What do you say to a student when he says to you aggressively, “You don’t have to get up in my face like that!”? How do you respond when in fact all you were doing was trying to be “reasonable” and explain why you were calling him down in the first place, and doing it by squatting down to be at eye-level with him, talking to him like a man? Is this blatant disrespect, or something else?
I’m not even sure I know what it means to be “in someone’s face about something.” I’m assuming that it means the chest to chest, strutting peacock type of testosterone-laden behavior I saw myself as a student many times. Of course I wasn’t doing that when students said those lovely words to me, so what’s going on?
An invasion of someone’s personal space is the only explanation I can come up with. In trying to be respectful — and I do believe teachers should be as respectful to their students as they expect their students to be to them — it seems I crossed an unknown, unseen boundary and caused offense. Or perhaps he was just testing me, seeing what he could get by with?
Was it a seventh grader? As far as I am concerned, he responded with total disrespect. I would have thought—oh, oh, here’s a direct challenge to my authority. But then, I always think that women have a harder time projecting any type of authority to begin with (in the classroom)—all the way through law school, as a matter of fact.
Oh, don’t worry—I have a hard enough time projecting authority. I think that’s a gender-blind problem in education.
It was indeed a seventh grader, and I treated it just as you interpreted it: a total lack of respect. Detention can work wonders, though, and he was an angel through the rest of the class—and I’m not saying that with tongue in cheek. He was great: hard-working, quiet, reasonable, and respectful.
“In someone’s face about something” does have to do with invasion of personal space, but also impies you’re being confrontational about the encounter. It’s possible that the student interpretted you crouching down differently – you probably meant it as not looming over him, being less threatening, while he might’ve taken it like you wanted to shout your comments or directions right at him, like you didn’t think he could understand if you weren’t close to him, and literally in his face.
These differences in body language can be especially profound if you’re from different cultures. Even when I (white/Asian middle class) did student teaching in an inner city (mostly black and latino working class) I noticed these things. They felt it more respectful to call me “Miss” than “Miss S***,” using my last name. I was also told by other teachers that looking someone in the eyes is a confrontation, so I should avoid doing so with agressive students.
Along with Nina’s comment on gender playing a role in authority, image – as in clothing – does too. Last semester I had a college student older than myself who occasionally challenged me by saying “that’s not what the book says,” or “why are you teaching us this stuff?” or “do you really think you’re going to teach us everything we need for the next course?” These comments tended to come on days I was wearing jeans, while he would be the model of a respectful student if I wore dress pants. I found this trend quite bizzare, but once I puzzled it out, his behavior was bothering me enough that I ended up dressing better on lecture days and wearing jeans only on lab days, when it didn’t make a difference.