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
#122: “Miss, that deserves a detention!!” When students tell you how to do your job.
Students telling you who deserves a detention or questioning why you didn’t sanction someone? It’s frustrating, undermining – and it adds to the noise when you’re already handling behaviour. If this culture is creeping into your classroom, this episode will guide you on what to do next!
IN THIS EPISODE, I DISCUSS:
- Why this dynamic is so frustrating – and so common
- How to break the cycle with a calm, clear class reset
- What to say when students start calling out behaviour decisions
- Why standing firm isn’t unkind – it’s part of compassionate, credible teaching
This is a perfect example of the approach I teach.
Yes, we lead with compassion. Yes, we value connection. But that doesn’t mean we don’t stand firm, hold boundaries, and have strong expectations. In fact, doing both is exactly what builds credibility and buy-in with our students.
Have a question, comment, or just want to say hello? Drop us a text!
JOIN MY FREE LIVE TRAINING: TURN YOUR TEACHING INTO A CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT MACHINE
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
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 bouncers, 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 to the Unteachables podcast. I'm Claire English, your host, and it is wonderful to have you back here to support you with classroom management, which is very much an under-supported area of teaching. So I'm very happy you're here. So I can give you a few pointers and I absolutely love what we're going to be speaking about today because it is the actionable like what the hell do I do in this specific situation, kind of stuff, because I'm going to do a few episodes that are like kind of Q&A based or kind of things that have popped up in my community or on Instagram or something where someone's kind of gone ah, this is happening in my classroom, what the hell do I do about it? So that is going to be what I'm going to be talking through today. One scenario that has popped up and this popped up a few weeks ago in my Behavi Club community and so many teachers were saying my gosh, yes, help with this situation. It is the most frustrating thing. It is so alarming or disarming or whatever you want to call it, like you know, throws your confidence. So I really wanted to bring it here on the podcast for anybody who might need this too, because my BehaviClub has said that it was very, very, very beneficial, and a lot of them have taken this strategy into the classroom and seen some pretty immediate results from that.
Speaker 1:So here was the question I wonder if anyone has any advice on how to deal with students who believe that they have the right to decide whether someone gets a sanction or, you know, a punishment or a consequence, whatever you want to call it, something that gets under my skin and more than low level behaviors itself. Is that one student tells me all of the time, miss, that deserves a detention, or are you not going to tell them off for that? It feels like they're either disrespecting me or don't trust that I can handle the situation. It seems to be the culture in my school that students take it upon themselves to offer their own opinions on when sanctions should be applied. Oh, that is a big one and one that definitely resonated with me.
Speaker 1:It has happened to me many times in my career and there have been many times where I've been like what the heck do I do about this? Because it's very frustrating. It's like you know you're trying so hard in that moment to address the behavior in a way that's calm, and you know like you're doing your best to kind of put things in place, but then there's students piping up and, you know, adding to the chaos and adding to the noise, and it's just really overwhelming and overstimulating sometimes for that to be happening. So if this sounds familiar, I would like to talk through how I would deal with this. But this is also something you can apply to other behavior situations, if it's not specifically this, if it's someone piping up about anything and you really want to like draw a boundary and draw a line there in a way that is fair and equitable and you're not coming across as like a big, mean teacher. You're not coming across as someone who's ready to, you know, tarnish the relationships you've had, like it's just a really good boundary response to this kind of behavior that will give you more confidence and it'll make you feel like you're in the driver's seat with it and it's just you with a really strong, beautiful teaching presence setting the boundaries and drawing a line in the sand on this kind of stuff. So what do we do to break the cycle?
Speaker 1:Okay, this is something that does seep into the culture. I remember it happening in my classes very early on. It's very overwhelming, especially when it is happening. You're also simultaneously trying to deal with the challenging behavior that's popped up. So it just adds to the noise and it can just be really tough. It can really throw you and if one student's saying that, then the rest of them are staying apart. It's just hard. It's really hard to deal with. So you need something to break that culture. You need something to kind of draw that line in the sand and say this is what is acceptable and this is what's not acceptable, and I find that a whole class reset does the trick to do that. By the way, if it's just an isolated incidence or it's just one student, yes, you can approach it individually and if that's the case, you can have a very similar discussion with them as what I'm about to model for a whole class discussion. But it is really important that if it's something that's consistently happening or really built into the culture, that you do do a whole class reset and even if there's a couple of students, you can still do a whole class reset just to draw a line in the sand and say this is not appropriate, and this is what we need to be doing from now on. And this is not appropriate and this is what we need to be doing from now on, and this is the expectation. Okay, and it does also reinforce your behavior approach and it is a really great way to be living your expectations in the day to day. So have this chat If you want to have this chat. I find it really beneficial. So here is the sample script that I used with my behavior clubbers and you can take this and use this yourself. You can adapt it to your context. So if you teach younger students, you'll have to adapt it to them. But this is like kind of the bones of what you would say for a whole class reset if this is happening.
Speaker 1:Okay, before we start the lesson today, we need to talk about something really important. I'm the teacher. If something is happening in this room, it is my job to make decisions that resolve that. When I'm talking to a member of this class about their behavior, you are going to see a very small part of the work that I do. I am going to respect everybody here enough to keep that as private as possible. It's not your job to decide what happens. It's not your job to know everything that happens and it's not appropriate to call out it's never appropriate to call out what you think should happen. I understand that you might have the best of intentions. I understand that you might want things to be fair, but I need you to trust that I am dealing with everything in the most appropriate way possible and you're never going to see everything that happens.
