It’s not your job to “put a student in their place.” This is my 40th year of teaching, and my best advice is to stop worrying about what a teenager thinks of you. Honestly, some are just not kind people (just like the rest of the world).

It’s important to try to make connections with students, but the reality is that they don’t all want to make connections with us. Sometimes respectful space is as good as it gets with certain students. It’s not personal; they just have other issues on their minds. Give them space and then catch them being successful. It can completely change the dynamic with them.

We all have that one student who is surly and combative, and what actually makes it worse is letting them know they are getting to you.

I’ve learned to be very boundaried about what I will accept from students, and the one thing I won’t accept is abuse. I also learned decades ago not to engage in arguments with teenagers. They love it if they can pull you into argument mode, but I simply will not go there.

So, when I have a student who tries, I absolutely cut them off, privately remind them of my classroom expectation, and move on.

As far as questioning your assessments, be sure you are using a well-constructed rubric for scoring that clearly defines what you are grading for and how points are awarded. I go as far as teaching my students to assess their own performance using the rubric before I do so they take ownership of the requirements of the assignment. Without a good rubric it can be hard to concretely justify your assessments. I find students rarely question my grading because I am completely transparent ahead of time about what I am grading for, and the rubrics keep me honest and consistent.

Beyond that, if you have a decent school guidance counselor or administrator who you can bounce this off of, sometimes a group meeting to air the issues and reinforce expectations can be helpful.

It’s hard, but put your energy into the other majority of your students who are needing your support and not draining your emotional energy.It’s easy to get sucked into the drama of that one student to the detriment of the rest of the class, the learning environment, and your own sanity.