The Dean at a Community College discusses the issue of what to do when you overhear students talk about other professors or even about you.
Students obviously talk about their professors and seem to have no problem doing so in front of their other teachers. While it's sometimes tempting to listen in, I always make a point of telling them not to mention names in front of me. Instead I'll tell them that if they have a problem or issue with a professor, the professional approach would be to go talk to that professor.
The Dean offers this advice if you overhear something negative about yourself:
"As with road rage, taking the high road also makes unwelcome escalation less likely. Suppose you confront the students, they take offense and escalate, and then complain that their eventual bad grades were the result of retaliation? These things happen. You don't know how people will react when surprised, especially if guilt and/or shame is part of the mix, so I wouldn't surprise them lightly.
In the best case, if your skin is thick enough, you can take some time later to try to analyze the comments dispassionately. Is there a kernel of truth to them? If so, is there something you can do about that? Sometimes we fall into bad habits without realizing it's talking to the board, taking too long to grade papers, requiring students to buy expensive textbooks that we proceed to ignore. (In my early days of teaching, a sympathetic student pulled me aside after class once and told me that I spoke too softly to be heard in the back row. That was actually useful.) If you're able to salvage some usable nugget of information, you can actually improve as an instructor. If the information is useless, walk it off. Don't let them get the better of you."
It's our job to model adult behavior regardless of what our students may be saying or doing.
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