Back in October I enrolled on a Managing Behaviour for Learning (MBL) – course, offered by The National Science Learning Centre. In many senses the course was billed as a MOOC, so I shared the link with our staff and again in person with colleagues I felt might benefit from the course. No-one was directed to the attend the course, a handful of staff self-medicated.
The course was led by Paul Dix @pivotalpaul, “a leading voice in behaviour management.” If you attended the course or have ever heard Paul Dix speak, I’d expect you got the same, clear message from Paul that MBL starts with our own professional behaviours (correct me if I am wrong Paul.) That as teachers, we need to learn how to positively influence the behaviour of our pupils – first through small shifts in our own behaviour and second through the strategies we adopt and make our own. Lastly, that pupil behaviours take time to develop, and time to change, stick with your strategies or modifications long enough for them to be adopted and engrained. From my perspective, that is a strong message, one that empowers the teachers to make / take a positive stance on behaviour for learning and one that does not excuse poor behaviour of the pupils.
As I blogged back in November, Paul possesses a very sincere presentational style, a style that encouraged me to formally record my appreciation for the course, a style that encourages me to listen to specific Pivotal Podcasts, which in turn, regularly prompts me to reflect on one of the topics covered in the MOOC. David Lisowski’s podcast on “Restorative Practice in Action,” connected with “Reparation and restorative practice” and facilitated a number of conversations with my colleagues on the restorative practice.
It also happened to prompt the following email for one of the MOOC attendees on staff.
Hi Kristian , in the training there is a part about restorative meeting.
I think it is really interesting and it would be nice if teachers could have in their identification badges the following 6 questions. That way every time we have to speak to a student we can follow them as a guideline. I used them today with a student, and it worked really well.
I believe that sometimes it is better to spend 10 minutes with the student, and talk about what happened in that lesson, so you can create a good relationship, than to just put the student in detention.
Six questions we should use in restorative conversations:
- What has happened?
- What were you thinking at the time? (teacher and student)
- Who has been affected by the actions?
- How have they been affected?
- What needs to be done now to make things right?
- How can we do things differently in the future?
I will be taking this feedback to a future Curriculum Leaders meeting, to assess the support for a consistent, scripted, restorative conversations along with the course resource – Ten reasons for following up incidents personally.
Article: Ten reasons for following up incidents personally
- The teacher best placed to have an impact on the behaviour of the student in their class is the class teacher.
- Senior colleagues cannot control the behaviour of students remotely.
- The student may come to the next lesson feeling resentment towards you if they have been passed up to another member of staff. You have no control over what happens and how that student is treated by others.
- Inclusion is about building relationships with every learner regardless of their individual needs.
- You have a responsibility to talk to the student about their behaviour, repair trust and reinforce high expectations for the next lesson.
- If you pass responsibility to a senior colleague the student begins to imagine that you are not able to manage their behaviour.
- You can use the opportunity to build your relationship with the student.
- Many young people with chaotic home lives are testing whether the adults around them are going to give up and pass them onto someone else.
- You may discover information about the incident or background to it that will prove useful when managing the student in future.
- Colleagues see that you are committed to managing the behaviour of all learners; when you ask for support it is more likely to be provided enthusiastically.
We are in the midst of staffing, recruitment and retention. As we continue to seek ways to make PD at The Wellington Academy one of our USPs, Pivotals “Taking Care of Behaviour (Online)” might well form a part of our improved induction package for teachers joining the Academy on the Main Pay Scale. £60 represents good value, flexible PD, excellent value if it sparks the kind of thinking and commitment to developing positive teaching relationships demonstrated in the email.
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