The Unteachables Podcast

#150: Students pushing your buttons? These 6 one-liners will save you!

• Claire English

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This episode is a big warm hug and a practical roadmap for every teacher who’s ever thought: “How the heck am I supposed to stay calm when they’re pushing ALL my buttons?!”

I’m diving into a juicy listener Q&A all about what to do in those real-deal, fight-flight-freeze moments in the classroom. And spoiler alert: it’s not about becoming a Zen monk who never reacts. It’s about having scripts, self-awareness, and a bit of self-compassion ready to roll.

In this episode, I walk you through:

  • My own messy moments (because YES, I’m a very imperfect human too)
  • The neuroscience behind your snapping point (hello, barking guard dog 🐶)
  • What emotional regulation really looks like for teachers
  • And my top 6 behaviour one-liners that will save you from spiralling.

So whether you’re already consciously incompetent 😬 or just starting to build awareness, this episode will meet you where you’re at, with practical tools to make it all a bit easier.

What you’ll learn:

  • The difference between reacting and responding
  • 6 calm one-liners you can keep in your back pocket for the trickiest moments
  • Why having scripts matters when your thinking brain goes offline
  • How to redirect defiance without getting sucked into a power struggle
  • Language that sets boundaries without shame
  • Why saying “I’m not here to argue with you” is low-key magic

Resources & Mentions:

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

RESOURCES AND MORE SUPPORT:

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SPEAKER_00:

