The Unteachables Podcast

#85: Teach students THIS about behaviour to help them reflect, take accountability, and feel empowered to make lasting positive change.

• Claire English • Season 5 • Episode 85

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You’ve probably heard the phrase, "Behaviours are students meeting a need." In this episode, I’m diving into what that actually really means for your classroom and how understanding the needs behind student behaviour can transform your management approach.

Listen in as I discuss:

  • Glasser’s 5 basic needs and how they drive behaviour (survival, love/belonging, fun, power/mastery, and freedom)
  • How unmet needs can lead to challenging behaviours in the classroom
  • Core principles of Choice Theory
  • The importance of embedding strategies into your practice that meet students' needs
  • How empowering students with an understanding of their own behaviours changes classroom dynamics

When students understand the needs driving their behaviour, it shifts everything—discussions, dynamics, accountability, and even how they view themselves. To help foster that awareness, start here:

  • Have a discussion with students (as a class or individually)
  • Make them aware they have five basic needs
  • Explain that everyone has these needs and is constantly trying to meet them
  • Acknowledge that sometimes we make poor choices while trying to meet our needs
  • Emphasize that they aren’t “bad,” and they aren’t defined by their behaviors
  • Highlight that we are all just doing the best we can
  • Encourage awareness of their needs and choices
  • Explain that with awareness, they can make positive changes

If you want to go deeper than this, I’ve done the work for you! I’ve created a fully resourced, engaging, and editable SEL lesson designed to help students not only understand their needs but also reflect on their behaviours and make positive changes. Grab it here!

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

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Speaker 1:

Oh hi, teachers, Welcome to Unteachable's 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 Unteachable's 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. Realistic classroom management support. I've got your teacher friend, let's do this.

Speaker 1:

Hello, fabulous teachers, welcome back to another episode of the Unteachables podcast. Thank you so much for spending this time with me. My gosh, you have got ample choice in the podcasting world to listen to so many different podcasts, but you're here with me, so I'm very happy about that. And if it's your first time listening, gosh, you have about 80 plus episodes to listen to now, so you can go and binge all of that. That's exactly what I do. I find a podcast that I enjoy and I just probably spend a week just obsessively listening to that one podcast. So this episode today is all about behaviors that meet needs, and you've probably heard somebody say that before. That behaviors are students meeting a needs. But what does that even mean? And what does that look like practically in the classroom? Like why do we even care about this? Why does it matter? Aren't we just there to teach our class and you know, get it done and get the results, and blah, blah, blah. Why is knowing this really important?

Speaker 1:

I wanted to start by talking about my little lady, ava, who will be two in just a few months. I also can't believe that. She's pretty much the same age as the podcast, to be honest with you. But Ava, oh my gosh, this toddler has some big, big feelings and she is obsessed with two things. She is obsessed with her bike and her shoes. If she so much as glimpses her bike outside and catches a whiff that we're about to do something that is not riding her bike, in that moment she would have thrown herself to the ground, screaming and crying. And it's the same with her shoes. The second she wakes up in the morning she is desperate for those clunky boots. If I'm trying to lay her down to change her nappy. She is desperate for those boots. She's clamoring to get them. She's trying to put on her humongous, oversized unicorn boots with a little thing at the back of it, like a little kind of fin at the back. They are so big, they're so clunky. She's getting sand all over herself with a nappy change, like she's just obsessed with these shoes. She can't be without them.

Speaker 1:

She's also incredibly determined. She is so determined and so independent, which I am so proud of. I just adore her so much and I am so proud of her every single day. But, my gosh, it can be tough, because if she wants to do something by herself, whether it's dangerous or not, she will physically push us away and say stop, stop, stop, mama, stop, dada. She will need to walk up those stairs by herself. She's determined to do something. Nothing's stopping her from doing it If she's hungry and she can see her food up on that table because we haven't been able to teleport her into that exact spot in front of her food in the 0.005 seconds that it takes from her seeing said food. She becomes so inconsolable that we struggle to get her in that chair to actually feed her. And I'm not saying this to you know. Talk bad about my daughter.

