#53: If your classroom management doesn't include these 3 things, it won't work. A walk through of my entire classroom management approach.
Mar 11, 2024Season 4Episode 53
Claire English
It is so easy to get lost in the noise in teaching. ‘Best practices’ are pretty dependant on who you speak to. Some will advocate for a trauma informed approach, some talk about restorative practice like it is the holy grail. Some will call it different names entirely. Some still stand by the use of extrinsic rewards and detentions, there is PBL, PBIS, tiers, intervention after intervention, a million pieces of the big old puzzle that is classroom management.
So what do we do? What is good classroom management, really?
For me, it is the holistic approach that I have adapted over the past 13 years. An approach that effectively reduces, responds to, and resolves, challenging classroom behaviours. An approach that not only supports every student, but empowers every educator.
In this episode of The Unteachables Podcast, I am going through the entire thing.
It is so easy to get lost in the noise in teaching. ‘Best practices’ are pretty dependant on who you speak to. Some will advocate for a trauma informed approach, some talk about restorative practice like it is the holy grail. Some will call it different names entirely. Some still stand by the use of extrinsic rewards and detentions, there is PBL, PBIS, tiers, intervention after intervention, a million pieces of the big old puzzle that is classroom management.
So what do we do? What is good classroom management, really?
For me, it is the holistic approach that I have adapted over the past 13 years. An approach that effectively reduces, responds to, and resolves, challenging classroom behaviours. An approach that not only supports every student, but empowers every educator.
In this episode of The Unteachables Podcast, I am going through the entire thing.
Welcome to our Teachable podcast. I'm Claire English, a passionate secondary teacher and leader, turned teacher, mentor and author, and I'm on a mission to transform classroom management and teacher support in schools. It doesn't feel that long ago that I was completely overwhelmed and out of my depth of behaviour, trying to swim rather than sink. It took me spending thousands of hours in the classroom, with all of the inevitable ups and downs, to make me the teacher that I am today Confident, capable and empowered in my ability to teach all students yes, even the ones who are the toughest to reach and now I'm dedicated to supporting teachers like yourself to do the same. I created the Untouchables podcast to give you the simple and actionable classroom management strategies and support that you need to run your room with confidence and calm. So if you're a teacher, or one in the making, and you're wanting to feel happy and empowered and actually enjoy being in the classroom, whilst also making a massive impact with every single one of your students, then you're definitely in the right place. Let's get started. Hello, hello, wonderful teachers, welcome back to the Untouchables podcast. If you are listening for the first time, welcome, obviously, but this is not the best episode to start on, because last week was part one of part two, which is this week's episode, and I'm going to extend this kind of metaphor, which is a bit annoying, but I want you to think about these two episodes like a house. This episode is kind of like the house that's built upon the foundations of the previous episode, so go back and listen to that first. In that episode I kind of go through the values which underpin the approach, why I have taken this approach to classroom management, some of the struggles that I've taken to get there, and it is just really pertinent for you to understand that before we move on to this episode. So for those of you who are tuning back in after last week, welcome. I'm really happy that you wanted to learn a little bit more about this, and this is kind of like the bread and butter of what we need to be doing. So this is going to be a good episode. It's going to be really valuable and guess what? You've gone a week into the future, but I'm still here sipping the exact same coffee that I was last episode. So there's a little bit of podcast magic. So this episode right.
Speaker 1:
I want to start with the fact that it is so easy to get lost in all of the noise in teaching. There is so much noise. There are so many things that people talk about as being best practice when it comes to classroom management. But best practice is kind of dependent on who you speak to, isn't it?
Speaker 1:
Some are going to advocate for a trauma-informed approach to classroom management. Some talk about it as if it's a restorative practice, like this little linguistics, this little language around what we say it is. They say that's the Holy Grail. Some call it completely different names entirely. Some still stand by the use of extrinsic rewards and detentions. Then there's PBL, there's PBIS, there's different tiers of behavior, there's intervention after intervention. There are just millions of pieces of this big old puzzle that's classroom management.
