ask what the boy is doing to earn your respect.

But yes, manners/respect/whatever you want to call it should be automatic.

You’re right, attitudes like this is what’s lead to so many badly behaved children in schools

Politeness is a default setting. Though I definitely quickly lost respect for teachers who were randomly rude and disrespectful to me for no good reason.

I would speak to your union. I had a similar situation and my union ( NEU) advised that under no circumstances did I need to apologise to either the mother nor the child. Equally another colleague caught up in the same complaint was advised the same by his union. ( NASUWT).

Your head teacher is totally wrong

And this why we have the balaclava ebike miscreants.
Pupils are there to learn not debate that a teacher has to earn their respect.

I’m a secondary school teacher too. I honestly do believe this is the way it is going. It shouldn’t be, children should be told to respect adults but it increasingly feels like we have to earn it. Mostly boys but not purely confined to boys.

Your HT is an idiot. Of course you’re right!

Is he new?

See, in my school, he would’ve been in the Ready to Learn room after his second attempt to disrespect me in a lesson, after a first warning.
His mum would be notified by automatic text straight away.

She would then be discussing it with the Head of Year if she had a problem with it, not me, being reminded of the school contract she signed, and if there were multiple referrals from other teachers too (likely), this would be being escalated.

No teacher should be being challenged like this, especially in the first month!

Default is respect for teacher

if you were rude to her son, would she accept that he needs to somehow “earn” your respect before you were polite to him?

how is this respect “earned “ it’s not, it’s a total falicy and excuse for being rude

Is this an academy or an LA-maintained school?

I've worked with young people and I hate the word respect. It's so loaded and means vastly different things to different people. I much prefer the concept of being considerate. It's not loaded. I can be considerate to anyone, I don't have to feel a certain way about them.

And it is the minimum we do to grease the wheels of society, consider each other.

That's how I would have redirected. However I bet a million it wouldn't work in this case