The Unteachables Podcast
Welcome to 'The Unteachables Podcast', your go-to resource for practical classroom management strategies and teacher support. I’m your host, Claire English, a passionate secondary teacher and leader turned teacher mentor and author of 'It's Never Just About the Behaviour: A Holistic Approach to Classroom Behaviour Management.' I'm on a mission to help educators like you transform your classrooms, build confidence, and feel empowered.
Why am I here? Not too long ago, I was overwhelmed by low-level classroom disruptions and challenging behaviors. After thousands of hours honing my skills in real classrooms and navigating ups and downs, I’ve become a confident, capable teacher ready to reach every student—even those with the most challenging behaviors. My journey inspired me to support teachers like you in mastering effective classroom strategies that promote compassion, confidence, and calm.
On The Unteachables Podcast, we’ll dive into simple, actionable strategies that you can use to handle classroom disruptions, boost student engagement, and create a positive learning environment.
You'll hear from renowned experts such as:
Bobby Morgan of the Liberation Lab
Marie Gentles, behavior expert behind BBC's 'Don't Exclude Me' and author of 'Gentles Guidance'
Robyn Gobbel, author of 'Raising Kids with Big Baffling Behaviours'
Dr. Lori Desautels, assistant professor and published author
And many more behaviour experts and mentors.
Angela Watson from the Truth for Teachers Podcast.
Whether you’re an early career teacher, a seasoned educator, or a teaching assistant navigating classroom challenges, this podcast is here to help you feel happier, empowered, and ready to make an impact with every student.
Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode packed with classroom tips and inspiring conversations that make a real difference!
The Unteachables Podcast
#112: Quick Win Challenge! How to get students to care about the consequence (and why their buy-in definitely matters)
There are strong opinions when it comes to consequences in schools. Some believe in strict enforcement—"do the crime, do the time"—while others advocate for restorative conversations and plans. Regardless of approach, one thing remains essential: we need student buy-in for consequences to be effective.
Without buy-in, consequences lose their impact. The students who struggle the most are often already expecting punishments like detention or suspension. They wear a mask that says, "I don’t care." But the truth is, punitive measures rarely lead to real behaviour change.
In this episode, I discuss how to create meaningful consequences that students actually care about. I break down three key considerations to ensure students understand the impact of their actions, feel supported in making better choices, and see consequences as fair and relevant.
Listen in as I discuss:
- Why student buy-in is crucial for real behaviour change. Without it, consequences are ineffective.
- Three key factors to consider when addressing behaviour. Reflection, relevance, and skill-building.
- How to create fair and meaningful consequences. Ensuring students understand and engage with the process.
Mentioned resources:
MASTERCLASS: REAL CONSEQUENCES, REAL CHANGE
Have a question, comment, or just want to say hello? Drop us a text!
RESOURCES AND MORE SUPPORT:
- Shop all resources
- Join The Behaviour Club
- My book! It’s Never Just About the Behaviour: A holistic approach to classroom behaviour management
- The Low-Level Behaviour Bootcamp
- Free guide: 'Chats that Create Change'
Connect with me:
- Follow on Instagram @the.unteachables
- Check out my website
Welcome to your weekly Classroom Management Quick Win Challenge. True classroom management is not how we address behavior when it pops up. Instead, it is a compounding effect of many, many micro decisions we make in our teaching practice before the behavior even pops up. In these Quick Win episodes I'm handing over one actionable, small but mighty tool to help you move the needle every single week to stop crowd controlling and to start calmly classroom managing like a pro. Let's dive into this week's game-changing challenge. Welcome back to another quick win episode. Teachers, it's so nice to have you here.
Speaker 1:This episode here is all about how to get students to care about the consequence that you're giving them and why their buy-in definitely matters. And there are kind of two camps when it comes to talking about consequences in school, like two kind of heated opinions. It feels like you're either in the camp kind of do the crime, do the time, or kind of let's talk it out, let's work out a plan, let's restore, let's move forward. But regardless of the values that people hold about consequences, I feel like we can all agree on the fact that we want to support behavior change, we want to raise responsibility and have accountability for our students and we want to break the cycle of challenging behavior. But to get those things, we need one main ingredient, which is the buy-in. If students don't have buy-in, any consequence that you throw out there will bounce right off them and be completely ineffective. And the reality is that consequences that are punitive, they just don't get the buy-in that we need, and those students that are the hardest to reach and the hardest to teach are just expecting to lose their lunch. They're expecting to get suspended. They're wearing a mask that says I don't give a crap. So what do we do? How do we get them to care about a consequence? How do we get that buy-in, especially from the students who are so used to getting those punitive consequences?