Speaker 1:
So I am not surprised that it is so difficult for teachers to decode that. It was hard for me. You have to decode it. But then see what works for you, see what works for your class, and the biggest problem with that as well is that when you try something new that actually works with classroom management, it doesn't work immediately because there's human beings in front of you that have to adapt to that. It takes time, it takes effort, it takes things compounding over a certain period of time. So you don't have time to sit there and go through that big old list of what could potentially work with a class when you are in survival mode already. So it's very difficult for us to remain calm practitioners walking into a class and saying, okay, here are all of these things that I'm going to try. Let's see what works today, let's see what works in a week's time. You deserve so much better than that. You deserve somebody to take your hand and show you the way, and that is exactly what I do in the Unteachables Academy with my courses, with my podcast, with everything, especially in that old teaching which is my full comprehensive course. So where you stand on classroom management is influenced by a lot of things. It's influenced by your own experiences at school. It's influenced by where you live. It's influenced by what your teacher training has covered, the framework your school's doubled down on, the school you walk into and, ultimately, what your values are in education. But, as I said in last episode, even if you have the strongest why, when it comes to being in the classroom, that can very quickly just be clouded and crowded out by all of the chaos that ensues in a classroom for being a teacher.
Speaker 1:
So my approach, I don't call it a Tuamrin-formed approach, I don't call it a restorative approach, I don't call it anything like that. I call it a holistic approach. And it is the approach I teach you little by little through this podcast. Everything is kind of a piece of the puzzle of my holistic approach that I teach you through the Instagram, that I go into more detail in my book and then the great deal of detail I go into it in my course. It's a holistic approach. And why not a Tuamrin-formed approach? Why not restorative? Well, the approach, my holistic approach, does have those values underpinning it. Of course it does. You know why. You listened to my episode last week. You know that my approach clearly has those values underpinning it.
Speaker 1:
But what's really important to note is that not all behavior is a manifestation of trauma. It's not a manifestation of the stress response every single time. I remember sitting there in school and it's a horrible, horrible memory. But we had this relief teacher in maths and a bunch of the boys in my class were taking turns spitting on his bum as he was riding on the board, and this was back in 2003. And those boys, I knew them. These behaviors were not a trauma response. These behaviors were not a stress response. They were disgusting behaviors that were kids meeting their needs for love and belonging of the group they were in and their need for fun, and it was manifesting this horrible way with this teacher. So, as well as having behaviors that are due to the stress response, there are also behaviors that are just developmentally appropriate and needs meeting. So that's why I don't call my approach a trauma-informed approach and I don't call my approach a restorative approach, because, even though restoration is a big part of what we do after behaviors we don't like, the whole approach can't rely on our ability to resolve behaviors when there's so much work that needs to be done in stopping them from happening in the first place, from mitigating them, for, you know, making sure we're empowered in doing everything we can in our classroom before the behavior to, you know, take control of our practice and ourselves in our classroom space.
Speaker 1:
So, yes, whilst I teach about trauma when talking about behavior, so the first module of my course that'll teach him is called the behavior backpack. And yes, I do teach about trauma. I do teach about the stress response. I do teach about the amygdala and all of the fight, flight or freeze responses and how that manifests in challenging behaviors. I do talk about restoration when I'm talking about the resolve part of my course, which is the very end. So they're parts of my practice, but it is not the whole picture and what often happens is professional learning. It loses teachers because it doesn't provide the realistic and actionable support they need.
Speaker 1:
Because if you're talking about a trauma-informed approach, you're just talking about the things that mitigate trauma responses in young people. You're talking about the things that create felt safety. That is such a huge part of it, but that is not the whole picture and it's just. It's just not everything we do. We need so much more to be able to fill in power in our classrooms. Yes, it's underpinned by neuroscience, it's underpinned by attachment theory, it's underpinned by development, it's underpinned by choice theory and, as I said, I explicitly teach this in my course, but I frame it as the knowledge we need to then look at what to do to apply the action in a way that's sustainable, in a way that we can understand it, in a way that's contextual, in a way that's relevant and actually impactful for not just young people who have had a really difficult time in their lives and really difficult experiences and traumatic experiences, not only students who have a disorganized attachment, but these approaches when I'm talking about holistic approaches to classroom management, this will be able to support you to classroom manage your entire class. It's beneficial for every single student in that room. So that's the first layer of my holistic approach, my framework for classroom management.
