The Unteachables Podcast

#140: If you've ever been told (or felt) you need to "be stricter" for classroom management success - listen to this.

• Claire English • Season 6 • Episode 140

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We’re busting a big ol’ classroom management myth in this episode: that being kind, compassionate, and empathetic means you’re “too soft” to manage behaviour effectively.

Because I’m seeing it everywhere right now - especially from all the beautiful new teachers joining me inside The Behaviour Club - this feeling of, “Am I doing it wrong?” “Am I too nice?” “Do I need to start being strict to be taken seriously?”

Short answer? No.

Longer answer? Let’s talk about it.

This episode is a riffed, unfiltered reminder that you don’t need to ditch your warmth or change your personality to be respected in the classroom. And if you're walking into class bracing for impact, because the last thing that worked was yelling or snapping, you need to hear this one.

I’m giving you a front seat to my own story from when I started teaching (and was 3 years older than some of my students 🙃), the realisation that changed everything, and what you actually need to learn to manage behaviour without selling out who you are.

What you’ll learn:

  • Why being kind and credible aren’t opposites (and how to be both)
  • The truth behind “don’t smile until Easter” and why it failed me
  • Why your teaching presence matters more than your personality
  • How to balance warmth with boundaries (without burning out)
  • The missing skillset that makes behaviour management sustainable

Resources mentioned:

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

Memberships to The Behaviour Club now open until Monday 15th September!
Learn more and join us here: https://www.the-unteachables.com/tbc

RESOURCES AND MORE SUPPORT:

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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 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. Hello, lovely teacher, and welcome back to the Unteachables podcast. It is an absolute joy to have you here. Thank you for listening along. If you're a first time listener, welcome.

Speaker 1:

My name's Claire. I am the one woman show behind the Unteachables Academy and the Unteachables podcast, obviously, and the work we do here is just all about just demystifying classroom management and making it something that is doable, something that aligns with our values, something that isn't like the other PD that just says, hey, build a relationship and you'll be sweet. Or here's another chat about restorative practice. Even though restorative practice is great, I align myself with that. However, we're just told to have a chat with our students and things are magically going to change. I want to flip all of that on its head and actually just hand over the things that you can do in your classroom, things that you can control, things that are actually going to move the needle when it comes to classroom management. Make you feel more in control and I don't mean in control of your students, I mean in control of your practice, in control of your classroom space, in control of yourself, because, in reality, the only thing that we can do when it comes to classroom management and behavior are the things that we can control. We can't change anybody's behavior. All we can do is try to influence it through what we do as individual humans. We're not superheroes. We can just do what we can do. So if you're new here and you're not sure about my vibe, I'm just you know all about hey, let's do this trauma-informed thing, this restorative thing. Let's show up as empathetic, compassionate, wonderful, kind, caring teachers, but let's do so in a way that still holds boundaries and is actionable and is empowering and actually changes things in our practice. So, yes, all of the things, all of the values, all of the wonderful, lovely things that I bring here, but you're here for the nitty gritty and the what can we actually do? I'm your girl for that, if you're listening along and going.

Speaker 1:

Yes, yes, yes, that sounds like a bit of me this episode here. I don't know if you can tell or not, but usually I have a bit of a plan. I have like dot points and I have, like you know, a general idea of what I want to talk about. Today is a little bit different. I'm going to be riffing it off. I'm going to be doing it a little bit more casually because there are a couple of things that have popped up for me that I really just wanted to talk about. The big thing that I wanted to talk about this week was okay.

Speaker 1:

Let me just backtrack for a second. So at the moment, I have opened up enrollments for my community, the behavior club. Inside of the behavior club I have training and resources and, you know, mentorship. People come in and chat to me about things, ask me questions. It really is just the space to come for all of the classroom management goodness Like so is. This is this podcast, but with everything else that you need to kind of back that up um, the training, the resources, you know, the actual one-to-one support, that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1:

Insight. I just wanted to give you a bit of context If it's the first time you've ever listened to me. Like, you know what is the BehaviClub? People have come into the BehaviClub more frequently this month because I have opened up enrollments for the first time in a little while and they have been introducing themselves and saying hello and one of the things that I do when people join the BehaviClub is send an email out and say hey, like, reply back to this email and let me know why you're here. Like you know what's brought you into my kind of world. What are you hoping to get out of the BehaviClub? And I've had, you know, obviously, a lot more people joining because I've opened up enrollment again.