Speaker 1:Here are three things I want you to consider the next time you're addressing challenging behavior. The first is to help them unpack their behavior with questions that guide their reflection. And in the next episode, the full episode, I'm going to do a full episode on how to guide and not lecture students with our language. But these are just a few examples of how you can help them unpack their behavior with questions that guide. So asking questions like was that helpful or was that unhelpful? Did that make whatever was going on better for you or worse for you? How do you think this may have impacted the lesson when I have you calling out during the lesson, or you and other students calling out during the lesson? Why might that be challenging? Do you understand why the things you've said are serious? Can you explain that to me in your own words? Who do you think these comments and behaviors hurt, and how? What was the impact on me or the class or your learning? So all of those questions they're not us saying to students you've done the wrong thing, your behavior sucked or you know you're going to pay for this. Of course you wouldn't say that, but what these questions do is it puts the onus back on students to reflect on their behavior. So anytime you're engaging in a discussion with students around their behavior, really ask yourself am I asking questions that get students to think about what's going on for themselves, or am I just telling them what to think? Just to note on that. By the way, remember that empathy is a learned skill, so by us modeling that to them, we're helping them have that for others.
Speaker 1:Now the second thing I'd like you to consider when you're addressing challenging behavior is really thinking about whether or not the consequence supports that students to make different choices, and it really starts with thinking about the behavior itself. So was the behavior that the student exhibited skill, not will? Was it developmentally appropriate behavior? Was it behavior that was just meeting their needs? Was it because of the stress response? And when we can start to think about things in that way, we can then consider what kind of consequence is going to support them to move forward. Slapping on a consequence is not going to help them without thinking about how that student can move forward, how that student can get some strategies, how that student can make a plan for next time if something's not working. So, starting to think about things in that way and really reframing things A detention isn't going to stop a student from behaving in that way if that behavior was because of skill, not will, if they didn't have the skills to sit there and do what you're asking them to do, even though they wanted to do well in that moment.
Speaker 1:The third thing I'd like you to consider when addressing challenging behavior to increase the buy-in from your students is does that student see the consequence you're giving them or the way you're approaching it in a way that's fair and suitable? A student's sense of justice can be huge and they're not going to buy into a consequence of, for example, scraping gum out from underneath the table unless it was because they put that gum underneath the table. So try having a list of suitable, real consequences that they can choose from and choose the most appropriate one. So you know fix it up or clean it up, or you know make right the harm that was caused or have a discussion with the person that you've caused harm to or take accountability for things. Your action step for this quick win episode is that the next time you're working through a behavior with a student, just ask yourself do they understand the impact, to have buy-in, to actually take accountability and make change? Was the behavior driven by something where they need to be taught the skills or supported in some way, or do we just need to give them a bit of a break because they're developmentally appropriate behavior?
Speaker 1:So last episode I was talking about my toddler and the behaviors that my toddler was exhibiting. It's not because she's being naughty, it's because she's a toddler and they're really appropriate like developmentally appropriate behaviors and thinking about whether or not the consequences are fair and suitable. Do they make sense and does that student see them as fair and suitable as well, so that's really important for buy-in. So I've used the word consequence a lot in this episode, but I want to remind you that when I'm talking about consequence, I'm just talking about cause and effect. I'm talking about something happens and then something happens after that, and I want you to also remember that sometimes going through the process of a reflective discussion is a consequence in itself, not to mention a far more effective use of time than just slapping on a detention.
Speaker 1:If you want to get really great at leading on these talks and delivering consequences that create change with your students, then join me for my masterclass Real Consequences, real Change. I am running it live this weekend, my goodness, and I only run this live once a year, and it's always such a sellout. It's always got the most amazing feedback from teachers. So please come jump in and explore that deeper If it's something that you feel is like a really logical next step for you to really want to get great at having these discussions and feel confident and feel like you can really nail down these, these skills, because, oh my gosh, it's such an important skill to have as a teacher. Okay, on that I will let you go because this is supposed to be a really quick win episode. So have a fantastic rest of your week and I will see you in the next episode. Bye for now.