Speaker 1:

I'm talking about this because all of her behaviors are her meeting her needs in the best way that she can, with the skills that she currently has as a two-year-old, with the way that she's able to communicate those needs in this very moment, with the understanding of the world around her that she has currently. And toddlers get such a bad rap, but they are the most beautiful, strong humans. They're just trying to work out so much all at once. As challenging as that may be for us toddler parents and I am sending strength If you are currently a toddler parent, it is not easy but the point is that, even as a two-year-old, she is striving every single second of the day to fulfill her needs herself. She is trying to fill her need for survival, for freedom, for mastery, for fun, for love and belonging. And she does this in the same way that we all do by behaving. Everything we do is behavior. We are behaving, acting, doing every single moment, just like Ava does. We are the same human beings doing the same things. So, yes, all behaviors can be attributed to meeting a need.

Speaker 1:

But how can you use this information to help you with classroom management, and I mean truly help in a practical and actionable way, and I really do feel like that's what's missing. There's such incredible information out there around behavior, incredible information around neuroscience and the brain and how context and practically speaking in the day-to-day for us as teachers. What does this mean? And I'm going to dig into that in today's episode. To start, I'll give you a little bit of a rundown of choice theory by William Glasser. All of us have five basic needs that are woven into the very fiber of who we are. These needs are innate, they're universal, they're satiated moment to moment and they drive us to behave. That is why I wanted to talk about Ava, because she has the same needs. Right now she's behaving to meet those needs. It just looks a little bit different for a toddler than it does for a 35 year old woman. Back in episode 31, I spoke about Glass's five basic needs, so please go and listen to that episode for more background around choice theory and around needs and the five basic needs.

Speaker 1:

But for the purposes of this podcast episode, I'll go very quickly into two principles of choice theory that you'll need to apply to the rest of the episode. The first is that all behavior is purposeful. Everything we do, all of the actions that we take, is always an attempt to meet one or more of our basic needs, and our basic needs are survival, love and belonging power, fun and freedom. So all of our behaviors, all of our actions are an attempt in the moment, in the best way that we can with the skills that we have. Thinking about Ava, she doesn't have the skills that we have, so she's going to meet her needs in different ways, by throwing herself on the ground. So it's always an attempt to meet one or more of those basic needs.

Speaker 1:

The second principle of choice theory that I want to talk about is that we can only control our own behaviors as teachers. We can't control the choices or the behaviors that our students make. We can only control how we respond to them, and that's really important for us to be teaching our students as well. And I use it all of the time to say a student says oh, but miss, he was doing it too. No, but you can only control your behaviors. You're not in control of that other student's behavior. So let's talk about what we can control and what we need to be accountable for. So I always use that one as well.

Speaker 1:

These two really are just the bread and butter to my classroom management approach, because it helps us to remain curious and compassionate while still holding high expectations and encouraging accountability and reflection for our students. So why is it important for us to know this stuff? And it is so powerful knowing this stuff. There are two things In general. When we're able to understand the behaviors of ourselves and others better, we can become reflective on why we might react in certain ways in the classroom. And, just so you know, a lot of us here that are listening would be depleting multiple cups just through the very act of being in a classroom trying to manage really tough behaviors.

Speaker 1:

Just think about the cups that we have, love and belonging. When we're dealing with behaviors in the classroom and we feel like we're not connecting with our class, that cup is being depleted when a student's swearing at us or running out like it's really, really tough, and it's depleting our love and belonging cup. Think about our power and mastery cup If we are trying to engage students in the learning, if we're trying to get really good results, if we're trying to be all over our practice, if we're trying to nail classroom management but we're just not getting there, our power and mastery cup is depleting. If we feel like we're out of control of the class, we are depleting that cup, the freedom that we don't have in our classroom to maybe do what we want to do. There are so many the fun cup. There are so many things that we are experiencing in the classroom that are depleting multiple cups just from being in a classroom trying to manage those tough classes and those tough behaviors.

Speaker 1:

When we can get reflective on why we're acting in certain ways, behaving in certain ways, feeling certain ways, then it's so powerful and we can also then get reflective on why some students are behaving in certain ways. Just think they're children. Because of their age, they can't meet their needs freely. So, just like we are depleting our cups in the classroom because we're trying to manage these really tough behaviors students, they're children and they're in the classroom and they're not able to fill their freedom cup, they're probably not filling their fun cup. There's things that they need to do that aren't quite fun. They're not filling their power, mastery cups. If they don't feel confident with the work, they're not filling their freedom or their love and belonging cups.

