The Unteachables Podcast

#151: What to do when your class is bringing the 'checked out, apathetic, can't be bothered' vibes at the end of the year

• Claire English

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We’ve officially entered the end-of-year zone... You know, the part where students are either bouncing off the walls or slumping over their desks like they’ve pulled three all-nighters in a row. And let’s be honest, we’re right there with them.

In this week’s episode, I’m unpacking a common (and deeply exhausting) classroom vibe: student apathy. That “ugh, why are we even here?” energy that rolls in hard during December. Whether your students are dragging their feet into class, doing the bare minimum (if anything), or slurping down Red Bulls the size of their heads — I’ve got you.

We’ll chat about:

  • Why apathetic behaviours spike at the end of the year (spoiler: it’s not just because they’re lazy)
  • How arousal states impact student engagement
  • And most importantly? Some super practical strategies to upregulate energy in a way that doesn’t leave you more drained than they are.

What you’ll learn:

  • Why students are checked out in Term 4 (and why it’s NOT a reflection of your teaching)
  • The difference between low, optimal, and high arousal states — and how to use them
  • My favourite “shake it up” tricks for getting student energy back
  • Fun, fast ways to use novelty, movement, and talk-time to re-engage your class
  • How to maintain routines without making things boring
  • How your energy sets the tone — and what to do when you’re the one running on fumes

Resources + Mentions:

  • 🎁 Free Whole-Class Games! Grab them here
  • 🎉 Brain Break Bundle!Grab it here
  • 🧠 The Regulation Rooms Resource (exclusive to Behaviour Club members): Not for sale yet, but might be soon!

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

RESOURCES AND MORE SUPPORT:

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SPEAKER_00:

