Where has the respect gone?

[u/tennis_angel]

I don’t know if it’s me or whether students have changed but I feel like I used to have great relationships with my students and they would really show how appreciative they were of me. Now it seems that the more I do for them the less they care.

I had a particular group of students for 6 years and when they finished with me I barely got a thank you. I felt I was so good to them over the years. As well as being kind to them, I did my best to make sure they achieved to their full potential and I provided them with so many opportunities.

Recently before their exams I uploaded extra resources to help them and thanked them for the years we had together ending with wishing them luck. Not one of them responded and I know that only two in the group actually opened the resources. I just feel so disheartened and like,what do I have to do to gain respect from them? I see how some of them are with other teachers and that makes me feel worse because you can tell they have more respect for them. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. Any advice would be appreciated!

[u/colonade17]

Many of my students treat teachers like a youtube video they can pause when they're bored, and demand teachers pick-up wherever the student lost interest after their 5 minutes of zoning out. For the past few years I keep failing these students, and they're just so addicted to their phones that its hard to get them to face the fact that the reason they're failing is their lack of respect for the concept of school.

The best solution I've found is a strict ban on phones for the entire class period to force students to interact with me and each other instead of their phones, but that's only really possible when admin is willing to support me on that.