Speaker 1:

And there is one solid theme from so many of my behavior clubbers that are joining and it is I just don't know how to balance being myself, which is somebody who wants to be really understanding of my students and kind and compassionate and warm and empathetic. I don't know how to balance that with then going into the classroom and getting respect from my students or being listened to or being, you know, taken seriously in the classroom. I have a lot of people also saying that, you know, when they seek support around classroom management, they're told that they're not, like, strong enough, that they're too soft or they're not strict enough. They need to be, you know, firmer and raising their voice and, you know, really drawing a hard line, and that is just the common theme. I see through so many of the people that join me inside of the Pavey Club, so many of you beautiful teachers. The reason I want to talk about it today is because I wanted to do kind of like a I'm telling you if I'm getting this from the people who have just joined the behavior club. I know that there are. I have thousands upon thousands of you listening every single week to these podcast episodes. I know that if I have a hundred people joining the behavior club and that is the common theme that is, you know, through so many of them that are joining I know that there are so many of you out there who are feeling this exact same way.

Speaker 1:

Maybe you're feeling defeated by it, or depleted or just really stuck and unsure where to move forward from here. Maybe, like me and I'll tell you a story about when I first started teaching in a second, that's where I'm going with this podcast episode but maybe, just like me, you were feeling like, okay, maybe I do need to change my personality, maybe I do need to do things differently, and doubting yourself and doubting the teacher that you are or have been. Or maybe you're looking at a colleague down the hall and they've got all the students there and they're sitting in their rows and you know the students are listening to them and respecting them and they're really harsh with their students. So maybe you need to do the same thing, maybe you need to emulate that. That's what this podcast episode is about in a nutshell.

Speaker 1:

So I would like to just kind of take you back 15 years to the teacher that I was and still am, but where I was right in the beginning, because I'll tell you when I finally got my own classroom, when I finally got my own classes and I am English trained and I don't know if anybody kind of relates to this, but in Australia at the time we didn't have the teacher shortage that we have now. When I first started teaching, there were no positions in secondary English, so I had to kind of do a mixture of a bunch of different things. So I had to do like a bit of history, a bit of geography, a bit of English. So I felt like out of my depth to begin with. Regardless of that, I was incredibly excited to have my own classroom, my own class. I was just so ready to connect with my students, to teach my students, to try to make an impact, to be the teacher that I needed when I was at school and I'm sure some of you out there can relate to that as well Just really wanting to be that teacher that you know saw beyond the behaviors and saw the student in front of me as a whole child, not just, you know, a lesson machine that can just pump through work.

Speaker 1:

Like I was really excited to be that teacher and in my head I had this, like I guess we all do at some point or another we have like this expectation of things and how they're going to be when we're a teacher and we think, okay, well, the students are really going to respond well to me because I care about them. They're going to respond well to me, because they'll see that I care about them and I'll talk to them on their level. And, mind you, I was like 22 years old as well, so I was like three years older than some of my older secondary students. So it was a bit of an uphill battle to begin with. Anyway, that's beside the point I really didn't think that I would have challenges with classroom management in the way that I had the challenges that I did with classroom management. I thought I was, you know, like, you know, when you're a young teacher, like, oh, I'm going to be kick-ass and I'm going to go in there and I'm going to be awesome, and anyway, I was very naive and that was definitely not what happened to me when I first stepped into my own classroom.

Speaker 1:

When I was going into the classroom, I had, you know, my English colleagues around the table and a lot more experience than me. And one of them said to me okay, claire, you ready. You know, like, just remember the old rule don't smile before Easter. And I was like, oh, I don't want to do that. And again, naive me was like, nah, not listening to anything, like I know exactly who I am as a person, I know exactly the kind of teacher that I needed when I was at school. I'm going to go in there and I am going to smile like crazy and I'm just going to be warm and open and just myself, of course.

