If you are lucky enough to have a shared staff area, one of the lovely opportunities you have in your day is a chance to speak to teachers in other departments across the school. Even in these snatched moments, it is sometimes a relief to hear a particular student that is causing you consternation in your lesson has the same impact in other areas.
Being in a staffroom gives you a chance to share strategies and perhaps laughter at the events unfolding in your workplace. It is also a chance to discuss changes in your classroom and not feel alone when things are feeling tough.
In any social media recommended for teachers, behaviour management seems to be a hot topic and one that many outside of teaching have very strong opinions on. For example, a glance at comments made on a news article about the increase of challenging behaviour in schools reveals deep and angry sentiments about the issue. Exchanges such as “It is parents who are at the centre of behaviour management in school.” and “We had different schools for problem students, why can’t we bring this back rather than have them in my child’s class?” highlight a lack of awareness of the changes in teaching policies regarding inclusion, nurture, equity and lack of council funding for schools.
When I was trained as a teacher 17 years ago, I do not remember being given specific training on behaviour management or the psychology of the teenage brain, yet that was the main concern I had when learning my craft. Yes, I was given a list of ‘ways to model good behaviour’ but we were told most of us would learn this on the job, and to an extent that was true: modelling strategies and seeing school policies in action did a lot more than reading a list, but managing changes in learner behaviour deserves much more consideration than that. Teachers have to juggle a lot when faced with challenging behaviour:
the learners themselves: keeping them safe at a time when they are not ready to learn and behaving in a destructive and/or difficult manner;
the rest of the class, impacted by what they are seeing and/or hearing;
you, the teacher, trying to keep a cool head and “rise above” what is happening so you can ensure that everyone gets through this in a way that is safe and manageable – and deal with the consequences.
It is so hard, especially when this isn’t the first time with that particular learner, or you know there are external factors which, perhaps, put this person in a state of distress even before they reach your class. If you are tired, stressed and/or already experiencing this in several classes, you can begin to feel like a failure and that feeling gnaws at any positive experience you have had that day, that week, that month… you get the picture.
We have some (obvious) recommendations and some ideas that hopefully can keep you going, but ultimately it really does take a village, and if every department in your school is doing something different when coping with challenging behaviour, for example different sanctions and steps, it can make teaching impossible and a poor experience for everyone – especially learners.
Start with Senior Leadership
Your school should have a policy for dealing with challenging behaviour. A supportive senior leadership team with a robust behaviour system means everyone sings from the same hymn sheet and can ensure all learners know what to expect in any subject from any teacher.
Shared goals and transparency are incredibly important: all schools will have priorities for their learners, be it boosting the academic results of the lowest SIMD or promoting equity in the school. However, if learners do not know why there are these (perhaps new) expectations and policies, they could react in a negative manner, so laying the groundwork is key. For example, when a school I worked in was faced with a poor inspection result, the reaction after the report was to implement a new uniform policy, have a “no nonsense” behaviour management system and remove all social areas in the school. This response, obviously, affected the students and they began to be more rebellious, challenging teachers who could not explain sufficiently why these changes had taken place overnight, and failed to quell the response of the majority of excellent learners, who felt punished and ‘lumped in’ with the badly behaved ones. It led to fights, bullying and massive outbursts of emotion in the classroom, even in the rooms of teachers known for their fairness and great classroom practice.
This situation was resolved after discussions with the pupil council, the sharing of information with learners and other stakeholders, the implementation of a new behaviour system and rewarding learners with fantastic communal spaces and increased opportunities in the school. It took all staff working together as a team to combat and support the new system and ensure all learners get the best experience possible in their education.
“TJK”
The best thing about writing a blog is I can discuss my own experience and mention ideas which are maybe too debateable for a Conduit resource. This is one of them: in every classroom I have worked in, I have a note at the back of the class. Originally, it was on a brick (such was the scene at the ailing building I worked in at the time) and it had three letters on it, bold and easy for me to see. These words were TJK and it stands for “They’re just kids.” Now, I say this is controversial because many a mature teenage learner in my class would physically baulk at me calling them a kid, but I promise you, this helps.
That brick was not for them, it was for me. It is a reminder that I am the adult, leading the learning, being the conduit for knowledge and if any challenging behaviour arises, it is up to me to remember that this person is JUST A KID. A teenager, yes, going through those emotions and with their own massive set of expectations and challenges that I, a teacher seeing them perhaps four times a week in my classroom, has no experience of. I need to remember that learners exhibit poor behaviour and, luckily for me, I have left my teenage years and I know it gets so much better after that! We are taught that challenging behaviour happens when one of these three things occurs:
1. The work is too easy.
The learner is not challenged or stimulated and therefore will act out, rush the work and be distracted (and that mostly involves distracting others, doesn’t it?) or even attempt to leave the classroom to find a subject they actually find stimulating. Ouch.
Fixes: find gaps in learning, through either a self-reflection task or termly radar chart, learner feedback form or having a learning conversation. Discover what the student enjoys and give them extension tasks and/or projects to engage them. Ask them to be the teacher, group leader or even a helper (I have enrolled students as peer markers or assessors, for instance) to increase student participation in the classroom, or speak to the teacher of their favourite subject and plan an IDL activity that will ensure learners feel listened to and appreciated.
2. The work is too hard.
The learner takes one glance down at the reading comprehension you’ve just handed them and implodes. Or explodes. Emotionally. “I can’t read!”, “I can’t do this!”, “I DID THIS YESTERDAY!” (yes, because you did not finish it) and this leads to poor behaviour.
Differentiate. Split tasks. Vary activities. Give personal targets to meet during the lesson or for that unit of work. Positively reinforce responses. Draw a line to show where you want the learner to reach (if writing) before the end of the time specified and use lesson snapshots to gauge understanding and learner feedback forms to tweak lessons in future. We have so many resources on site to help you teach, but we always love customer requests and aim to complete these requests in a timely manner.
3. The learner is experiencing profound difficulties outside your classroom, and this leads to them breaking down in your lesson.
This is absolutely the most difficult – and heartbreaking - for an educator. Perhaps your learner is on a reduced timetable, and either is in your classroom because it’s one of their core skills or they chose it because they enjoy your class, even if you, perhaps, find them tricky to work with. Maybe your learner is coming back to class after a break: bereavement, illness, school refusal…the list goes on. For these learners, being positive and knowing the background situation is key. Similar to when work is too hard, chunking tasks and regularly providing feedback to the learner is really important, as is establishing their connection to the class.
Group work, paired tasks, learner conversations and “checking in” with their guidance teacher and with this learner is so important to making them feel valued and keep them talking, because if you leave them to circle the drain without providing any form of scaffold, they will not see the benefit of being in your lesson and they will refuse to step into your room. Ultimately, knowing your class is key.
But we at Conduit know this is really hard and takes it out of you. Finding strategies, friends and different ways to help learners is key. We are here to help and strive to make our resources brilliant for all learners.
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