Speaker 1:

There are so many things that are happening in the classroom moment to moment that result in needs meeting behavior that is not necessarily productive for the space. So when we understand these things, we can start to embed strategies into our practice that meet those five basic needs. Where we're automatically filling our students' cups in the day to day. Things like the consistency and predictability that we can bring, things like making sure things are scaffolded and making sure things are really modelled, them thinking and communicating, and all of those things that we can do to start to meet their needs in the classroom in a more productive way. But it is so much more than just us understanding basic needs. When students understand their needs. That is where the power comes from this particular knowledge, because, just like when we understand our basic needs, we can become a little bit more cognizant and reflective about what we're doing. Students are able to do the same thing, and that's what I really want to talk about today.

Speaker 1:

A classroom management approach that is holistic and proactive must have an element of student education around their own behaviors. This is truly empowering for every single individual. When students are able to understand more about their own behaviors, it just changes the game. The discussions that we have around behaviors change the dynamics between us and our students change because they know that we're not labeling them for their behaviors. The behaviors are just a normal part of being human and then we need to behave in ways that are appropriate, yes, but we're able to depersonalize it in a way and make sure we're able to put things in place that work for that student. The buy-in around your proactive classroom management approach then increases.

Speaker 1:

Students go okay, this teacher cares about what the needs are that are lying beneath the behaviors. And look, we probably won't know what is lying beneath that behavior. We probably won't know the true need that is sitting at the heart of why that student is behaving in certain ways. But that does not matter. What does matter is making sure that that student knows that needs do drive behaviors and that they know. But you know that needs drive behavior.

Speaker 1:

So the discussions around behavior then change. It turns into a discussion not about you did this wrong, you needed a consequence. It changes a discussion to okay, these were the behaviors that we're seeing. How can we behave differently next time to still meet the needs you know, to feel more empowered in your work to you know, make sure you can go get that drink or go to the toilet or get your voice heard, or whatever. The driving force is beneath the behavior or whatever they identify as that. It changes it to. What can we put in place next time to change this and to actually make authentic change in the behaviors that we're seeing?

Speaker 1:

Also, students are able to then take more accountability for their behaviors because they're able to say, oh, okay, well, it's not about me being a bad person, but yes, I did behave in that way and there might be a reason behind it and the way they see themselves and their behaviors change, and just so much more. It's so empowering for every single individual in the room when they're able to say oh, my gosh, yes, like I have these five basic needs. Maybe my cup is empty, empty, maybe I'm not able to fill it in the classroom and maybe there are things that I need to think about. And it's also important to say that's not. We're not always going to be able to meet our needs in the way we want to, and that's a discussion we can have with our young people. We're not able to meet our needs in the way that we need to all of the time, but we do need to take accountability for our behaviors and behave in ways that are more productive for the space that we're in. So we can start just by having the discussion with our students and you can do this whether it's like a whole class thing or individual. If you've only got a couple of students who are struggling with their behaviors, maybe it's better just to do this individually. But if you've got the time to have this discussion with students and talk about behavior in a big way, then definitely try to do it. It is never a bad investment to be able to talk to students about their behaviors. This is a skill that they will use for life.

Speaker 1:

Like I remember doing the choice theory training and I do talk about this in the choice theory, the needs episode that I mentioned at the start, I talk about this in a little bit more detail, but when I did choice theory training and we're going through the basic needs and how needs drive behavior and there's obviously a lot more to choice theory it was like a five day, like a five full day course that I went to um I went to do and I was so lucky to be able to do that. But throughout that five days I had so many aha moments and I was going through a lot during that time and I was holding a lot of trauma from my childhood and I had a lot of baggage like emotional baggage, and my behaviors weren't necessarily the best and you know it was quite self-destructive. And I remember, you know the ability to reflect on that and look at my needs as something that were driving forces, and looking at the cups that were so depleted or the cups that were really big because they were depleted for so long in my life and it just the penny dropped and there were so many light bulbs and it just helped me to become more cognizant of my own needs and the behaviors that I was exhibiting. And just, you know those light bulb moments of okay, it all makes sense now and I can do something with this information. I can make changes, I can look at the behaviors in the moment through a different lens. It's so empowering for us to be able to do that. So just having the discussion with students around their basic needs and even just imparting this information to them can be a life skill that they will take for the rest of their days with them.

