Should teacher's ignore teens' low level rudeness?

[Bert2025]

Been a teacher for a number of years but I am finding it increasingly difficult to ignore what I call low level rudeness from my form in particular. There is one 16 year old young lady in particular who has taken against me, it would appear Lots of sniggering and whispered comments etc... This is because I pulled her up about going against the dress code a while ago. I am inclined just to ignore as a professional and an adult I my 40s but still it is pretty galling. If I engage and talk to her about it, she will probably deny it and then use it against me later. She doesn't seem a very nice person at the moment. What do others do about this type of thing? Just typing its has helped She doesn't affect my day or teaching so I th I I I will just let her crack on un!less she does anything overtly of course. Thank you for reading.

No. You don't want to be putting up with that, and you are doing the pupils no favours by not having high standards of behaviour

Thank you for your reply and while I completely agree, she hasn't done anything overtly enough for me to pick her up on it. I

With kindness. In these circumstances I am good humoured, patient and assume the best. Find every opportunity to praise and reward; catch her being good. And totally ignore any silly whispered comments and sniggering. As you say, you are the adult and this teenager will grow up one day.

I find this hard too, I just say to kids that if they want to moan about me they can do it out of earshot, the same way if I want to moan about them I'll do it in the staff room and not in front of them! There are some things I'll ignore but not this sort of insidious meanness which is becoming more and more common. Usually from kids who would run to their parents and complain about every little thing.

Yes I feel exactly the same. I did tear a strip of a (intelligent) year 8 being sarcastic towards me yesterday! At the end of the lesson I had a laugh with the nice kids on the way out about how I probably needed a sleep!

But the worst is the very malicious student who do the faux compliments such as "that's a lovely dress miss i would love to wear that". Because there is plausible deniability that I wasn't an insult.

I had one year 10 girl tell me I looked like her Nan to try yo get a laugh out of her peers at my expense. I replied that I wished I was her Nan because then she may have learned some manners. Her peers did laugh...but not at me.