Speaker 1:

Then I failed at the advice of smiling before like not smiling before Easter and I went brilliantly and the rest is history. No, that's not the case. I was completely walked all over in a way that I was not expecting. I was not listened to. I spent most of the lesson just being spoken over. I wasn't able to get their attention. I just did not know what the heck I was doing.

Speaker 1:

And of course then I spiraled, like of course, in my head. I was like, oh my gosh, it's because I'm not strict enough, I am being too friendly, and, oh my gosh, I smiled before Easter the cardinal teaching sin. So of course I'm going to have really bad classroom management. I don't know how to manage my class and I just completely spiraled. So of course I then thought maybe I'm not supposed to be that teacher that's warm and welcoming, and maybe I do need to be someone who's strict and be someone who's really stony faced, and that's cold. And so because when we're inexperienced or aren't a hundred percent sure what we do is we mix up the idea of credibility and coldness. Those two aren't the same thing. And now, of course, I know that and I teach other people that. But I wiped that smile off my face and I, you know, tried to become more detached and I was doing things that the other teachers were doing like crosses on the board and like I just became a teacher that I didn't want to be and it didn't work. Of course, my classroom management was still horrible. I still sucked at it.

Speaker 1:

Because now what I realize, of course, is that it has nothing to do with me smiling. It has nothing to do with me being this cold, cold person, or it has nothing to do with me being a kind and bubbly and happy person. And it was many, many, many more years before I came to realize this. But it isn't about being too strict, it's not about being too nice, it's not about being anything in between. That. It's about us. It's a skill. It's a skill that needs to be taught and learned to teachers that are going into the profession. That is about us strategically balancing our non-verbal presence. It's about being credible when we need to be. It's about being approachable when appropriate.

Speaker 1:

And when I spoke before about like the credible and being cold still now, like I've got teachers that I coach through this where they're like okay, I'm trying really hard to be credible but I don't feel like, I don't feel comfortable doing this because I feel like I'm being cold and I'm being harsh and I'm being really disconnected. That's not what it is. You can be credible and still be smiling. You can be credible and still be having a really beautiful conversation with your students and facilitating a really lovely class discussion. You can be credible and do all of those things and then switch into being more casual and more approachable in a different moment of that lesson, in the same lesson. And it is something that takes skill and practice and you know it's something that you can learn and hardwire as a part of your practice.

Speaker 1:

And I just don't understand where we've gotten to the point as teachers where we just aren't being taught that and we're instead being told don't smile until Christmas or don't smile until Easter, wherever you are in the world. It's, you know, one term in you can't smile because you'll be walked all over. I don't understand how we've gotten to that as a society when we're working with 30 young people in a room, a lot of them very vulnerable young people. We're in the middle of a youth mental health crisis where I think I can't remember the stats on the top of my head now I remember I'm just roofing this off. I haven't got notes in front of me. I did a podcast episode about it, about I don't know, maybe six weeks ago, so go back and listen to that one. But the statistics at the moment, with students having severe depressive or anxiety symptoms and not being ready to learn, it is just stark and it's scary.

Speaker 1:

So I don't know how we've gotten to a place where we're still teaching young, inexperienced teachers or we're still believing it as older teachers who've not been taught anything different that we can't be warm and compassionate and, you know, kind and connected in a classroom and not be taken seriously Like. I think we need to change that rhetoric because it's so, so wrong. This is what allows us that balance between credible and approachable. This is what allows us to balance these and develop these beautiful bonds and be warm and compassionate, but then we're simultaneously being an effective teacher and reinforcing the expectations and boundaries that our students need to feel safe and to learn, but unfortunately, that's not what the rhetoric is. The rhetoric is geared towards us needing to go into the classroom and crowd control and be nasty, when classroom management should be incredibly intuitive and it should be incredibly human.

Speaker 1:

If you are listening out there and you're a really empathetic human being, of course you're then going to be an empathetic teacher, and classroom management should work with your empathetic nature. We're in a caring profession and we should be able to show up as our beautiful, empathetic selves. That don't have to be harsh or cold or strict or punitive in order to connect with our students is a deeply human profession. You're never too kind. There's no such thing as being too kind, lacking boundaries or not following through with boundaries, yes, but that's not. That does not connect with being kind. You just need to know how to use your kindness and your empathetic nature as a strength.

