The Unteachables Podcast

#72: Let’s have a heart to heart… How are you going? Plus, big news on how The Unteachables is changing.

July 23, 2024 • Claire English • Season 5 • Episode 72

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Let me ask you a question, teacher friend...

How are you, really?

I have thought long and hard about how I view teacher wellbeing, what it is, how we get it, and there are so many factors that we need to consider: 

  • How much autonomy and trust you have.
  • The support you’re getting from leadership.
  • The culture of the school.
  • How empowered you feel in your classroom .
  • How confident and masterful you feel.
  • The opportunities that are afforded to you.
  • How fulfilling you feel the work is.

But today I wanted to talk about one factor that for me has had the most impact on how I am mentally and emotionally in the day to day in my role as a teacher.

One thing that has had the biggest impact on how I have been able to develop professionally.

Our teaching village.

They say it takes a village as a teacher but what does that mean? It certainly doesn’t just mean having people around us because when I felt my lowest in teaching, I had PLENTY of teachers around me.

For me having a village as a teacher needs to be about having like-minded people around us that we can trust to be vulnerable with, ask questions to, bounce ideas off, be inspired and empowered by (and empower them in return). To be able to access support in whatever form needed. To never have your struggles minimised or shrugged off, but heard and validated.

This was so pivotal for me, that I am changing the way that I support teachers here at The Unteachables Academy. I am making The Behaviour Club, my teaching village, central to what I offer. TBC is a dynamic community where like-minded teachers can connect, share, and grow together. With masterclasses, resources, and a thriving online network, this club is designed to support educators every step of the way.

Click here to join us and become a member of The Behaviour Club!

Have a question, comment, or just want to say hello? Drop us a text!

TAKE THE QUIZ! What is your teacher type, and what does this reveal about your classroom management?

Join The Behaviour Club -The essential training, advice, and community to confidently and calmly tackle all things classroom management.

The Low-Level Behaviour Bootcamp! - Strengthen your teaching presence and tackle low-level behaviours!

Purchase my book - ‘It’s Never Just About the Behaviour: A holistic approach to classroom behaviour management


Freebies and support:


Speaker 1:

Oh hi teachers, Welcome to Unteachables podcast Congratulations. You have just stumbled across the best free professional development and support you could ask for. I'm Claire English, a passionate secondary teacher, author, teacher mentor and generally just a big behavior nerd, and I created the Unteachables podcast to demystify and simplify classroom management. I want this podcast to be the tangible support, community validation, mentorship all those pretty important things that we need as teachers to be able to walk into our classrooms feeling empowered and, dare I say it, happy and thrive, especially in the face of these really tough behaviors. So ready for some no-nonsense, judgment-free and realistic classroom management support? I've got your teacher friend. Let's do this. Hello wonderful teachers. Oh, my gosh, that is not a good start with my voice, is it? Hello wonderful teachers, welcome back to another week of the Unteachables podcast.

Speaker 1:

The last week has been hell. I rarely record a podcast the day that it goes out, but I am sitting here at 10am recording a podcast episode the morning that I'm supposed to be releasing that podcast episode and that never happens. I'm usually really ahead of things. I'm usually, you know, getting things prepared, getting things out. But, as you can hear in my voice, we have been hit very hard by the plague in my household. My sweet baby brought home influenza from daycare and she also had an ear infection, but it means that the last week we've taken her back to urgent care three times. She was a very, very sick little girl. Thankfully, on day nine she started to turn a corner and started to be herself and she is a hundred percent herself now. Thankfully, it was a very scary period of time and, of course, she passed it on to my husband and I. So, as we were trying to take care of a very sick little toddler and take her to urgent care and everything we ourselves were were crumbling to a million pieces and yeah, it's a very, very bad flu bug that's going around at the moment and I hope that anybody else in the southern hemisphere with me stays clear away from it, because it was very hard hitting, but on that, probably going to be cutting a lot of this out as I try to breathe. Um, this has been a very fun, very amazing week as well, because I guess I can go into it a little bit later, but I have just opened doors to the behavior club, uh, which is what I've been working on for the last four months, and it, of course, classic Claire moment that the week I'm supposed to be releasing the behavior club and opening up doors. We're so sick that every little thing is like a mad, mad scramble to the finish line. But we're there and I opened up my founding member spaces yesterday and I have my brilliant community. That's in there now. Founding members, of course you can still come and join us, but I'll talk about that later in the episode.

Speaker 1:

What I also want to quickly talk about in the start of this episode is my book is never just about the behavior the like. The last seven episodes of the podcast will be dedicated to that. That is is done now. If you want to hear more about the book, you can go back and listen to those seven episodes in order so you can kind of get a feel of what the book's about. But I received this review on Amazon and I've received so many beautiful reviews on Amazon, but this one came through when I was in the thick of the sickness. And Matthew Moskin Matthew Moskin, if you are listening to this know that that review that I'm about to read. It got me through feeling very dark.

