The Lion

"The lion does not concern himself with the opinions of the sheep." -- Tywin Lannister, Game of Thrones

When students verbally bully one another, this is the best advice I can give to the victim: reacting gives them power over you; it makes them think you care about their opinion, which only entices them to bully you more. The opinions of bullies should, in fact, be beneath you. (Of course, when I witness bullying, I do try to step in and request everyone always be respectful towards everyone. But the above advice for students is for situations where I'm not present.)

Similarly, when students attempt to say disrespectful things to or about me (whether the disrespect is intended or accidental), I tend to react with, at most, gentle bafflement.

In the same vein, it does not concern me whether I am students' favorite or least favorite teacher; really, I'm basically indifferent to whether they even like me at all. As long as I am doing my best to be both kind and effective (I aspire to the "warm demander" archetype of teacher), some students will love me, some will loathe me, and most will be somewhere in the middle. I do not feel any need nor desire to be these teenagers' friend, though I always try to be their ally and comrade.

Neurodivergence and Disability

Full disclosure:

I am a number (somewhere in the vicinity of two) of overlapping flavors of mildly to moderately neurodivergent. I like to think I generally pass as merely eccentric; more rarely, offputtingly weird.

After getting hit by a car as a pedestrian in late 2020, I left some of my brains on the pavement (not quite literally), never completely recovering from the traumatic brain injury. I estimate I'm at about 95% of my previous capacity; most of my remaining difficulties lie in finding the right words when speaking, resulting in conversational gaps as I try to find words.

This can make me seem like I know less than I actually do, or like I'm even more awkward and less confident than I actually am.

Or, in situations where I can't come up with a $1 word but a variety of highfalutin' $10 words come to mind (e.g., if I can't remember the words "near" or "close" or "next to", but "proximate" and "juxtaposed" spring straight to mind), it can make me seem like I'm trying too hard to appear smart -- which can have additional pitfalls with schoolchildren, who naturally have a less expansive vocabulary, and so are less likely to be familiar with such $10 words.

In the context of the classroom, I turn these apparent misfortunes into a strength: informing the class that, despite having been equipped with a brain which was not quite standard-issue to begin with, and which has since become dented and dinged up, I am nonetheless successful in life, and so can they all be if they set their willpower to it, no matter what handicaps they might be faced with.

Moreover, by being low-key but unapologetically weird, I can, in theory, deflect hostility away from the "weird kids" and onto myself. When necessary, I'm happy to be the weirdest person in the room, if it helps me tank bully aggro away from the squishies (if you'll forgive this use of MMORPG vernacular), on those occasions my attempts to build a classroom culture of overall respect might fail.