An insightful and thought-provoking post from Cedric, that was the basis for an excellent 15 minute forum...

The above clip shows the comedian Greg Davies diffusing a situation where James Acaster insults him. For me, it’s a wonderful example of successful behaviour management: it’s rooted in patience and kindness, and so doesn’t humiliate James; leads to James acknowledging his mistake; and ends in forgiveness, with both parties returning to enjoy a successful show. What more could you want?

What I go on to discuss is rooted in similar principles, and hopefully just as effective. I am not claiming to be an expert, with the vaccine for ‘bad’ behaviour, but the process of writing and reflecting has been useful to me, and I hope to others. The below reflections are also the result of numerous patient discussions with wiser colleagues and PGCE tutors, lesson observations, and reading and watching Bill Rogers — the true grand master of the classroom. 

 When first starting out in the classroom I used to struggle to decide: is that disruption important enough for me intervene? What is acceptable? What is unacceptable? I realised that, more urgent than needing to develop a behaviour management ‘style’, I first needed to decide when to engage in behaviour management. Once I knew ‘when’ to intervene, I could then move on to ‘how’ to intervene. 

To settle on ‘when’ to intervene, I needed an over-riding idea of what it is I wanted to achieve in my classroom. One that would guide my interactions with all my students: both good and bad. Ultimately, for me the basic aim of my lessons has evolved to be: students should leave my classroom with a better chance of flourishing in life. 

I find this ‘philosophy’ is a useful life boat for me in the maelstrom of a lesson. Having a core ideology around ‘flourishing’ to fall back on allows me to perform a split second litmus test around behaviour happening in my lessons: is this allowing the student, and students around them, to flourish? If the answer is no, I need to intervene or I’m not living up to the standard I’ve set myself. What I especially like is the freedom ‘flourishing in life’ allows; it gives scope to develop the academic and human side of the student. 

I have developed three ‘categories’ of behaviour management that I use to measure my own effectiveness in this space and ensure I am serving my wider ‘flourishing’ ambition:

•  Category one: modelling conflict resolution — both the student who is disrupting my lesson and the rest of the class are watching and learning from me: how will I deal with a disruption? It is my responsibility to model how to manage discomfort in a constructive way.

• Category two: inspiring short-term change: there needs to be an immediate change in behaviour so that the lesson can get back on track and all students can go back to learning.

• Category three: creating long term change: beyond an initial change in behaviour in that lesson, there needs to be progress towards ensuring disruptions no longer happen. Ultimately, I need to take the student on a behavioural journey that ends with them feeling.

To achieve the above and lead to students (hopefully) ‘flourishing’ I rely on a combination of: positive language and body language, ‘killing them kindness’, high expectations and conversations around choice, knowing what works for individual students, and lots of time!

However, the purpose of this blog is to highlight that a decent chunk of behaviour management starts before the need to intervene in the first place. There’s planning for lessons with behaviour management in mind, but I’m talking beyond a lesson by lesson plan. I want to have created such a welcoming, positive, environment that disrespecting the learning happening in the lesson is seen as anathema. If I can have the students on board, and aware that they will be given the tools to flourish, then my theory goes, the class should almost auto-regulate. I’m not anticipating students skipping into my class with glee, no — what I’m referring to is different: if the students know they will turn up to my class and be treated with the respect, love and kindness to allow them to flourish I believe they will be inclined to give a 100%.