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 behaviour nerd on a mission to demystify and simplify that little thing called classroom management. The way we've all been taught to manage behaviour 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, hello, lovely teachers. Welcome back to the Unteachables Podcast. I am your host, Claire. If you haven't been in my neck of the woods on the podcasting side of things before, it is lovely to have you here. If you're a longtime listener, thank you so much for being back here. Absolutely love your guts, and I can't wait to dig into some more classroom management goodness with you. Today's episode is based on a really banger of a QA. And the question was how does one stay calm, mature, and collected when students are pushing all of the buttons? So it's really asking the question that I think a lot of us have asked ourselves before when we're feeling like really in a state in a classroom that feels really chaotic and really unmanageable, which is how do you remain the adult in the room? And I just want to say to the person who asked this question, like massive, massive props to you because when you ask a question like this, it is showing how reflective you are. And to even recognize that when things go wrong, when students push the buttons, when students push back and display those really defiant behaviors, that you can slip into responses that are reactive, like that in itself is incredible. So if you are out there going, oh yes, like I just don't know how to remain regulated and mature and collected and the adult in the room, the leader in the room, when my students are displaying these behaviors because they're so damn triggering, this episode is going to be really, really helpful. But I also want to say that I'm I'm really like you should be proud of yourself for being able to reflect in that way because it's very vulnerable for us to be able to recognize. Like sometimes I'm not the adult in the room. And I'm telling you now, I've got a two and a half-year-old daughter, and I'm sometimes not the adult in the room because it's so freaking hard. So I just wanted to say, yes, it's hard, and this is very common, and there are things that we can do to try to remain that mature presence, that leader in the room when our students are, you know, really pushing those buttons when they're pushing back, when they're displaying those defiant behaviours. I actually worked with a new teacher once who would always stand at the front of the room, and when students weren't listening to her, she would actually stamp her foot and clench her fists and go, why aren't you listening to me? And I had so much empathy for her because clearly her like it was on display for everybody to see, but her nervous system was firing up, she was, you know, fight flat or freeze mode massively, and she was doing what she could and what she knew to do to get back in the driver's seat. But my gosh, she was really hard to work with because although I was able to reflect back the behaviors that were triggering her and how she was responding to those behaviors, she wasn't able to be really aware of how those things were impacting the way she was showing up in the classroom. So if you're here and you're nodding along and you're like, yes, I can do that, I can slip into, you know, reacting in that way, you're 50 steps ahead already. What is it? The unconsciously incompetent, consciously incompetent, um, consciously competent? Unconsciously competent. I don't know if I said too many competents there. I don't know, but you get what I mean. So if you are currently consciously incompetent at regulating yourself in the middle of a lesson or dealing with those behaviors that are super dysregulating um in a way that's really effective, then stick with me. You are in a really, really good place. The first thing that I'm going to say to you when it comes to this stuff, it is so damn human to be triggered by certain behaviors. It is so normal, it is so human, and it's almost inevitable. If you are somebody who has gotten into teaching and you're standing in front of a class and you have, you know, you're fresh out of uni, you're standing in front of a class and students are there pushing your buttons. Maybe every time you turn to face the board, they make a funny sound and you don't know who it is, or you know, like there's a student in the class that's being really defiant and say no to everything, and in front of everybody, you're you're there, you have to decide whether or not you're gonna die on this hill or not and go gung ho. If you have not been triggered by certain behaviors, if you are able to remain calm and stoic and regulated and you're able to respond with brilliance and remain the adult and remain the leader, I take my hat off to you, but I just don't think that it exists. I don't know how it would be possible to be a teacher and not have moments where we're triggered by certain behaviors and yell or not stamp our feet. I mean, like metaphorically speaking, right? Or like just get into patterns where we're reacting to behavior in ways that aren't as mature as we'd like. It is so human. So I want to say that first off the gate. Because your brain's guard dog, your brain has one too, not just our students. Our amygdala is designed to react. When we feel like we are out of control of the classroom, our amygdala would be seeing that as a huge threat because being out of control is scary. And that is a threat. Not being able to be in control of things, not being able to have that autonomy. It is a threat. And when our guard dog barks, all of that logic will go out the window, even if we know logically in our minds that reacting to behavior in this way is going to escalate the situation. It's going to escalate the behaviors of our students. We will still go there because our brain is designed to go there. And if we're not aware of that and we don't have things that can kind of break that pattern, it's very hard for us to be that mature leader in the room. So the awareness of that is the most important thing. So just get really good at noticing your body cues. Like, is your is your jaw clenched? Do you like are you breathing quicker? Is your heart rate