I can't take your attitude

As a very young female teacher, I worried a lot about getting respect. Some of my students are within a couple years of me; if I met them under different circumstances, they would be my peers. How am I supposed to act as an authority figure under those conditions? This thought has constantly come up throughout my first year of teaching. What I'm guessing, however, is that this like so many other negative attitudes within the classroom, this thought quickly becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. If I think that for whatever reason I deserve or instantaneously gain less respect from the students than other teachers, that's exactly what's going to happen. Or at least, that better be the way it works because if I truly don't have any control over this situation, I'm just not sure what I'll do...

There have been a handful of situations this year, in which I have had difficult conflicts with older female students. These conflicts have inevitably included a lot of teenage attitude and have made me feel very uncomfortable. The first conflict came last semester when I had a very intelligent white girl in one of my classes who did not like me or respect the way I did things. I would try to address it by hearing her out, listening to her as I would listen to a peer or a colleague, and reasoning from there. That just seemed to fuel the fire and she convinced the administration to let her transfer out of my class by the end of the year. While I should be above the petty, "she doesn't like me... she thinks I'm a bad teacher" type of stuff, I'm not. This was, of course, the reason the situation was so challenging.

The current issue I'm having involves a handful of senior girls who do not like me in the classroom or at track practice. I tell them to do their throwing drills - they whine and complain disrespectfully then run to the head coach for support. I tell them that they can't be late to my class - they manipulate another teacher into writing them a pass to be late then whine and complain under their breath as I write them up anyway. It's definitely not an easy situation, but it is made worse by the fact that I let them bother me.

I let myself get caught up in the immature, irrational emotions of high schoolers. I let them make me feel uncomfortable in my classroom, the hallways, or at the track. As an educated adult woman who has a handful of significant accomplishments under her belt - especially at such a young age - I should be so far above this. Right now I just don't feel like I have enough distance to be truly above it though, and I don't know how to rationalize everything to get myself there without putting the students down. I need to balance a respect for where they are right now with the knowledge that I don't have to be a part of it. I guess working with these challenging personalities is not really that different than working with challenging people in any other professional setting. Sometimes though, it just feels like high school again. If anybody has any tips for me, please send them my way. Everyone remembers what 16 year old girls are like...