Speaker 1:

You said this book has finally helped me navigate the world of classroom management. I feel as a new teacher. I've had so many questions regarding behavior. This is the only book that has provided answers to my ambiguous questions. One of the most helpful things about this book is that the actual phrases and conversations are modeled for me. I always want very clear examples of things in this book delivered. It's made me feel empowered as a teacher. It allows and supports me to create the environment that I want for myself and my students. It tells me clear directions on how to turn my room into an island of safety. Going into my second year, I feel a hundred times more confident in the type of environment I want to establish and, most importantly, how I can do that. Such a beautiful book. I cried when it ended because I've had such an emotional connection. The strategies I've learned from the book have already made a world of difference to me and in my mindset alone. My gosh, matthew. Like, please know that that review meant so much to read. That book was a labor of love and um, everything that you've just written there about like the clear examples and you know, showing the how and the why like that is exactly what I wanted from the book. So thank you so much for that beautiful, thoughtful review that would have taken a little while to write out.

Speaker 1:

Now onto this episode of the podcast. It is titled let's have a heart to heart how are you going? Because I really want to have a heart to heart. How are you going? And the reason I want to talk about that is because the answer to that question has really changed and shifted and shaped for me over the last 13 years of being a teacher. And the reason why I want to talk about this in particular, it's because the reason why I've pivoted the unteachables now and I'll talk about the ways that I've pivoted my offers and how I'm going to be supporting teachers has changed from now on, and it really does have to do with this question of how are we, why are we like, why are we feeling this way and how can we feel a little bit better as teachers.

Speaker 1:

So I have thought long and hard about how I view teacher wellbeing, what it is, how we get it, and there are so many factors and every single person is impacted differently by this. You know it could be that you feel crap because of a lack of autonomy, maybe trust is an issue, maybe you're not getting enough support from leadership, maybe the culture of the school is toxic. How empowered you feel in your classroom has a big weight on how we feel as teachers, how confident and how masterful and how all over it we feel. If we're walking into our classroom feeling confident and masterful in our classroom management and our teaching and learning, our wellbeing is going to be better, the opportunities are afforded to us, how fulfilling we feel the work is. So many things impact on our wellbeing as teachers. Some of those things are in our control and some of those things are not in our control. And I want to talk about one thing for me that has had the most impact and one of the things that actually I didn't think was in my control until this very moment.

Speaker 1:

For me, the absolute darkest time I've had as a teacher was working in a small school. I was the only English teacher. I was also the assistant head teacher and I felt like in the day to day I was always either managing up with somebody my principal, and I'm not going to say too much about him, I'll just leave it there or I was managing down, managing the rest of the teachers. I was a teaching and learning lead, so I had a lot of responsibility for the entire staff team. The teachers were brilliant. If you were listening to this and if you're a teacher of that school, I don't think you would be there's a very small staff, but the teachers were so brilliant but I felt completely alone. I was working in a silo that it was just the nature of the beast, with the role that I had, where I didn't feel like I fit anywhere, really like where I could belong.

Speaker 1:

Um, now, the best time I've had as a teacher was when I was working with a big English faculty and we're like a little family and I say that with caution because I feel like anytime you say we are a family in a work context, it can be a little bit toxic, like I. I really cautious of ever saying we are a family here because it can be used against people. Um, but I did feel like I was a family with these people. In fact, you know, seven, eight, nine years on I can't remember exactly how many years I still some of these people are still people that I would consider my best friends and my family. So, um, that particular context, not only did I feel like I had this beautiful faculty around me, that had these shared experiences that I could talk to, that were my village, but I also had leaders who heavily invested in staff professional development, heavily invested in us and made us feel. Two particular leaders did this made us feel like we could do absolutely anything.

Speaker 1:

I was dealing with the same stuff as I was in that smaller school similar students, similar context, the same challenges with parents. The only difference was in that smaller school I didn't have a supportive village, and they say it takes a village as a teacher. But what does that actually mean? It doesn't mean just having people around us, because I had people around me at that smaller school. I had a beautiful team of teachers around me, I had the leadership team that I worked with, but I felt my lowest.

Speaker 1:

I think that having a village as a teacher needs to mean having like minded people around us that we can trust to be vulnerable with, to ask questions to that we know aren't going to be taken as silly you know, bounce ideas off and be inspired and empowered by, but also be that for them as well, like not just being somebody that takes, takes, takes, but in that village you are an integral part of what you do there as teachers and you are just as important as the teacher next to you and the teacher next to them, just to be able to access support, in whatever form. You need to never have your struggles minimized or shrugged off, but feel heard and validated. And my philosophy for leadership has always been if somebody comes to me, if you come to me and you say that you're struggling with something, I don't care if that something is so small to another person, I don't care if it's something that others would think is really simple. I don't care if it's something that I would think, oh, that's a bit, that's a bit simple, isn't it? You know, like that, that shouldn't be an issue.