Speaker 1:
It all starts with what is behavior? Why is behavior happening? All of those things to do with the trauma-informed approach, all of that stuff. But that is just the first piece and to follow that, there are three different steps that we take. There are three. It's like a roadmap to approaching, mitigating, resolving challenging behavior. So it's reducing, responding and resolving challenging behavior. When it comes to the first one, so these, I'm actually stepping you through what the curriculum is and that'll teach them, to be honest with you, because everything I do in that'll teach them is literally just stepping you through the roadmap of what my approach to classroom management is. So, nuts and bolts, preparing for it is all the stuff that you need to know about behavior, the behavior backpack, and then we kick into the first actual, tangible, actionable thing when it comes to classroom management, which is to reduce behavior.
Speaker 1:
Now I say this a lot, but the most impactful and effective classroom management that we can ever do happens before there is any behavior to be seen anywhere in the room, and all of these things that we do mitigate the behaviors. They do create felt safety, they create the consistency, they reinforce expectations, they reinforce boundaries, the kinds of things we do to reduce the behavior before they happen, things like crafting a strong teaching persona. Again, that's something that we can control. It's not reliant upon our personality, it's not reliant upon how you know out there we are, how excitable we are. It's not about how popular we are, it's not about how scary we are. It is about our nonverbals. It's about how consistent we are. It's about our can you hear that rain? The one thing about moving from London to New Zealand is that there's proper rain. Here in London it's just drizzle and here it's just like heavy pelting down, which is something that I've really missed. Anyway, I digress.
Speaker 1:
So crafting a strong teaching persona is actually all of the things that we do in that classroom with our nonverbals. So how are we regulating ourselves? How are we then co-regulating with young people in our care? What are the barriers to that? Because being a teacher is not a very calming experience in general, whether it's because of the behaviors that we're coming up against, all the fact that teaching is just absolutely chaotic, with all of the admin and stuff that we have to do.
Speaker 1:
The next thing we can do to mitigate the challenging behaviors before they arise and this is the biggest module and that'll teach them, because it is so crucial that we get this right, because when we get this right, we won't be having to face the torrent of behaviors. And after that, the second thing is how we run the room, so things like establishing routines, how we set expectations that students are actually going to buy into, how we maintain those expectations and make them a part of our everyday practice, because it's all well and good to do one lesson at the start of a term, at the start of a school year, whatever we do, but you have to live those expectations through everything you do. How do we live them? Through the conversations that we're having, through the little things that we're saying? I'll give you micro scripts and everything in that'll teach them, but how are we embedding that language and making it a part of our common language in our classroom and how are we making that a part of the restorative practice and everything like that. So it's actually something that isn't up on the wall just for people to forget about. It's actually something that we're living and breathing every single day.
Speaker 1:
The next thing we can do to mitigate behaviors before they happen is that we need to think about how our teaching and learning has an impact on behavior. So things like adaptive learning and differentiation, how we plan our lessons, these are the kind of things that I give you roadmaps for and toolboxes for and explicit things for. Because when I heard differentiation in my early career, it terrified the hell out of me, because in my head I'm like okay, I've got six classes of 30 students, that is, 180 students, always different needs, always different abilities, always different ways that they like to engage in their learning. How in the freaking hell am I going to sit down and plan my lessons for all of these young people and make sure that it is doing what I need to be doing with these teaching standards? It is really daunting. It does not have to be that hard. So in this particular submodule, when it comes to differentiation and lesson planning, I break it down for you. I give you toolboxes, I give you strategies to lesson plan really quickly Just things that students like you need to be able to support your students in the best way possible. Why this helps with behavior is because if students can come into your class and know that they can be successful at what you're planning in that lesson, their felt safety is going to go up. And when their felt safety goes up and their regulation goes up, everything else goes down and their behaviors are naturally going to be more regulated behaviors.