up? Do you get sweaty palms? Are your shoulders really tight? And just silently name it. Like my guard dog's barking right now. My nervous system is on fire. It's not a sign of weakness, it's not a sign of you being a bad teacher, it's not a sign of you being not mature enough to lead your classroom. It is just your nervous system trying to protect you in a classroom that is really dysregulating. So it's very normal, it's very human. Try to do something to regulate and ground yourself. You've caught yourself, that's the main thing. Now what? It's gonna be really dependent on you as an individual. I take deep breaths, and my go-to line in that situation is I can only control my own behaviors. All I can control is how I respond. I can't control the behaviors of other people. What those lines do for me is it reminds my amygdala, my nervous system, that I am I am in control. Like there are things that I can control. I can't control the classroom in every way, shape, and form because we're all human beings and we all have our own complexities. So just reminding myself of those things, and you can use those go-to lines. I drop my shoulders, and that really helps to get me back in my thinking brain so I can then implement some of the strategies that I'm about to speak about now. So about those strategies, because it's not about just regulating ourselves as much as that is very important. Then this next thing here, this action is the most powerful thing that we can do in the classroom, I believe, because having great language, having great responses that we can grab at a pinch when we're feeling really dysregulated, if we have that kind of ready as a script in our mind, it allows us to respond even when our thinking brain is offline. As much as we can take away the process of, oh my god, what the hell do I do in this situation when this student's like yelling no at me? It is so much easier for us to then deal with things. So I'm going to walk you through about six one-liners that I always keep in my brain at a pinch when things are happening in different situations. So I know I can always access that language because it's hardwired. And it will take a little bit of time to hardwire this language, but once it is, it is just so much easier to remain regulated, be the adult in the room, be mature and respond rather than react. I also want to say that I'm using the language of like mature and adult and all of those things just because that was what was in the question itself. I don't mean that in those moments you are being immature or not an adult. I just want to use the language that was in that question because it is just human. Like I just want to make sure that I'm really clear about that. You are not your behaviors just as students aren't their behaviors. They are just us communicating something. And what we're communicating when we're reacting in ways that aren't ideal in a classroom is that we don't feel safe and we need to get back in the driver's seat. And these sentences, these like one-liners that you can grab will do exactly that. The first one-liner is one that I use when a student's trying to talk to me when I need them to be focusing on a task, or I'm trying to deal with something else at the time, or I'm really trying to keep the class calm and settled, and I'm trying to regulate the room, and just there's one student there that's like keeping on talking to me about something of relevance, they might be doing it during a class discussion, and I'm getting really angry and frustrated, but I don't want to do something that will tarnish the rapport that I have with that student. So instead of saying something like, oh, not now, be quiet, like and and saying something that I might regret later, which I have done before, I will use the line, Jessica, I really want to hear about that. Let's hold on to it after the lesson, or let's hold on to that after the task, or I'll come over to you when I'm finished with this. What you're doing in that situation is you're still holding the expectation that they need to be listening to you, but you're not shutting down or shaming that student. You're still sending the message to that student that what they say, it does matter, but it needs to happen at a more appropriate time. But you're not shutting them down, you're not shaming them, you're not undoing any of the work with rapport that you have done. The second one-liner is one that I use if a student is doing something pretty reasonable. Just say like you're wanting them to be working on their stuff, and then a student gets up and they start wandering around the room, they're saying, Oh, I'm just going to the bin, I just want to put my rubbish in. Just say they're getting up a lot, but you really need them to be sitting down, listening, focusing, working. And just say they get up and like, what are you doing, mate? And they're like, Oh, I'm just going to the bin, or I'm just doing this, I'm just doing that. The one liner that I love to use in this situation is, I understand you're doing this, but right now I need you to be doing that. So, for example, I understand that you're just going to the bin, but right now I really need you to be in your seat. What that does, and why this is so powerful, is you're clearly communicating that boundary still, but you're minimizing the chances of that student feeling like they're in trouble for no reason, and you're still saying that what they're you're acknowledging what they're trying to do. Yeah, you're just trying to go to the bin, that's fine. You're just trying to go and get your bottle out of your bag, or you're just trying to get a glue stick from someone or a pencil from someone, and you don't want to make them feel like, you know, they have no bodily body autonomy, they have no autonomy in their movement, they have to be sitting down at all costs, they have to comply at all costs. You also don't want to be sending that message, but if you really need them to be sitting and doing what they need to be doing, made I understand you just want to go and grab a pencil from James, but right now I really need to be sitting here listening. After that, you can get a pencil. Sound good? Great. That minimizes the escalation that you might