Speaker 1:

There's so much shrugging off of things in schools. There's so much of oh, we just haven't tried, you haven't tried to build a relationship, you haven't tried to not take things personally, you aren't trying to differentiate your lessons or really like. This is really condescending support or a lack of support. So I want you to reflect right now on the situation that you are in. How are you really going right now in the school that you're in, and what would make you feel differently about the situation you are in right now, in this moment? Are you lacking that true village? Are you lacking the support that you need in order to feel empowered and thrive in your classroom and if you are nodding along with anything that I said, think about how you can establish that village.

Speaker 1:

Who can you reach out to look around the staff room? Is there somebody that you can connect with? Is there somebody that you can trust? Is there somebody that you look up to, a mentor of some kind that you can pull aside and trust and talk to? You might not have this.

Speaker 1:

I went six years not having this and it is so hard if that is you and you really really don't have that, because a village can just be two people as well. A village can just be you and your teacher, bestie and you know somebody that you can talk to over a coffee in the staff room when nobody's around. Um, so I am sending support if that is the case and I really hope that this podcast can be a source of a village and community for you, because, even though it was just me talking very poorly at the moment, might I add, I'm very scared about listening back to this podcast before I post it but I really do hope this podcast can be that source of village and community for you, and there are a lot of people that listen to this podcast who share your values, share the same direction that you want to head with classroom management, want to be the same kind of teacher that you want to be, with those same values. And that brings me on to the unteachables, because there are going to be some changes in the way that I offer support to teachers. You know that that'll teach them is my signature course. That'll teach them is incredible and I don't mean to be tooting my own horn, but it is really about developing your classroom management from the ground up. It is about that full transformation of okay, we start with this module here, we end with this module here, and by the time you get through that course, your teaching practice is going to have this big transformation. But I want to offer more than a course. I need it to be more than a course. It has to be classroom management and that level of support for teachers. It's more than just training.

Speaker 1:

And when I was sitting down, I sat down, you know, a few months back, and I had a big piece of paper and I'm like what do I want from this? What do I want for teachers? And to do that. I thought about the things in my career that has made the biggest difference in terms of training, development, progress, choice theory, training, envoy. There are a bunch of different things I could pinpoint, training wise that have been really beneficial. All of the marvelous in-school training I received from my mentor, cara these all shaped my practice right. But when I think about it more deeply and when I really dug into that, it wasn't the training itself. I could have gone to that training and gone. You know what? Bish bash bosh. That's it. I'm done. I'm going to go and try to implement in my classroom. Oh, whoops, I've tried. I have a question, I've lost it and now I'm not going to be doing this anymore.

Speaker 1:

It really was the ongoing support that was most transformative. It was being there with teachers who had also done that same training. Teachers that spoke my language, teachers that I could bounce ideas off. Teachers that I could sit across the table going. Hey, oh my gosh, have you tried those spiralling questions from choice theory today? No, how about we try some now, because I feel like I need to brush up on this? Or teachers that are there going, oh my gosh, I tried X, Y and Z from Envoy today. It was bloody transformative. Everybody, you need to give this a difference.

Speaker 1:

So I really reflected for a long time on what my goal is here. It is to support teachers to thrive in their classrooms, to have the capacity to support their students, and teachers can't support their students without feeling supported themselves. And so that brings me onto what I am doing now. I'm pivoting my offers a little bit. Yes, I will still be offering that'll teach them. Yes, I'll still be offering separate training programs. If this is not something that you need, but you would still like to learn from me, it's important that I still have those on offer as well. But I have created what I also said at the start, so I was not that big of a surprise the behavior club.

Speaker 1:

The behavior club is a community for teachers who don't just want to craft their teaching practice, but do so with ongoing support that you need to build the confidence to really hardwire those skills. What I'm trying to do is I'm trying to emulate what got me to this point, and really what got me to this point was my mentor, cara, and uh, like all of the incredible things that she did in bringing community together, she would send us on these professional development training, but then she would also hold these meetings and we'd be brought into these meetings and we'd have these discussions and we'd be able to bounce ideas off each other and it would just be this beautiful community where we could be vulnerable and share our wins and celebrate the positives that have happened but also talk about the struggles. That is what I am trying to emulate with this club Everything that has been pivotal for my own practice in really being able to get to a point where I'm able to support other teachers. This is not a sales pitch, the way at all. This is an invitation because I don't want somebody in the club that isn't 100% in need of this or on board with this. It is for somebody who is struggling with classroom management, who needs a village. If you're not going well at the moment, I want you to join us. It is the cost of a coffee a week because I wanted it to be really accessible. I know that that'll teach them and my other courses might not feel as accessible to some teachers because it is that one big course. So, because of the nature of this offer, I'm drip feeding different courses monthly.