Speaker 1:
Okay, the next piece of the puzzle when it comes to reducing challenging behaviors before they happen is the rapport that we build with our young people. I had to put this in there. It's obviously a massive part of what we do, the relationships we build, and I want to just do a caveat that it is so much harder than people say it is when it comes to building relationships with those students who are the hardest to reach and teach. I just got a message this morning from somebody saying hey, clare, I've just moved from primary to secondary school and I have always been able to build really strong relationships with my students, but now I feel like it is impossible. Primary and secondary can be completely different beasts. They're very different in ages. They're very different developmentally. It's really fricking hard.
Speaker 1:
So if you've ever been told just to build a relationship and your classroom management is going to get better, it is true. But it is not true at the same time because it is such an over and I've spoken about this before it's such an oversimplified version of what we need to be doing in our classrooms. So the module in that will teach them that I do is specifically about building rapport with the hardest to reach and teach, those students who have got a really insecure or disorganized attachment, because at the end of the day, anybody can kind of build a relationship with somebody who already has the social and emotional skills there to receive that and to feel safe around you. But when it comes to the students who are the hardest to reach and teach, that is where things get complicated and that is where you need the support and that is what I specifically talk about. So we talk about things like the emotional piggy bank, investing in an emotional toolbox, things that will, little by little, be able to gain their trust and make waves when it comes to actually being able to approach them about their behavior and having them in the classroom with you settled and ready to learn such a huge part of it the next module. So that is all the things that we do to reduce the behaviors before they come into the classroom. So our teaching presence really honing that and hardwiring a strong teaching presence that has strong expectations, strong boundaries, done in a really compassionate way, calm way, our teaching and learning on point, but not in a way that's going to add everything to our plate. In fact it reduces what's on our plate because it gives us really firm and explicit kind of roadmaps to follow and templates to use that will help us without planning and our differentiation. The next part is about running our room. So maintaining those expectations, having expectations students buy into and then, obviously, building rapport with students who are really tough to engage and to build rapport with. So that's all this kind of stuff we do and there is more in there.
Speaker 1:
I haven't gone into every single detail, obviously, because there's a whole module with like four submodules, but that is the kind of stuff that I teach within my holistic approach. That is what the first part of the holistic approach is made up of. The second part of the holistic approach is responding to behavior that is happening in the moment, because no matter what you do, you could be brilliant at all of the things that mitigate the behaviors, but we're talking about human beings here. We're not talking about robots. There are going to be behaviors in the classroom that are going to bubble up.
Speaker 1:
So, with this part of the holistic approach to classroom management, it is all about what we do in the moment to respond to behavior, and there's two parts to it. It's when behavior bubbles up, after talking about there's a roadmap I call the 5Ps roadmap and if you're in any of my courses you'll know about the 5Ps. It is how we pause, is how we position ourselves. It's the pace that we're using. It's the private or public voice we're using. It's all of the way that we craft. It's like in the plan and the pursue. There's a lot of different things that we do, but it's all of the things that we do in the moment, step by step, on how to respond to and address challenging behaviors that are happening in our classroom in that moment. And then the second part of it is when behaviors bubble over, because not all behaviors are going to be able to be resolved with just that roadmap, because sometimes the behavior is incredibly dysregulated. It's escalated to the point that you can't bring them down with those simple strategies that I teach you. So I go through, like the escalation strategies and all of those things.
Speaker 1:
So, when it comes to a holistic approach, we've got all of the things that we do beforehand and then what we do in the moment in the classroom. The one thing that I am going to say is the worst thing that we can do. The one thing we need to be thinking about in the moment is de-escalation and getting things back to a point where we can then go off and teach the lesson again. But we just can't be the fist against them, and I've spoken about this in another podcast episode. We can't be a fist against a fist and wanting to go into battle and wanting to win that battle and wanting to. You know, it's a battle of the egos in the classroom sometime. So in this particular stage, the whole goal is not to resolve whatever's in front of us, is to de-escalate it so we can get back to teaching and make a plan for after the lesson or depends on how serious the behaviour itself is. But in this part of the holistic approach and the roadmap, it is all about de-escalating, getting back to teaching, and doing so in a way that is calm, effective and compassionate for not only that student, not only for yourself, but the whole class.