get if and rightly so to be frustrated when you have 30 in a room. Like that student there's thinking about what they need in that moment, and they are reacting and responding to what they need, which is also okay, and they're not necessarily doing anything bad. They're just getting up and walking to the bin. Great. When you've got 30 in a room, and that one student gets up to go to the bin though and disrupts the kind of vibe that you're setting, that's when things become an issue for you, and you might find that your nervous system starts to fire up because oh my god, I just wanted to be sitting down. So that one liner is golden. I understand you're doing X, but right now I need you to do Y. The third one, which a lot of you are going to find helpful, hopefully, it's when a student isn't following instructions and you're trying to get them back on track. This is a situation where things can blow up for me quite easily. Just say if I'm trying to get them back on track and they're just like looking at me blankly, saying no, everything starts to escalate. I feel like I need to get in control of that situation. If I let that slide, then the whole class is going to erupt. What I do instead of standing there and face to face or standing over them and trying to get them back on track and trying to put that like pressure on them while I'm standing right there, which is not going to end well for some students who would escalate things. I will just say I'm going to be checking back in five minutes. When I do, I expect that. The reason this works so well is because it's supportive and non-confrontational. It removes any of those needs to like lock horns if the student's not following those instructions immediately, which they won't sometimes, like because they probably also feel embarrassed and you're saying this in front of all of their peers. And if they've got a face to maintain in front of their peers, they're gonna be like, no, miss, go away. Like, I'm not doing that. It's not happening. If you say I'm gonna give you five minutes, I'm gonna pop back over and see, you know, how you're going, or I'm gonna give you five minutes. When I do, I expect that. It completely changes the dynamics of that situation. Just say if they're on their phone, you stand there, give me your phone, no. Put your phone away, no. Okay, Bob, I'm going to come back in five minutes. When I do, I expect that your phone is in your bag. Got it? You move away. No locking horns. Guess what? Bob might sit on his phone for an extra three minutes. He'll be watching you, watching him. And then three minutes will go on. The class is no longer looking at him, the class no longer cares what he's doing. No one's going, Oh, wonder what Miss is gonna do because Bob hasn't put his phone away. Is she gonna send him out? Is she gonna escalate things? Is she gonna get angry? Because the kids love it when things like that happen. It takes away from the learning. It's you know, not all kids, but you know, it's a little bit of excitement in the class. It completely takes that away. So in three minutes, when all the eyes are off Bob, Bob might quietly slip his phone into his bag. If he doesn't, then you can follow it up after. That's okay, but you have completely diffused the situation and taken away the need for you to stand there and have your hand out for 10 minutes while that's escalating, and then you have to end up going, right, go to the principal's office because you can hand the phone in to them. That is three. Number four is if something is happening in the classroom and you're trying to talk to that student about their behavior, just say they're chatting and constantly calling out over everybody and just being generally disruptive, and just say there's a few pockets of students who are doing the same thing. But you go up to this one student who you think is the instigator of it because you can see everything. Like you're up the front of the room, there's all your students there, and you're watching on, and just say Steve is the one that's you know he's causing most of the disruption. So you go up to Steve and you're like, hey Steve, mate, like you know, stop talking. And Steve's like, oh, but they're doing it too, but the rest of the class is talking. Go talk to Bob, he's doing it. Bob's the one that's talking, not me. In that situation, very easy for me in the past to be like, oh, like, no, I'm talking to you, and blah blah blah. So instead of allowing ourselves to get worked up by these comments, which can work us up quite easily, say something like, I'll 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? I love this one because when you're saying, I understand that, before I move on to talk to them, what might I need from you? And you're ensuring that student knows you're aware of the other issues, you're acknowledging that, you're saying, yeah, there are other people talking here, but then you're circling back to that student, you're asking a reflective question, you're not telling them. When we move to questioning rather than lecturing, like asking rather than telling them what they've done wrong, when you're getting them to reflect on their own behaviors, you have a far better opportunity for them to then take accountability for them. When we lecture, when we stand over and we yell or we just talk at them, it's coming in one ear and out the other. The second you flip that and say, What might I need from you right now before I move on to do that? You're getting them to reflect on what their responsibilities are and get them to take accountability. The next one, number five, is similar to that one. So, you know, when a student's deflecting or blaming others or pointing the finger instead of taking responsibility for their behaviors, you can just simply say, What do you think is important for you to be doing right now? If a student is in a place where they're pointing the finger, where they're deflecting, they're unlikely to respond well to us dictating what they should be doing because for them, in their minds, other people are doing it, they're pointing the finger, that student was talking, that student was making faces at me, that student was throwing things at me, that student was the one