Speaker 1:

It's not just about classroom behaviors, even though it does help immensely when it comes to discussing behavior with them. So just have the discussion. Have a discussion. Make them aware that they have these five basic needs. Explain that everyone has these needs and we're constantly trying to meet these needs. Acknowledge that sometimes we make poor choices while we're trying to meet these needs. Emphasize with your students that they're not bad. Their behaviors aren't necessarily bad. They're just trying to meet their needs in the best way that they can and you're holding compassion for that and we aren't defined by our behaviors. Highlight to our students that we're all just doing the best we can with the skills that we have. This does not mean that we don't take accountability for our behaviors, but it just communicates to students that, oh my gosh, there's so much more happening. It's not just about me being a bad kid. I'm not a bad kid. I'm just trying to meet my needs in the best way that I can Explain that with awareness they can make positive changes. Encourage that awareness of their needs and choices and embed this language into the day-to-day.

Speaker 1:

When you're having discussions with your students around their behaviors hey, james, like what needs do you think you're meeting? Like what was going on for you at the time? Like what were you feeling at the time. Oh, my gosh, okay, you were trying to be the class clown. Were you trying to meet your fun needs? Oh, it sounds like it. You know that cup might be empty in our classroom, but sometimes it is. And you know we're doing our best in the classroom, but sometimes we need to focus on things that are a little bit more serious. How can you meet your fun need at break time? So then you come into the class and your cup's a little bit more full to be able to focus in our lesson. So embedding the language of our needs, our basic needs, into the discussions that we're having around behavior can be so powerful for our students.

Speaker 1:

Another example might be with love and belonging. Like how can you fill your love and belonging cup outside of the classroom so you don't feel like you have to come in here and have a chit chat with your friends Like what can we do about that? How can we change that? Hey, james, I noticed that in the classroom, like the behaviors that I'm seeing I don't know, I'm not in your brain, but maybe you're trying to meet your power needs. Do you know what's a really great way to meet this power need? It's by really channeling that into our work and feeling confident and feeling like we're successful and we're moving forward. How can we make that happen? Are there any barriers to that? How do you feel about English right now in our classroom? Like, how do you feel about your writing? Do you feel confident? Do you feel capable? And if not, what are the things that we can start to work on to make you feel more masterful and powerful about the work that you're doing in this classroom? This language, these discussions that we can have with our young people my gosh, it just changes the whole culture around classroom management and the community that you're building, and it just makes things so much more positive and so much more proactive when it comes to your classroom management. So the action step from this episode is pretty obvious Just go ahead and start to have those conversations with your young people.

Speaker 1:

If you do want to go deeper though it doesn't have to be anything flashy but if you do want a done for you lesson, if you want things to be ready to go, I have got a fully resourced, super engaging and editable SEL lesson, supporting students not only understand their needs but reflect on their behaviors, to make changes you know, manage their impulsivity. This is culture shaping stuff. I have nine resources to support it plenty of activities, posters to use up in your classroom to prompt that reflection. If you're in the behavior club or the low-level behavior bootcamp, you've already got a copy of this. By the way, if you don't have a copy of that, if you're not in one of those two things, you can grab this separately. I wanted to make it available for everybody, but you can go to the-unteachablescom forward, slash what I need, which is the name of the lesson, or I'll also drop that link into the show notes, just so it's easy to find.

Speaker 1:

But this lesson's brilliant and I spent hours upon hours, upon hours making this lesson, so you didn't have to do it. It's just you don't have to use a lesson, you don't have to do anything flashy. As I said, you can just have those conversations. But if you really do want to take an approach to this, that's really strategic I definitely suggest that you go and check out that lesson. Okay, until next time. You, wonderful teachers, have a fantastic week. Be sure to fill your own cups, by the way, in whatever way you can, because it's definitely impacts on your own practice and how you show up in your classroom and how much capacity you have for dealing with challenging behavior. So make sure, whatever you do, you are going and filling those cups up. Okay, go ahead, go and crush your classroom management. I will see you next week at the same time. Bye for now, teachers.

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Claire English

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