Speaker 1:
The next part of the roadmap is to then resolve the behaviour. Just say that behaviour was incredibly challenging. It wasn't able to be, because a lot of the behaviours are going to be resolved in respond. A lot of them are either going to be mitigated in reduce or then resolved in respond. So when people talk about a restorative approach taking a bunch of time, that is because we're missing the pieces beforehand and missing those things that are really going to be effective in making sure we don't spend time doing 30 different things. We're doing 30 different discussions at the end of the lesson.
Speaker 1:
But this part here resolve is about the behaviours that were serious enough or consistent enough to be able to talk to them after and need a consequent on it to be resolved. So in this part resolve, it is about the conversations that create change. So I go through transformative talks. In this part here it's like a restorative discussion, but I've adapted it to a teaching context, because restorative justice is about a really long process and sometimes that is required in an education setting when the behaviours are complex enough or serious enough. But most of the conversations that we need to be having around behaviour are conversations that can happen in five minutes and you need to be able to do that and feel empowered in that, because that's where the change happens and in those conversations we can be raising accountability. That is the number one goal for here, like making sure they know that they're accountable for this and then resolving it through some education, through a consequence, through whatever you need to do to resolve that behaviour that has happened in that classroom.
Speaker 1:
Education, true discipline that is what this part of the roadmap is all about, this part of the holistic approach, and giving them consequences that actually create change. So, thinking about what is a logical consequence, how can we implement these consequences in a way that students the goal would be that students should be in front of you saying you know what. This is the consequence that I think is appropriate. This is the consequence that I think might be fair. That makes sense for what I did. Okay, I'll go clean up that mess that I made in the classroom. That is the goal here.
Speaker 1:
So, recapping, and obviously there is so much more to this holistic approach that I can go through in a very short podcast episode, which is why obviously, I've got my course that will teach them, but I've also created a free training session called turning your teaching into a classroom management machine, and the reason I've called it that is because every part of this holistic approach is like a cog that makes everything move, and it's so. Every single part of that is just as important. If we're not reducing the behaviours, we're never going to be getting on top of them. If we're not crafting that strong teaching presence, if we're not getting our teaching and learning on point, if we're not setting our expectations and boundaries in the right way, that is going to lead to an increase of the behaviours that we see when we do have those behaviours pop up in the classroom. If we are not able to follow a really strategic roadmap to reducing those, deescalating those, resolving those in the moment, then we're going to be stuck in the resolve part, with 30 kids in our room having to talk through their behaviors with no strategy to actually then reduce them for the future. So it's really important that we're getting every single cog in this classroom management machine moving and this is how teachers can effectively classroom manage Classroom management in a way that is sustainable for their time, their energy. Trust me, when we hardwire these skills, our teaching does become a classroom management machine, because we're not having to think constantly about what we're going to be doing. Everything is working together to create an environment in our classroom that is compassionate, it's calm, it's productive. We can get back to teaching, we can get students learning and progressing. It's classroom management magic. It really really is, and I will stand by that every step of the way.
Speaker 1:
I am so excited to share more about this with you. Please come to the live training session if that's something that is your vibe, if you've enjoyed hearing a little bit about it today. Because I make it really visual. I step through. I know I'm slaying in my bed right now having this coffee and it's very hard for me to embody exactly what this looks like through just talking about. I'm a very visual learner, so even talking through it, I'm thinking can people really visualize this right now, which is why I wanted to step you through it in a really visual and explicit way. So come along to the free training session if you're listening to this in live time, if you want to register for that, it is the dash on teachablescom forward slash free training, but I will also pop the link in the episode description show notes, whatever you want to call them, and register for that.
Speaker 1:
Come along. There's already so many of you coming and it's really exciting that I'm able to share something that is. It is the backbone of everything that I do. In fact, people who have come into that will teach them and learn this explicitly and followed the roadmaps and everything. Some of them have even messaged me saying that they're now leading on classroom management in their school because their principals have walked into their classroom and gone. Oh my god, something magic is happening in here, something really amazing is happening in here, and so, naturally and organically, they have become leaders in their school of classroom management. That is the impact of this kind of stuff. So I hope to see you there and I hope to see you big on the unteachables podcast. Bye, teacher friends.