who did it first. When we ask them, it's going to be more effective than telling them. What do you think is important for you to do right now? It just brings it back to them, their responsibilities, what you need them to do, and then you can move on to another student if need be. And by the way, if they can't tell you in that moment, if again, instead of getting caught in this locked horns back and forth of no, tell me what you think your responsibility is, because that can also happen. They might not have the capacity in that moment to think about exactly what you know their responsibility is, what they need to take accountability for. You can also say, and this is by the way, just so you can get back to teaching the class without escalating things, you can say, All right, Bob, I'm gonna give you a minute to think that through and I'm gonna come back in five minutes. That one line, I'll give you five minutes. I'm gonna be coming back and checking in then. It just gives you space and it just puts space between that behavior that you're witnessing or on the receiving end of, or that is disrupting the class. It gives you space between that stuff and then your reaction to it. So you're more likely to be able to respond. You're keeping yourself calm, you're keeping that composure, you're remaining in control of your own tone, your body language, and you're saying to that student and you're saying to the rest of the class, I will circle back to this. I'm going to hold my expectations and my boundaries around this, but I'm not going to escalate it. I'm not going to get into a fight. We're not here to fight. Which brings me on to the next one. Number six. When a student is refusing to follow your instructions, when they're arguing, when they're digging their heels in, you can simply say, James, I'm not here to argue with you. Let's take a break. I'll come back in five. You're keeping that composure, you're staying in control, and you're able to continue when both of you are ready to move forward. And I want to say before we finish up, that was number six, that's a final one. Give those a go. But I really want to finish up by saying this. I don't always know what to say when it comes to challenging behavior. The things that students bring into the classroom, the things that can pop up, you never know what's going to pop up. It's really hard to know what to say back to certain things. I'm not a wizard. I'm a human being, a very flawed human being, who's actually pretty crappy at regulating some days. I do really, really struggle with my own regulation and it's something I'm working on constantly. But these sentences right here have saved me more times than I can count. When I'm dealing with challenging behaviors, especially things like defiance or when students want to make things really public. Sometimes I do feel like a bit of a stunned mullet, but it doesn't matter because I have these phrases up my sleeve. They're not gonna be perfect 100% of the time. They're just pre-prepared phrases I can grab that keep my thinking brain switched on, or when my thinking brain's not online, they're just things that I can automatically grab because they're hardwired, they're easy to access, and it helps diffuse a situation. It's it's beautiful when you can have things like that happening in your practice. So really practice those. Maybe just grab one that you can use. Um, and I just hope that was really helpful. I actually have a couple of free guides that have the language that you heard here, but heaps more examples. I don't know the links off the top of my head, I probably should, but I'll pop them in the show notes for you. One of the guides is 20 calm phrases, so it's like one liners, a lot like the one that I said last. So I'm not here to argue with you. Let's take a break and I'll come back in five. There's like 20 of those, and I call them my calm scripts. And calm scripts are just phrases you can grab and use when you desperately need to put space between yourself and the behavior and remain the calm, credible leader in the classroom. And one of my biggest recommendations is just to choose a couple and get really good at those. You don't have to know a million, you don't have to know exactly what to say under every single situation. When you're under stress, when you're struggling with your regulation, it can be impossible to find those right words. That requires your prefrontal cortex. That is often shut off by student behavior. So just have that language ready to go. So I will pop the link in the show notes for that guide, or you can just practice the six that I've spoken through here. But until next time, teachers, give yourself a bucket load of grace. If you get anything from this episode, I hope that it was just we are all flawed, imperfect, beautifully messy humans who struggle with this stuff. Like, we're our own people too. We don't come into the classroom as these like cyborgs ready to, you know, deal with all of these defiant behaviors and talking back to us and like it's a tough job. So please just give yourself grace. And I hope you got that from this episode that I have nothing but boundless empathy for anything you're experiencing in the classroom and also a very deep knowing what it feels like because I have been there and done that. If you also have a teacher friend, or if you are the leader of a school or a leader of a staff team, then send them this episode. I do have a few school leaders who reach out to me after I do these practical kind of episodes where we're using like specific language for diffusing defiance. I have quite a few people reaching out saying that they've passed that on to their staff team, like my guides and stuff. So please send this episode to somebody who you think might really benefit from that. If you do, if you can think of someone who will benefit from that or a team who would benefit from that, um, it would be wonderful to be able to support you in uh whatever way I can. Okay, I will leave it there. Go and sprinkle that classroom management magic into everything you do. Catch you next week, teacher friends.

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Claire English

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