The Unteachables Podcast

#113: 1 powerful shift to make in your behaviour chats to create more change

• Claire English • Season 6 • Episode 113

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One of the most powerful shifts we can make when addressing student behaviour is to stop lecturing and start leading. Instead of telling students what they did wrong, we need to ask the right questions to guide them toward reflection, accountability, and change.

Lecturing rarely leads to buy-in. It is one of William Glasser’s seven disconnecting habits, and without realising it, we often fall into this trap—especially in the heat of the moment. The result? Students tune out, nod along without truly listening, or push back entirely.

In this episode, I explore how shifting from lecture mode to guide mode creates a more productive and effective approach to behaviour chats. I provide real-world examples of common classroom scenarios and show you exactly how to replace lecturing with guiding questions that encourage self-reflection and responsibility.

Listen in as I discuss:

  • Why lecturing does not create real behaviour change. The importance of student buy-in.
  • How to shift from telling to questioning. Using questions to encourage reflection and accountability.
  • Practical examples of guiding language. What to say instead of lecturing in common behaviour situations.

Mentioned resources:

MASTERCLASS: REAL CONSEQUENCES, REAL CHANGE

BEHAVIOUR REFLECTION BUNDLE

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Speaker 1:

Oh, hi there teachers, welcome to the Unteachables podcast. I'm your host, claire English, and I am just a fellow teacher, a toddler mama and a big old behavior nerd on a mission to demystify and simplify that little thing called classroom management. The way we've all been taught to manage behavior and classroom manage has left us playing crowd control, which is not something I subscribe to, because we're not dancers, we're teachers. So listen in as I walk you through the game, changing strategies and I mean the things that we can actually do and action in our classrooms that will allow you to lean into your beautiful values as a compassionate educator and feel empowered to run your room with a little more calm and, dare I say it, a lot less chaos. I will see you in the episode.

Speaker 1:

Hello, hello, welcome back to the Unteachables podcast. If you're new here, welcome. It is so nice to have you listening in. I hope you find immense value from these episodes, because, for lip and heck, we just don't get taught how to classroom manage, do we? And you really do deserve as much support as humanly possible, because it is tough. This stuff is tough and in this episode I'm going to be talking through one really powerful shift that you can make in the discussions you are having with students around their behavior, that will create more change and ultimately just make you feel much more confident in going through this process, because it can be quite a daunting process to sit in front of a student and need to have a talk about their behavior in a way that gets buy-in, that has them on board, that gets accountability and with those students who are the hardest to teach and reach, not have them going F you and walking out of the room, which has happened to multiple times in my career because I wasn't always good at having these discussions. If I'm going to be fully transparent with all of you, which I always try to be Now, one of the most powerful shifts that we can make in our chats about behavior is to stop lecturing and to start leading. What this means is getting really good at asking the right questions that guide students to reflect on their behaviors, take accountability and just be open and willing to make some changes, which is what we want.

Speaker 1:

So many times when we enter these behavior conversations, we're sitting across from a student who's sitting there fiddling with something on the chair on the table sorry and looking out the window and just nodding and going yep, yep, yep. And if you are in a situation where a student is sitting there across from you and they're just going yep, yep, yep, you know that you're probably talking at them and not guiding the discussion. So this is going to be such a powerful shift to make. But why not lecture? Why not just talk and tell them what's gone wrong and try to tell them what to do, like differently? It just doesn't get buy-in. It is actually one of William Glass's seven disconnecting habits to lecture and we do this without realizing it. I always slip into lecture mode and have to stop myself, especially at home, when I'm not being as intentional with the talks that I'm having. And you know, when we lecture, there's more of a chance of students just glazing over and not listening and, as I said, nodding along and going yep, yep, no worries. And when students disconnect from the discussion in that way, we're not getting change, no change is occurring. Or for the hardest to reach and teach kids, you know, as I said, they might just go F off and walk out of the room.

Speaker 1:

To explain what I mean by shifting away from lecturing and being more of a guide, I'm going to take you through a bit of an example that I'm sure most of us can relate to. So let's just say you're standing at the front and trying to get through content and there's one student who is derailing the lesson. They're getting the rest of the class unsettled and whipped up. So you approach them to talk to them about their behavior and they hit you with a big why are you talking to me All of them are talking to? It is tough, it is triggering, and you can feel yourself getting increasingly frustrated because you know for a fact that that is the student who is getting the rest of the class unsettled. You're at the front, you can see you. You're standing up there, you're looking around, but rather than taking accountability and listening to you, this student is pushing the blame back on the rest of the class, back onto you, saying that you're targeting them in some way unfairly and things are just escalating and escalating, and escalating.

Speaker 1:

It is so freaking easy in this moment, in this kind of situation, to slip into that lecture mode. No, you are talking. I'm standing up the front, I can see the whole class and it is you who is talking. You've been calling out, you've been getting the rest of the class off track your behaviors are inappropriate. And although this feels good in the moment because we are trying to rectify the situation, remember that our brains, when we are in front of a class and we see behaviors happening that are getting the class off track with what we're doing, we slip into survival mode because we're no longer in control of the situation and we've got a whole class in front of us that can very easily descend into chaos. So this does feel good in the moment for our brains. We're trying to get that student back on board. We're trying to regain control of the space.