Speaker 1:So from now on, if you see me approaching one of your classmates about behavior, you will not offer your opinion. You're not going to comment. You will allow me to do my job and you will do your job. I'm going to give you 30 seconds to think about that and after that 30 seconds I'll get any questions from you that you may have and then we're going to leave it as that. Is that okay? Yeah, okay, 30 seconds on the clock. Then after the discussion, if students do keep doing this, I'll follow it up with each individual. By the way, you can add things in the conversation, like, if you see something that you think is unfair, if you think that something is inequitable, please make sure you do still come to me and talk to me, but you can do that after the lesson in private. Like I'm more than happy to have that discussion with you in private, but it's not appropriate in the lesson.
Speaker 1:So, making sure you're still opening up those doors for students to advocate for things that they think are unfair, it's only going to do things, it's only going to be great for buy-in. But what I do find with students that are, you know, saying things in the middle of the lesson like, oh, miss, that's unfair. Oh, isn't he getting a detention? Or blah, blah, blah, blah. What I do find in those situations is that students meeting their need for fun, for power, for freedom, for all of those things. So it's not necessarily them advocating for the right thing, it's other things going on. So still open the door for students to come to you if they've got any concerns about the way things are being run.
Speaker 1:But in general, I would definitely approach the discussion in that way and you know, if students do continue, then make sure you're really drawing a line in the sand with that. You know you need to make sure you're following through, otherwise students are going to be very quickly cottoning onto the fact that you're not going to stay firm in it and it's just going to keep happening in the future. So make sure you're having those one-to-one discussions. Make sure, if this continues to happen, you're talking to them, making phone calls home if necessary. But just make sure you're following through and actually taking it seriously. Because what I find happens sometimes is we have these discussions and they go really well and the students like, oh, they mean business. And then three weeks down the line it starts happening again because they've started to like test that boundary again, which is what what kids do, like they are built for boundary testing and they're impulsive and all those things. So if they're testing that boundary and they realize that, oh okay, like you know, that boundary isn't holding up, then they will keep doing that and it's going to be harder next time to do the whole class reset. So making sure you're following through in the best way possible.
Speaker 1:This is the perfect example of the approach that I teach. You know, like we are compassionate, we are kind, we are driven by the most beautiful values and beliefs around our students and I know that if you're listening to this podcast, you are like me in that but that does not mean that we can't stand firm and credible with our expectations. That doesn't mean that we can't have serious conversations with our students around behavior. This does not mean that we don't hold students accountable, you know. It just means that when we do have these conversations, we have far more buy-in with our students because of all of the work that we have done in investing about an approach that is compassionate, kind and restorative and trauma-informed and all of those things.
Speaker 1:Sometimes teachers can switch off to that and go oh, it's a weak approach, it's a soft approach. It is not a soft approach. It doesn't mean you're not standing firm and strong in your boundaries. It actually just means that you're doing so in a way that is going to get the maximum effect and buy in with your students. And make sure you remember as well that standing firm and strong in your boundaries does not make you unkind, credible, and being a credible teacher and being a strong teaching presence in that moment when you really need to be it, doesn't equal unkind. You just have to be really mindful of your nonverbal cues.
Speaker 1:You know, as I'm talking through that discussion with my students, I'm not standing there like yelling at them, I'm being very calm, I'm being very measured. I'm standing very credibly in the classroom with my feet on the floor. You know, uh, weight distribution evenly on both feet, my shoulders down. My facial expressions are quite neutral. I'm not going into that like kind of scary teacher mode necessarily. It's just like. This is the situation, this is what's happening and this is how we're moving on from here. It is nothing that's going to suggest to students that I'm being unfair or unkind or nothing that's going to turn them off coming to speak to me if they need to Also remember that this kind of confidence doesn't happen by accident.
Speaker 1:If you're listening to this episode and going, oh my gosh, like that sounds really good, but I just don't know if I have the confidence to do that. Practice it just practice, practice, practice. That didn't happen for me overnight either. You know like I wasn't having conversations that sounded really confident and really controlled and really credible when I started out with the model that I teach. It happens by practicing and having the right pathway to follow and the right support and the right experience. I said it a few episodes ago, but there's literally nothing different between you and I. There's nothing special about me. There's nothing outstanding about me as a teacher. It's just that I got the right support and I've had the experience and I've spent a lot of time hardwiring the things that I've learned. So please remember that there's nothing special about me. There is nothing that you can't do that I do right now. And if you're thinking, heck, yes, I would absolutely love to have you as my mentor, claire, and to guide me through this journey and to teach me everything that you know. I want to learn the classroom compass method. I want to be able to feel confident in the classroom, to be able to have these conversations and just know what to do when things pop up.
Speaker 1:Right now, as we speak, doors are open to the 2025 cohort of the Classroom Management Lab. This was formerly known as the That'll Teach them course. So if you've done That'll Teach them, you've got the Classroom Management Lab updates. The, the classroom management lab, is my eight week course, my foundational, my absolute signature course for guiding you through my classroom compass method and I just walk you through everything and teach you how to reduce, respond to and resolve behavior with the utmost confidence and, you know, give you those skills and those strategies.
Speaker 1:So you aren't just wondering what the hell do I do about this kid, about this class, about this, the culture that's established in this room? You'll know what to do because I'll guide you through it. I'll be there, I'll help you through it and I absolutely cannot wait to see you there and be a mentor in your corner. If you decide that the classroom management lab is for you in 2025. I'll leave it there. Thank you so much for joining me today and I will see you at the same time in the same place next week on the Unteachables podcast. Take care.
