The Unteachables Podcast

#65: Redefining a strong approach to classroom management: It's about so much more than just the behaviour.

• Claire English • Season 5 • Episode 65

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Welp… it’s happening.

The past 670 days have led to me being able to say this next sentence….

NEXT MONTH MY BOOK, 'IT’S NEVER JUST ABOUT THE BEHAVIOUR’, IS FINALLY HITTING THE SHELVES!!

It feels like a lifetime ago since I signed the contract above the title ‘author’. The imposter syndrome was real. Author? Me? How the hell am I going to pull this off? Especially because the person who signed on that line was a very pregnant Claire about to head into the chaotic unknown of parenthood for the first time.

So I guess it was a lifetime ago. I was a different person in my pre-mother, pre-author life. But the best news? The imposter syndrome is well and truly gone. It’s Never Just About the Behaviour is everything I wanted it to be and more.

When writing it, I kept coming back to these main goals.

To empower you to take the action you can take when you walk into your classroom.

To feel supported, confident and equipped to turn your own space into an island of safety and support for each one of your students.
 
To know that, when challenging behaviours inevitably pop up, you’ll be able to respond to them effectively and calmly.

Allowing you to do the job that you got into the profession to do, and do it damn well.

To teach.

To celebrate the release, over the next 7 weeks, there will be a weekly Podcast episode based around each of the pillars of the book - think about it as a VIP sneak peek to dip your toes on (or even make sure it is for you before you take the plunge and purchase… but I have a feeling it is for you if you are on this list). 

This first episode right here is based on the first pillar, Get Curious! 

In this episode I…

  • Introduce the overarching approach to classroom management I take in INJATB
  • Explain why being curious about our students' behaviour is essential for understanding and addressing it effectively.
  • Give you a quick overview of something from the behaviour backpack: William Glasser’s five basic needs—love and belonging, fun, power and mastery, freedom, and survival—and how they drive behaviour.
  • What this looks like in the classroom: I discuss how unmet needs can manifest in student behaviour and what you can do about it, and share practical strategies to help you stay curious and empathetic, even in challenging situations.


Other episodes of the podcast I reference throughout:

Episode 31: The Why That Drives Our Behaviour - The Good, Bad, and Ugly
Dive deeper into Glass’s Five Basic Needs and understand how they influence behaviour.
[Listen to Episode 31]

Episode 63: Blame My Brain - What'

Have a question, comment, or just want to say hello? Drop us a text!

Resources and links:

Connect with me:


Claire English:

Because classroom management is something that we are doing and we are living. We walk it and we talk it through every single choice we make, whether we're sitting around planning a lesson or having a tender moment with our coffee before the school day begins. Oh hi, teachers, welcome to Unteachables podcast. Congratulations, you have just stumbled across the best free professional development and support you could ask for. I'm Claire English, a passionate secondary teacher, author, teacher mentor and generally just a big behavior nerd, and I created the unteachables podcast to demystify and simplify classroom management. I want this podcast to be the tangible support, community validation, mentorship, all those pretty important things that we need as teachers to be able to walk into our classrooms feeling empowered and, dare I say it, happy and thrive, especially in the face of these really tough behaviors. So ready for some no-nonsense, judgment-free and realistic classroom management support. I've got your teacher friend. Let's do this. Hello, wonderful teachers, welcome back to the Unteachables podcast. It is so nice to have you here back again, or maybe it's the first time you're listening, and if that is the case, then you've chosen a very good episode to start with, because for the next seven weeks I'm going to be doing a little bit of a kind of series. I would call it around the book that I have written. If you didn't know, I wrote a book. It's called it's Never Just About the Behaviour, and that book is coming out in the next month. So it's coming out really soon. It's been on pre-order for what feels like I was going to say for what feels like a year. It almost has been a year. It's six months that it's on pre-order, but then I started writing this book. You know the end of 2022. So it is a massive labor of love. It is something that I am incredibly proud of and incredibly excited to bring it into the world. So, in the lead up to that book launch, that that you know finally getting to the point where this book is going to be in the hands of people who have pre-ordered it six months back and you know, finally getting to the point where this book is going to be in the hands of people who have pre-ordered it six months back. And, you know, actually out in the wild and that is what I wrote it for to be supporting teachers out in the wild. So in the lead up to that, I'm going to be doing an episode every week that dig into each of the pillars in the book. So think about it as a little sneak peek and of course, I will be giving you some good takeaways as well.

