Schools always define their behaviour expectations positively, and that’s right. But when a student is doing the wrong thing, they also need to be told explicitly by the teacher what they should stop doing, to avoid any confusion.
I was prompted to reflect on this by a recent conversation with a student, to whom I’ll give the fictional name, Paul. The conversation arose from a ‘learning walk’ around the school.
Me: (whispered to Paul) Can we have a quick chat outside?
Paul: Why?
Me: I’ll tell you outside
We went outside the room into the corridor…
Me: How do you think you are behaving in this lesson so far?
Paul: I’m behaving well. Why?
Me: I heard the teacher talking to you twice about your behaviour. Do you remember that?
Paul: Not really… I don’t know
Me: Didn’t the teacher ask you to stop chatting and pay attention?
Paul: I don’t remember
Me: You don’t remember what she said to you? I could see you chatting a lot to some students next to you just in the few minutes I was in the classroom.
Paul: I don’t think I was. They were chatting too…
I definitely saw Paul chatting to one or both of the two students next to him, and each time he was the instigator, not the other students. He was paying no attention to the teacher, who was explaining something algebra-related to the class – he barely looked her way. She did ask Paul to stop talking twice while I was there – so she did tell him specifically what he was doing that he needed to stop doing. Indeed, he stopped chatting while she was speaking to him – so he understood what she wanted – but he restarted after she looked away.
In class, we expect students to:
⁃ Pay attention
⁃ Follow instructions with good grace
⁃ Get down to the work promptly
⁃ Make an effort to complete the work, and do it as well as they can
⁃ Think; for example, think about any questions the teacher asks of everyone, and about any tasks set
⁃ Act on any feedback given by the teacher
What we don’t expect to see in lessons
⁃ Chatting
⁃ Other distracted behaviour (e.g. checking text messages on a personal mobile phone etc)
⁃ Distracting others – chatting, shouting out, humming, pretending to cough, making comments to ‘play the clown’, catching another student’s eye and pulling a face or laughing etc
⁃ Harmful behaviour, such as being violent or verbally abusive to others, or humiliating others, and so on
In my experience, students’ behaviour in mainstream schools – both good and bad – is mostly about choice – there are definitely exceptions to this, but those are rare. In my example above, Paul was choosing to chat. His choice meant he didn’t hear the teacher’s explanations; his choice made it harder for the students next to him to pay attention, and possibly other students, too; and his choice made it harder for his teacher to teach. If he is doing that all the time in his maths lessons, it must be very wearing for his teacher and the other students.
Harmful behaviour is very rare, fortunately, but the other three negative behaviours – chatting, other distracted behaviour, and distracting others – are fairly common in schools, I think.
The vast majority of young people behave very well the vast majority of the time, but a minority make the challenging job of teaching even more so, and one question this raises is: how strict should a school be?
At HBK we grapple with this question as we try to steer a tricky course somewhere in between too ‘laissez-faire’ and too strict. Does our current approach work well for all of our key constituents? For all our teachers? What about our cover supervisors and the supply teachers? And what about our students? Does it work for all our students, including those who hate disruption to their lessons, and those who are apt to chat/call out/be silly etc…?
Too strict, and that creates tension and unhappiness. Too laissez-faire, and that causes stress for teachers and many students, and hampers learning for everyone. The aim of all behaviour policies is clear: outstanding behaviour, because that is the best foundation for outstanding learning.
Behaviour at this school is generally good – but it is not outstanding. And poor behaviour seriously harms learning. So the key question is, what’s the best way to achieve outstanding behaviour at the school, every day? We will keep asking ourselves that, and trying to improve.
