Warm/Strict:

• Having high behaviour standards and to establish those standards consistently and to communicate those standards with warmth and affection.

• Making decisions not on popularity but based on long term commitment to students' growth.

• An example: I am enforcing this rule because I care about you.

• Understanding consequences to broken rules is an important part of growing up.

• Applying our rules consistently is the fair thing to do by our students.

• Applying our rules consistently supports our colleagues across the school.

• Be a good teacher first; relationships will follow. It is an iterative process.

• ‘Teaching well is relationship building’

Imprecise praise might illustrate a situation in class where praise relates to person/personality and not actions or gives effusive or meaningless affirmations that offer little in the way of deliberate guidance.

• This might lead to a young person feeling inaccurately defined, labelled or constrained.

• This could be intentional, meant as a way to build relationships and trust, or it could be unintentional: as a result of a lack of deliberate planning and thought.

• We might very well care deeply but if the actions we take to demonstrate this are not linked to clear expectations it means that potential learning and relationships are built on shifting sands.

Invisible expectations might see us holding a pupil to account for something that is poorly or barely explained either in terms of behaviour or learning.

• This lack of transparency implicitly relates a lack of connection and creates unnecessary trap doors for pupils, and ultimately, for teachers.

• In the long term this will not only lead to poor relationships but learning is likely to be less effective as low or no expectations conspire with an absence of human consideration.

Unrelenting inflexibility tells a story, rich in expectations and clarity, but locked into the rigid stare of the long and unbending “my way” ahead.

• In this quadrant the paths to learning and behaviours are writ large on a single arrow.

• Learning might be strong but relationships will take time and may not flourish, some resulting barriers may lead to inattentiveness and rejection, leaving room to care more about the people that one might be keen to hold to account in a class.

Warm/strict is a technique geared towards creating an environment where a student understands that you care (warm), but you are in charge (strict).

1. Front load expectations and apply antecedents

2. Apply R/W/BIR consistently

3. Move on quickly

• Radical Candour meets Warm Strict

• Warm/Strict: we enforce rules because we care by Thahmina Begum