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The original was posted on /r/professors by /u/forestfire2 on 2023-10-06 20:18:29.

I’m a newer professor, without any experience teaching anyone other than adults, so please excuse what may be a simple question:

I teach in a large, urban setting that has recently enabled high school students to take as many general education college courses as they want. The public high schools here are overcrowded, understaffed, and they push students through. The schools are known for bad behavior of students. I feel for the kids who want an education but can’t get one because of how disruptive public high school is, but now it is bleeding into the college classroom.

I teach in the evening, so I always have about 6 high school students in a class of 20. I expect I will always have this amount because evening classes are good for a high school students schedule. Most students are respectful of their peers, but I have noticed last semester, and this semester in particular, that there is some high school-antics, general disregard of others: rude to peers, rude to me, shirking rules, talking in back of class over others.

Basically, how do I firmly tell these students that while I cannot make them care about the course, they are disrupting the experience for the students who do care and who paid to be there?