Speaker 1:

However, it's not doing us a favor when it comes to getting buy-in for that student to actually follow the instructions that we're asking them to follow. So instead we need to shift our language to asking questions. The more we can question our students, the more accountability, the more reflection and the more buy-in we can get. So, in the moment, try saying things that encourage students to acknowledge the behaviors they are exhibiting. For example, I will be speaking to them or addressing them in a moment, but what might I need from you right now before I move on to do that? Or you might say can you control what they do? Whose behavior can you control? Yes, your own behaviors. You might say whose behavior are you responsible for? Whose behaviors aren't you responsible for? What are you responsible for right here in your class? What's your job right here in this lesson right now? What might I need from you right now? So all of these are questions that get students to reflect and think about the behaviors that they are exhibiting. It takes away that back and forth discussion or argument of but they're doing this, but they're doing that. It just focuses back their attention on their behaviors and what they are doing. And when we shift from being the lecturer to being the guide, we have a far better chance of quickly shifting their behaviors back to where they need to be and have a productive and positive lesson without things further escalating. Because when we start to get into these head-to-head with students about no, you are doing this, no, you are doing this, no, they're doing this. You know, when we get into this head-to-head, things can very, very quickly escalate.

Speaker 1:

Here are some more tangible examples of behavior chats where we might need to flip it from lecturing and guiding so when you might say something like your behavior was really challenging this lesson, your behavior was atrocious or inappropriate or any of that kind of stuff, telling them that their behavior was bad, that lesson guiding and flipping it to guiding might sound like why might I need to talk to you after that lesson? That gets them to then reflect on their behavior and identify for you what the behaviors were, rather than you having to identify it for them. Lecturing might sound like what you said was inappropriate and I'm just not going to stand for it. We need to obviously, uh, hold boundaries and talk to students about their language, but instead of lecturing in that way, we can say do you understand why the things that you just said are serious? Can you explain that to me in your own words? Again, putting the onus on them to take accountability and responsibility for the language they're using? You might say when you're lecturing, you are stopping the learning from happening in the room and that's not fair for the other students. You might say instead, when you're guiding, when I have you and other students calling out, why might that be challenging during the lesson? Instead of saying to students you're going to go and pick up all that rubbish now, you might say what might I need you to do now before we head out for a break? All of those examples are us flipping the lecturing to the guiding.

Speaker 1:

However, there are going to be times where students sit there and they won't know the answers, or they still won't be able to reflect, or they won't be in the right headspace to do that. They won't have the skills to do that. For whatever reason, they might not be able to reflect on the behaviors. Maybe they don't even understand why what they said was inappropriate. If this happened, you can try saying something like can I give you a clue, can I make a suggestion? Can I explain what I was seeing from where I was standing? Because then you're still coming at it from a place of guiding. You're just guiding them in a way that's going to get so much more buy-in. You've already posed the question and if they're sitting there, they're scratching their heads, they're not sure, then you can go in and give a little bit more information, then you can guide, then you can make a suggestion, you can give them some clues, you can explain what you were seeing from where you were standing. So I really hope that was really actionable and really tangible and something you can take away straight away into your classroom.

Speaker 1:

Just ask yourself every single time you go into a discussion about a student's behavior. Right now, in this moment, am I lecturing or am I guiding? You can just have a discussion with a student and then afterwards just reflect back and think In that discussion that I just had with that student, do I think the balance of me talking or me asking questions was, you know, in balance, or do I think that I was slipping into lecture mode Does not make you a bad person if you're lecturing. We slip into lecture mode all day, every day. It is so normal and again, our brains are trying to gain control of the situation. Control is safety, so we're trying our best to make sure that we are all over it and that's not your fault, but being aware of it is really, really important. So wonderful, teacher, if you listened to this episode and you were like heck, yes, these are the kinds of chats that I need to get bloody good at in order to move forward with my students.

Speaker 1:

You should definitely come and check out my masterclass Real Consequences, real Change. I take you through an entire roadmap for deescalating and resolving challenging behaviors and using consequences that get buy-in and actually work. Restorative work gets such a bad rap because there's not a lot of actionable support out there for teachers on how to actually have discussions that create change and do so in a way that doesn't take up a ridiculous amount of time and is unrealistic for us to do. Hence why I created this. I only run this live once a year to do Hence why I created this. I only run this live once a year.

Speaker 1:

So, if you are keen, make sure you head to the-unteachablescom forward slash change to grab your ticket. It would be wonderful to see you there, but please, whether or not you're listening to this in real time or not, still head to the show notes and go to the link that I post, because you still will be able to join the masterclass. You just won't be able to come live, obviously, but whether you join me or not, just always go into conversations, as I said before, with students reminding yourself to question and guide, not lecture, and that is always going to get you so much further, especially with those students who are the hardest to teach and reach and are the more vulnerable students and the students who you're having these conversations with on the regular. Okay, wonderful teachers. I hope that was helpful and I look forward to seeing you in the next episode. Bye for now.

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Claire English

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