Teacher troubles! What to do? It's the beginning of the year!

Ok, my daughter, from the start, met her teacher and did not like him. I have to say, my daughter just knows those things sometimes, so when I doubt her, I usually realize that she was right about the person. The first few days my daughter was on and off about this history teacher of hers. Sometimes she liked him, other times she didn’t. By the end of the week, she had found a disliking to him. On good terms with him, she was hurt from his “jokes”.

The teacher would make jokes poking fun at his students. They would laugh at themselves, but after a while it got old. There are triplets in the grade who don’t look alike. The teacher was having the an open conversation about how he can’t tell the triplets apart (one of the three are in the class) and my daughter added into the convo and jokingly said, “They don’t look alike!”. My daughter had in no way meant to insult him, just join in the loose conversation as everyone else had been doing. Well, he decided to poke fun at my daughter, saying “I love how you get mad at me! I’ve only known them for a week and you’ve known them for years!” And he repeated this almost daily. My daughter claims that the rest of the class was saying the exact same thing she was. So she laughed at herself when he threw that punch line. Then she was getting tired of it because she had never intentionally meant to say it in the way it appeared to the teacher, and had not thought that she would be the class “joke”. During Meet the Teachers night, I went and sat in her classes, and met this history teacher of hers. And in fact, he mentioned, to the whole class of parents “Well, one of my students had yelled at me for not being able to tell the triplets apart! I told her I only knew them for a week, and she knew them for years!” Then he mentioned the student’s name. The parents laughed, but I personally thought that he went too far this time. He did not need to mention this to the class, and personally mention my daughter’s name.

My point being here is that I know, not all teachers are supposed to like you, or your daughter, but in this case I feel that if he’s going to keep singling out my daughter to make fun of her, I don’t know how to handle this without disrespect. Any suggestions? Thanks so much and sorry for the incredibly long long question!