Teach Secondary 13.8

Strict, yet kind Paul Dix explains how to balance the strictness needed for behavioural rules to be established, with the kindness that ensures students will want to follow them... S trict teachers in the common imagination are terrifying beasts. Physically imposing, gratuitously loud and generally terrifying. Trunchbull doesn’t do relationships, the Demon Headmaster likes control too much and Professor Snape don’t play. In real teaching, strict is good. Being nasty with it is not. It’s a fine line for some. You can be strict whilst being kind, and you can be strict while being relational. Just don’t be strict and be a dick with it. Consistencyof response Nitpicking and over- controlling through a million unnecessary rules does nobody any good. Micromanaging humans never goes well. Just think about your own autonomy at work. If you want to be strict and utterly reasonable you need to centre your behaviour work around three simple rules and what we knowworks – a properly consistent response. Maintaining a consistency of response from all adults working with children and young people is critical. It’s important enough to put every other strategy into a firm second place, so it makes sense to plan it and agree on it. Not, mind you, so that all human empathy is sucked from teaching, or so that multiple spreadsheets of responses can be produced by the spreadsheet people. Plan it so that it is strict and kind , and it will be. Allow everyone to improvise their own responses to poor behaviour, and the variables will kill your consistency stone dead. Gaps will appear, and those students who like to take advantage of such gaps will be encouraged. It’s the gaps between adults that allows, and can even foster poor behaviour. Lack of clarity, lack of agreement and lack of consistency are sweet treats for the impulsive ones. Take-up time That’s why you need a simple plan for the wobbly moments. All adults with the same consistency. A tight and kind response. Imagine the impact of that on the behaviour of your class or school, just for the next 30 days. It would be transformational. Behaviour would be as much about the team as the individual, as it should be. If you can embed a consistency that makes it impossible to put a cigarette paper between the response of one adult and the next, that transformation will last. None of this needs to be oppressive. You can have a well-structured intervention script for when a child is repeatedly disruptive, a plan in each classroom that’s designed to support (not simply to sanction), and language that seeks to encourage, not condemn. The speed at which warnings and reminders can be delivered by a frustrated adult is incredible. Poor behaviour tempts us into an unnecessarily urgent emotional response, when what’s really needed is ‘take-up time’ between conversations – time for the irritated, seething and/or embarrassed student to recover, time for you to catch up with those who have been on it from the start, and time for you to breathe . “Poorbehaviour tempts us into anunnecessarilyurgent emotional response” teachwire.net/secondary 52