Claire English:

So let me first start by telling you about the book itself and the structure of the book. Rather than having chapters, there's still chapters this is not another name for it, really but I've organized it into seven pillars of classroom management. These seven pillars the reason I've done it this way is that they act as a kind of way of being as a teacher, and then all of the actions and all of the strategies, the roadmaps, those really tangible things because it is just chock full of it fall under each of these pillars. And the way that I've approached it in this way, rather than just having kind of, like you know, chapters around building relationships or this or that or the other, it's because teaching is about us, all of us, as humans in the room, and having these pillars humanizes all of those things that falls under it. So the first pillar that I'm going to be digging in today is be curious. So all of those things that fall under being curious, it's just about being human in a way, and all of those strategies are kind of, you know, under that one umbrella. It also allows them to be driven by the theories and research that I introduced at the start of each pillar. So it's just a really nice conceptual way that we can approach classroom management.

Claire English:

So when we go into the classroom with this book and these strategies, we aren't going in with necessarily a toolbox, we're going in with a way of being with our young people. Yes, there are toolboxes, there are roadmaps, there are really tangible, actionable, relatable, relevant things that you will take into your classroom and immediately apply. But it is more about going in with a way of being and it just makes it so much easier to embody and implement and hardwire this approach, especially for someone like me who is a really big picture thinker. And then the fine details come after that. It really is far easier than going in with a big toolbox. It isn't contextually relevant.

Claire English:

I have read over my career so many books about classroom management behavior. You know I am such a nerd for this stuff and in reading those books I'm like, yes, that's fantastic, it's a really great strategy. But when I go into my classroom and I am dealing with the absolute chaos that unfolds in my room, I'm not going to, I didn't think about it in this way at the time, but I'm not going to be in my thinking brain enough to go. You know what sweet I'm going to dip into that toolbox and get out that strategy. So this is a way for us to be able to hardwire a new classroom management approach, an effective classroom management approach, an actionable approach, in a way that's going to be far easier. It's kind of like the cognitive load of it is so much lighter when you're approaching things in this way.

Claire English:

And actually I'm going to read this excerpt from the book and from the introduction and it really does explain this a little bit better, because I put a lot of thought into what I wrote on this page, and not all I mean. I still put thought into it, but talking through something is very different than reading something that I put a lot of thought and energy into editing and thinking about. So this is how I would talk about the book itself, because classroom management is something that we are doing and we are living, we walk it and we talk it through every single choice we make, whether we're sitting around planning a lesson or having a tender moment with our coffee before the school day begins. It is for this very reason that teachers need far more than a toolbox of reactive how-tos. Instead, they should be equipped with a way of being that permeates every facet of their practice.

Claire English:

The seven pillars that underpin the concepts and strategies in this book are just that a value system and a way of being that anchors the what to do with the. Why am I doing this? So that is why I wanted the pillars to be something that drove the book rather than just something that was a little bit less conceptual. And the pillars are, and I'm going to be going through each of these every week be curious, be calm, be compassionate, be consistent, be clear, be challenging and be connected. So I'm going to close my makeshift copy of the book that I've been using for edits with a cover on the front that is definitely not the cover that you're going to be seeing when you get it. So the pillars are what each of the next seven episodes of the podcast are based on.

Claire English:

So, as I said, be curious, be calm, be compassionate, be consistent, be clear, be challenging, be connected. I'll be giving you a bit of an overview of what that pillar is about and then dig into a strategy for you to take away, because I want you to know that when you buy this book, when you invest in this book, it is going to be something that is really tangible and actionable for you as well as just. It just makes sense, and I think that's what a lot of classroom management is lacking, and if you've listened to my podcast for any amount of time, you know that that is my bag making sure everything is just really relevant, validating all of the things that we need as teachers. This brings me onto the first pillar be curious. I open this pillar by talking about the fact that all behavior has a purpose. Even the most challenging, even the most tiresome, frustrating, unpalatable behaviors have a purpose. And getting curious about this and what is beneath that behavior, what that purpose is, is a stepping stone to not only addressing behavior but then authentically mitigating and resolving it.

Claire English:

So when I talk about behavior in this pillar, but also just in the entire book, I'm not just talking about our students, because behavior isn't something that is unique to sitting in a classroom as a young person. Behavior is something that we all do. Behavior is just. It just is, isn't it Like? When I think about you know, my teenage years, my early twenties, you could classify that as really bad behavior Some of the things that I was doing and that I was going through but it's really important for us to know that we are all just human beings and we all have our moments, and this pillar really is about developing our own emotional intelligence through understanding that behavior is just a part of the human experience and it's not something that is necessarily good or bad. It's just something that is, by understanding how the brain works, by understanding the stress response, our attachment, how we meet our needs, not only are we able to better understand the behavior of the students that we teach, but we're able to better understand ourselves as human beings Like I. When I teach this stuff in my course, that'll teach her. For instance, some of the best comments that I get from people are like oh my God, I have had all of these aha moments, these little light bulbs going off in my brain about how I have been throughout my entire life, how I show up, how I act, how I am, how I be in my classroom. So I think that there's so much power in us being able to understand the purpose of behavior, not just for us as teachers, but for us as human beings and I remember some of these things that I still remember, the explicit moments I learned this stuff and I was like, oh my gosh, and it was some of these things that I still remember, the explicit moments I learned this stuff and I was like, oh my gosh, and it was almost like a weight was lifted off me because I could then understand the function and that's also why I teach classes to students around this stuff. So that is the general overview of what Be Curious is about, and I did promise you one juicy takeaway from the book each week. So here is the one about Be Curious.