Speaker 1:

It'll be a big focus on community for people who are aligned with the values, I am able to charge, and because it's me with a bunch of people in the community, I am able to charge less for that. So I'm able to support you. So, if you're aligned with those values that you hear me talk about in the Anteasables Academy, if you need a village, if you need that ongoing support, if you want to learn from me, I want you to pull up a seat and be there with me. There is so much that's going to be inside the club. It's actually a ridiculous amount for the price, to be honest, but because I am bringing people together, I can afford to do it in this way. So you should get in now, because I'll always honor the monthly price that you joined on, even when it goes up, when the offer grows, when I have, you know, 30 courses in there, 40 courses in there, not just one, two, three you will keep the same price.

Speaker 1:

So the kinds of things you'll get every single month you'll get a masterclass. So each month I'm going to be diving deep into a topic or challenge around behavior. So I'll be taking you step by step through, like a game plan on how to address that. Then you'll have your accompanying resources, from email templates to social emotional learning lessons, frameworks, behavior discussion prompts. I will be providing you with any resources that you need to feel confident to take action, to take it into the classroom, to hardwire these skills. Then you have your virtual coffee catch-ups monthly Meet with me for a heartfelt chat around the topic, to answer any questions that you have.

Speaker 1:

You can also watch the recording forever of that and, most importantly, your behavior club community. It's like a virtual staff room, but everybody's on the same page. Show up as your most authentic self, engage in the topics that I put out there, shoot the breeze, ask for support, join a challenge, celebrate the wonderful things you're doing and just have that village. Already. I've got my founding members in there, so I've got over a hundred people in there already that are just the most inspirational, empowering, incredible teachers I have spent. That's also why my voice is even croakier than it would have been, because I just spent the last two hours in there recording welcome videos and talking to people about the wonderful things that they've shared. So just join this amazing community If what I've spoken about has resonated and you think that a village is exactly what you need to be able to progress with your practice.

Speaker 1:

Also, as the behavior club grows, so too will the big behavior vault, so you can return to everything. So if you're thinking at one point in your career, oh my gosh, I am just struggling with low-level behaviors, you go back into that big behavior vault and you find that course on low-level behaviors and you watch that course and you can start to hardwire those skills. And then the resource library will also be growing month after month and it will have amazing resources in there, like social emotional learning lessons, regulation toolboxes, teaching and learning toolboxes, scripts and prompts. You need to have discussions with students and their parents, so much more. So this month, if you're listening in real time, the big behavior challenge that I've addressed is deescalating dysregulated behaviors. So in that you get your masterclass and that goes through a game plan on how to reduce, respond to and resolve big, challenging, dysregulated behaviors.

Speaker 1:

You get a fully resourced social emotional learning lesson. Flipping our lid. You get the coffee catch up where I talk about overcoming the challenges of staying calm and regulated as teachers. You get the regulation toolbox, which includes 29 calm cards to use on the go. It's like a portable calm corner which is perfect for secondary teachers and you get many, many prompts and templates to help you navigate those behaviors with students and communicating that to their parents as well. It is a massive month and of course then, month on month, there'll be new things that you can dive into, talk about, um hardwire, all the rest of it, and I am so excited to really crack into all of this.

Speaker 1:

So if you would like to join us for the behavior club, you can head to the dash on teachablescom forward, slash TBC and I will put the link to that in the show notes as well. And again, if memberships aren't your thing, that is fine. If you still want to access courses and resources separately, I do offer that. I've actually uploaded every single resource from inside the club, of course, not the masterclass, but the resources that accompany it. So the lesson, the templates, the cards. I have uploaded those into TPT for anybody who would like to purchase those separately, because I still want you to be able to have access to them. Or you can sign up for one of the courses, but the courses aren't up just yet.

Speaker 1:

And if you're from a school and you would like multiple teachers to join the club, please just email me at claire at the dash on teachablescom because I do offer bespoke packages for multiple staff members and also schools. You will be able to also purchase the individual packs for your school if you want to use one as a training session. So I think that I have pushed my voice pretty much as far as I will go today and I've got another few recordings to do before I leave for Australia in a few days. So I'm going to go rest my voice and I will see you next week. But if you have any questions whatsoever about the BehaviClub, if it is right for you again, this is not a sales pitch. I want the right teachers for the right reasons in the BehaviClub. I want to support the people who really desperately need this level of support. I can't freaking wait to see you in there, sending all my best teachers Until next week.

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Claire English

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