The Incredible Impact of Respect at Cal Young

By: Eli Lowen

If I were asking you how you feel about Cal Young, what would you say? Would you say that it is a perfect place? Probably not. When I did ask people, one of the biggest problems was facing bullying or rude behavior, and some 85% of students felt they had experienced this. After taking a closer look, I was very surprised and realized that this topic has much more to it than it seems. 

Originally, I was going to write this article on how teachers and students need to improve the way that they treat each other, but I soon realized that the topic is so much more complex, that it was genuinely difficult to write it all out on just one page. 

When I interviewed students, each and every one of them said that they had experienced some sort of bullying from students and that they had felt mistreated by a teacher before. Some said that teachers didn’t let them go to the bathroom or that some teachers have done things that the student was offended by. But when I interviewed the teachers, their responses made this topic way more interesting. 

Most teachers said that they love their jobs and that they are always excited to go to work everyday. But some of the responses caught me off guard. More than 20% of teachers claim that they feel disrespected by their students, one teacher even being shouted at, cursed at, and getting literal classroom materials thrown at them for ridiculous reasons. “2⁄3 of my students are respectful, but the 1⁄3 who aren’t can ruin the learning environment of the other 1⁄3 and the teacher,” said one teacher. “Most students at Cal Young are super respectful of me as their teacher and of the space. The issue is a vocal group of students who are not respectful to me, (the teacher), their fellow classmates, the lessons, and of the space and supplies. This distracting and vocal group disrupt the lessons and are off task regularly. We have more good students than not. I wish I could empower the good students to take back the classrooms from their disruptive peers who make it harder on everyone,” stated another. “Each year,” started a 4j teacher, “There are probably 20 students who I feel respected by. Of those 20, I would say 5 to 8 that actually enjoy being with me throughout the day.” Some reported not feeling fully supported by the district. I could go on and on. This is when I realized that teachers are the ones suffering from this issue way more than the students. 

We were at school last year for some 1,170 hours, which for reference is about 50 days straight. Since we spent so much time here last year, wouldn’t you agree that it is worth it to have good relationships with your peers/students? If we work on strengthening those relationships, I’m sure that people would be happier all around; students, teachers, office agents, everyone. And if we prioritize respect, I can almost guarantee that there will be less bullying and rude behavior. 

“To this end, the greatest asset of a school is the personality of a teacher.” - John Strachan. 

As a school, we need to remember that teachers are humans too. And just like other humans, they have bad days. I have no doubt that teachers have mistreated students in the past. But the disrespect from students many times outnumbers the amount of disrespect coming from teachers. We should also not forget that teachers dedicate their entire career to educating students out of their love for kids. They also spend hours a week working late into the night unpaid to grade their students assignments. We all need to work on bringing respect to Cal Young.