Why do you care? Honestly and authentically, why should a student change their behaviour? Why should anyone change their behaviour?

Consider the interventions you use in your classroom now that look at changing behaviour, increasing skills or teaching new behaviours?. Make a list of all the different reasons for the other behaviours you teach students and why. For example,

I am teaching Johnnie to unpack his bag. Why? So, he is ready to learn.

I am teaching Lucy about safe hands. Why? Because sometimes she is unsafe with her friends, I don’t want to see her without friends.

You can refer to the 5 Whys model in the Ethical Considerations section to help frame the underpinnings or root causes of why you ask students or anyone to change their behaviours.

Historically, the ‘adult concern’ step is the most difficult for teachers to participate in because we are used to using ‘Plan A’, or the unilateral application of adult will:

‘Do it because that is the expectation!’

Or

‘Do the behaviour, or else!’

Often, we do not consider the driving factors that influence why a student may need to change their behaviours or why we seek a behaviour change.

Why is the behaviour concerning?

How is it impacting the young person?

How is it impacting others?

This is not the point to get into a power struggle with a student by placing your concerns over theirs. It is a time to be open and honest about the effect the student’s behaviour is having on themselves, yourself and the people around them.

This is the time within the process and the conversations with students for you to get your concerns on the table. The student had their chance during the ‘Empathy Step’ – now it is your turn to explain why the behaviour is challenging.

For example:

‘Jimmy, I feel you are not enjoying my lessons and don’t respect me when you yell and scream at the back of my class. This makes me upset and frustrated as it makes me feel like a bad teacher and it takes away learning time from yourself and others.’

​

or

‘I am concerned that when you punch the walls, you will hurt your hands, which scares me. I am afraid that you are going to hurt yourself.’

You need to be prepared to be vulnerable with your students if you want them to genuinely acknowledge that their behaviour has an effect beyond what they intended. Students often don’t consider their behaviour's impact on others, or they may lack the capacity to articulate their want to change.

I often recommend that teachers filling in the problem-solving plan consider their ‘adult concern’ alongside their investigation of challenging behaviour, as we often struggle the most with this step. ​Consider your example student and their behaviours which you have prioritised.

Why is this behaviour actually a problem?

Why should the student care? ​

Fill in the Problem-Solving Plan with the adult concern, so you are well equipped to respond to the student when they ask you why this is an important discussion to have.

Spend a day, or at least one lesson, intentionally explaining your ‘adult concern’ to students. You should be giving learning intentions, but make them explicit and verbal.

For example, when asking students to pick up rubbish from the floor, don’t just give them the instructions. Instead, let them know why: ‘Ok, we need to clean up now because there is a lot of paper on the floor and I feel like I am not organised and like others might judge us unfairly if our room is messy.”

This allows your students to better understand the metacognition of your decision-making and will enable you to become more vulnerable with your students, driving connection.

A warning: Be careful not to overshare or use vulnerability as a tool to motivate students. This is not an activity in making students complicit by emotional manipulation; it is about allowing students to get a glimpse of your genuine decision-making processes.

I encourage you to write your reflections in a journal or Word document using these guiding questions:

What did you notice when you started discussing your authentic concerns with students?

Was behaviour change more or less frequent when you discussed your concerns with the students?

What percentage of students do you think disregarded your concerns? And why do you think they were not considerate of your concerns?