Claire English:

Back in episode 31, I spoke and I'll link you in the episode description if you want to click on that and head back to episode 31. I spoke about Glass's five basic needs, so go and listen to that one for more background. It's called the why that drives our behavior the good, bad and ugly. So if you want a little bit more information about what I'm about to talk about, go back and listen to episode 31, because it's a really great introduction to the five basic needs. But just a really quick rundown. We each have these five basic needs that we are constantly trying to satiate, and we are doing so through our behaviors, and each of us meet these needs in a different way. So the five basic needs are love and belonging, fun, power and mastery, freedom and survival. But us being driven to meet these needs can actually cause conflict in our classroom, because when our students needs aren't met or they clash with our needs, this may result in behaviors that are very challenging to us. When I talk about behaviors and needs clashing, I want you to think about this scenario I want you to think about.

Claire English:

Maybe you have one lesson before this big test and you're getting a lot of pressure from your head of department about results, results, results, results. You need to get these results from your students, so you stay up all night creating the most perfect lesson to act as a whistle-stop tour of everything they need to know. You are so exhausted that next day because you spent so long trying to develop the most perfect lesson that would drive better results for this test, you know this is everything your young people need to be able to be really successful. You are trying to meet the need of mastery. You are trying to be good at your job. You're trying to be successful at what you do so you're being driven by this need of mastery. Then you have this lesson and students are nice and settled, they're getting into it. But then imagine one student comes in and they're really disruptive and they start to draw the rest of the class into this same disruption and very quickly you have lost the room. You know when these kinds of things happen, you've just lost them.

Claire English:

So, just on face value, what were the needs of that student? You don't know, because it could be a variety of things, but maybe they were trying to meet their need for fun, maybe they were bored and they wanted to do something fun. Maybe they were trying to meet their need for freedom and they wanted to escape their situation and make choices for themselves. Maybe the need for survival made them behave in that way, because just the sheer mention of a test sent them into an absolute tailspin and their fight, flight or freeze response activated and caused them to leg it out of the room or to behave in ways that were drawing everyone's attention away from the lesson. If you listen to episode 63, blame my brain. What's behind those big, bad, bold and downright baffling behaviors? You can hear more about behaviors that are driven by that stress response and that will make a lot more sense. Maybe they're trying to meet their need for love and belonging because maybe they have a friend waiting outside that door and they want to be kicked out of the lesson If they know you're going to say, right, that's it, get out of here. Maybe they know that that is something that could be a result of the behaviors and they want to get sent out because I've got a friend waiting out there by the bathrooms. We don't know. That is the problem. That is the fact, which is why this pillar is called get curious rather than get the facts. But just the simple act of curiosity allows us to depersonalize the behavior that we're seeing. It allows us to better regulate. It allows us to be more emotionally intelligent teachers and human beings in general.

Claire English:

So if you would like to hear more about my upcoming book or even pre-order a copy if you're listening to this episode, so if you would like to learn more about my upcoming book it's never just about the behavior or even pre-order a copy or order it If you're listening to this episode, in July 2024 and beyond, you can head to the dash on teachablescom forward slash book or you can find the episode in the description or you can find the link in the episode If you would like to learn more about my upcoming book it's never just about the behavior or if you would like to hear more about my book. So, if you would like to learn more about my upcoming book uh, or even order a copy if you are listening to, if you would like to learn more about my upcoming books never just about the behavior and even pre-order a copy or order it If you're listening to this episode in July 2024 and beyond, you can head to the dash on teachablescom forward slash book or you can find the link in the episode description. I'll pop it in there as well. So that is the dash on teachablescom forward slash book and it has all the details there. It has the different countries you can order it in and links to where you can order it.

Claire English:

But, my gosh, I can't freaking wait for this book to be off the screen from pre-order and into people's hands. I am so, so freaking excited. It is yeah to say it's a labor of love. You know, I created this alongside raising my baby and and I guess, just something that's so special to me and something that I've been thinking about doing for the last decade and I was thinking the other day that, since I was in my second year of teaching, like this is this was my dream to be able to support teachers with classroom management.

Claire English:

Not because I was great at classroom management. The opposite is, because I was shocking at classroom management and I realized that something needed to change and we needed to do something different to support teachers that are coming into the profession. So they're not sinking, they're not having to learn how to swim on their own. So this book is such a huge testament to that work and, yeah, just to be standing here, being able to present this to you is it just means everything to me. So, yeah, I'll stop being stuffy about it and I'll see you in the next episode. About to be calm.

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