Students always hear the word disrespect in the school rules and the student handbook itself, but what do teachers actually consider disrespectful?

Teachers have different answers when asked what behavior or actions they consider to be disrespectful. Ms. Steiner said that eye rolling and disregarding requests were some of the things she considered to be disrespectful, while Mrs. Harris said that “Responding to a reasonable question with an attitude” makes a student disrespectful. When I questioned if phone usage was a common part of the student’s behavior, Mrs. Campbell said that it was “through the roof” and Ms. Steiner agreed that it was way too common for what the school allows.

The frequency of disrespectful students differs among teachers. Ms. Steiner, when using general terms and referring to the hallway, gets disrespectful students on the daily. Mrs. Campbell says that while disrespect occurs every day, overall students are respectful within class. So, when speaking generally, disrespectful students are common but are not so serious as to draw major attention.

Despite students being not entirely bad, there are some rather concerning outliers. An anonymous teacher said that one of their students came into class late during a classmate’s presentation. The teacher asked him to walk around the desks in order to avoid being disruptive, but instead of simply walking around the desks, he made a scene. He slammed his binder down, questioned in what ways he would distract the class, and then proceeded to curse loudly.

While the definition of disrespect can be hard to grasp due to what different teachers consider to be rude, you can simply avoid doing anything that could be considered disrespectful by following the classroom rules. Generally teachers will let you know what they find intolerable, but if they do not, take the safe route and don’t do anything you know irritates your other teachers.