Speaker 1:

But I really wanted to talk about that in today's podcast episode and just remind you whoever's out there listening, that's like oh my gosh, I keep getting told that I'm not enough, or I'm not strict enough, or I'm not a certain way, so I'm not able to be a strong teacher in the classroom. How am I going to show up as a strong teacher and still align with my values? Or do I just have to be in this innately caring, human profession in front of these 30 kids at a time who, I know for a fact, are struggling with you know things? Just being a child and being, you know, a teenager in today's society is so hard. We're standing in front of these young people and, instead of being able to connect with them, we're being told the opposite. Otherwise, we're what? Going to lose control of the room. It is just not the case.

Speaker 1:

If you want to learn more about the non-verbals that we use and the credible and approachable, I've got a few podcast episodes about that as well, so I will link them down in the show notes so you can go there and learn, cause I don't know if you, if you haven't listened to this podcast before, you're probably like what is she going on about? Credible, approachable, body language, non-verbals. It is like the bread and butter what I teach when it comes to like teaching presence, and it comes from Michael Grinder's Envoy. I just it is brilliant. It is like a magic behavior button, like I know that doesn't exist, but if there was one, it is the closest thing to that and it's something that allows us to just be aligned with who we are as people in the same breath as being able to be really effective teachers. I hope this is aligning with somebody out there. I hope I'm, because I'm not used to just riffing it off without at least a few bullet points. I'm like am I just going off on a million tangents? Anyway, if you did resonate with this episode and you're like Claire, yes, I've listened to your podcast episodes. This is bloody brilliant and I just want to work more closely with you. I just want to hold my hand out and invite you one last time for this year, for 2025, into the behavior club.

Speaker 1:

The behavior club is my membership for upper primary secondary teachers who just want to get really great at classroom management in a way that feels good, that doesn't burn them out, that just you know, it feels really authentic for you. All of the actionable stuff that we should be teach, like you know, taught when we're going into the professional, the stuff that I wish that I had when I went into the profession. It's got all of the resources, the community. It's like walking into a lovely staff room of like-minded, fellow, empathetic, compassionate, beautiful teachers who are just willing to lend a hand, to give advice. I'll be there mentoring you as well, pointing you in the right direction, anything you're struggling with. I've probably got a Netflix style kind of training on demand that you can go in and binge that whenever you need to. It is just such.

Speaker 1:

I'm so proud of the behavior club and the space that this has become. It is. It's brilliant, it's beautiful and, yeah, I guess that's all I'll say about that. That's all I need to say. Just come and join the behavior club if that aligned with you and you would love to join this beautiful community of teachers who are transforming their practice without sacrificing their values, without being told to just build a relationship or to just be stricter or to just, you know, use more consequences or whatever you're being told at the moment. That is not our vibe. We are all about the action and the things that actually work. So memberships are closing for 2025.

Speaker 1:

This is the last time that I will be reaching my hand out for that invitation. If you want to know if you're the right fit, if you're still like, not too sure, I'll pop the link in the show notes. Just click that link and head over to the page If we're not open. When you listen to this, pop your name on the wait list so you'll be the first to know when we are back open for new beautiful teacher enrollments. And I guess I'll just leave it there. But a final reminder for this episode you are never too kind, you are never too compassionate or empathetic. It is just about learning the skills and the strategies to work with your beautiful personality and not against it. Okay, lovely teacher, until next time.

Speaker 1:

By the way, if you love this podcast, please leave me a review, or please make sure you're subscribed so you get all of the new episodes. If you leave a review, it just helps me reach more teachers who are just like you, who deserve that support, deserve to be able to just get access to some strategies that are going to start to shift things, because we can really get in this funk as teachers where things feel really hopeless. I've been stuck in that pit of hopelessness more times than I can count and it does just take one thing sometimes for us to pull us out of that state of hopelessness and action one thing and see something change. So I would just absolutely love to be able to reach as many teachers as possible who are struggling in the classroom, and if that's you, I'm so glad you've found this space. So leave me a review, if you could. That would be just so wonderful, and I shall see you next week in the same place. Bye for now.

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Claire English

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