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 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 in action in our classroom that'll 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. Well, hello there, wonderful teachers. Welcome back to the Unteachables Podcast. It is brilliant to have you here listening in again. If it's your first time, hello, I'm Claire. You can join me here every week talking all things classroom management in the easiest, most accessible, most actionable way possible. And it's flipping December. I can't believe it's already the end of the year, but I'm sure that you have said that enough in passing in the halls of your school to other teachers. I don't need to say it again here. It's just been Thanksgiving, if that is what you celebrate in your patch of the world. And if you do celebrate Thanksgiving, I hope you had a beautiful, wonderful time with your families and friends. We don't celebrate it here in Australia, but because I work with so many of you that do, it's actually been really nice to kind of take a bit of a pause to think about what I'm grateful for because there's a lot. Like I feel like in this phase of my life, this stage of my life, I it's pretty tough being a toddler mum and trying to balance a lot of stuff, but there's so much to be grateful for. And I actually had a bit of a health scare last week. I uh went to the doctors for like a routine skin check, and I just said, Hey, do you mind just checking, you know, this patch on my breast? And um, they found a lump. And of course, for three, four days I spiraled until I was able to get into a mammogram and an ultrasound. And thank goodness this morning I came out of there and it was clear. Just a cyst. Um, and by the way, if you are at an age where you get routine mammograms, please just get it done. Don't be afraid by people saying it's painful or anything like that. Just it's so quick. It's, you know, if you've got a toddler that's elbowing you in the boob like I do, like it just felt quite painless. It was, it was great, it was really quick. Um, anyway, so back to the gratitude piece, right? I feel today so grateful for my health and so grateful to be aging. There's so much on social media at the moment around anti-aging, and you just see so many transformations with plastic surgery and and just so many things that, you know, like make us feel definitely makes me feel a little bit like sometimes. This is no shade to anybody who wants to do that, by the way. Go and do it. If that makes you feel great, freaking all power to you. But I wanted us to stop and just talk about this because I feel after last week's scare, I just feel like it is such a privilege to age. Like right now, I have my hair greys popping out, and you know, my belly's a little bit loose from having Ava, and my makeup gets all caught up in the smile lines around my eyes, and I am just so grateful for that. Like, and when I think about events like Thanksgiving and Christmas and all the holidays, and you know, all you wonderful people out there might celebrate different things, but every single year I think it's so important to just stop and take heed of like what we're actually grateful for. It's not the things in our lives, it's like this this chapter that we're living. Um, you know, chapters kind of end without us realizing them. We don't realize when the last time for something would be. So I guess that's what I'm feeling grateful for this year. Like really just stopping and going, like, I have a life and I'm living my beautiful life, and I'm living my life with my family. And by the way, it wasn't always like this for me. There were many years of my life where I didn't even celebrate Christmas. I didn't celebrate things like that because I didn't really have anywhere to go for Christmas. And maybe for you at the moment, things feel really tough. And it certainly is the case for a lot of our students where, you know, the holidays will feel heavy. They don't feel joyful. And it's only in the last few years that I've been able to stop and go, oh my gosh, like I have this beautiful family now that I've created for myself. So I just want to hold space for anybody out there as well who is finding the holidays tough, who found Thanksgiving tough, who is going to be finding Christmas tough. Um, and just make sure that I flag the fact that a lot of our students are doing it tough, you know? Anyway, I just wanted to stop and say that. I don't know who needed to hear that. It's got nothing related to teaching. Um, but you are beautiful and perfect and fabulous, and there's so much to be grateful for, and it is a privilege to be getting older. So I don't know who needs to hear that. Anyway, now let's go on to the teaching portion. I didn't sign up today to be some kind of inspirational speaker, but uh anyway, moving along. In the lead up to the end of the school year, speaking, see, I've tied it back somehow, but in the lead up to the end of the year, we will see kind of an uptick in certain behaviors, and it is just bound to happen. Whether you are super experienced in the classroom, whether you've got a really easy class throughout the rest of the year, whether it's been a challenging class, like different behaviors will start to creep in. And whether it's an increase in apathetic behaviors where your students are coming in like, oh, I don't want to do this, I'm tired, I can't be bothered, or an increase in really high-energy, chatty, dysregulated behaviors. I have got you covered in the lead up to the break in this podcast. And I'm gonna give you some really tangible strategies to use immediately, as well as a little bit of an understanding around why those behaviors are increasing at this time of the year. So why you might be seeing more apathetic behaviors or why you might be seeing more high-energy behaviors. I mean, I'm sure that you can take a stab in the dark as to why they're happening, but it is really useful, I find, to start to unpack those things and say, like, what's actually happening here with our students. On today's episode, we're going to be talking about the more apathetic behaviors. And next episode, we're going to be talking about the more high-energy behaviors. So I thought I'd split them over the two episodes just so the strategies don't get kind of mixed up and lost. Anyway, so apathetic behaviors. If you're thinking my students are totally checked out, this episode is going to be helpful. I see these behaviors more in my older students, actually year-round, and I always have to use these strategies to try to help to upregulate that energy. What you might be seeing with apathetic behaviors are students that are coming to class later. Maybe you're hearing a lot of, why are we still doing this? It's nearly the end of the year. You might see a lot more students opting out of doing the work completely or doing very little work. You might see like very little output from your students. Maybe students are seeing very little purpose in the lesson and they're quite negative about it, you know, like I don't want to be doing this. Like, what's the point? The exams are over. Like, we don't have any reports now. Like, what's the point of us actually doing work? What is it going to? What's the what's the end goal here? You might see students who have really little energy, very hard to motivate. They're walking in with a, you know, a can of Red Bull the size of their head. You might be seeing students who are droopier or more tired or even having a little snooze at their desks. All of those behaviors are the kind of behaviors that I wanted to talk about in today's episode and give you some strategies to start to shift those behaviors so you can get to the finish line and not be feeling so drained yourself because my gosh, it is so exhausting battling apathetic behaviors or lesson. I would argue that sometimes it is actually more draining doing that than having to bring down the chatty energy. But I guess just depends on what class I'm in. If I'm dealing with the chatty behaviors, I would choose the apathetic ones. Dealing with the apathetic, I'm like, come on, where's your energy? What could like, you know, have a bit of spies, a bit of life about you. Anyway, so that is what we're going to be talking about now. How to shift those behaviors and kind of upregulate that energy. But first up, why might we be seeing these behaviors? And as I said, you probably can take a stab in the dark as to why, but I'll unpack them for you. The first reason why you might be seeing these behaviors is that students are just flipping tired physically, mentally, socially, the break is knocking. And you know, just like we are, they're anticipating the break. It's just like when you're in the car and you need to go to the toilet really, really bad. And as you get closer to your house, the urge to go to the toilet just increases because you know you're nearly there. Uh, they don't want to be sitting in class. They want to be catching up on sleep, watching a movie till midday. Like, you know, they just want to be out of there. And so do we. I think that like we struggle towards the end of the year. We're exhausted. We would rather be laying in bed. We would rather be doing something with our own families. We wouldn't choose to be sitting there trying to deal with the apathetic behaviors if we had a choice in the matter, right? Of course we need to do our job, of course we need to teach. I'm just saying that we both are tired. Like everybody is tired. The second reason you might be seeing these behaviors is the loss of purpose. There's no buy-in. Exams might be over, assignments might be done and dusted, schemes of work are like a little less serious, you know. There's this attitude of, eh, it doesn't really matter. And that attitude might start to dominate. But generally, what students are, when they're exhibiting those behaviors, they're in a low arousal state. And understanding arousal states can help us to choose the best strategy for the best moment, whether it is those apathetic behaviors or the chattier, more energetic behaviors. Just a little bit more about arousal states before we go on. There is a lower arousal state, an optimal arousal state, and a high arousal state. When you see students who are lethargic and droopy, resting their head on the desk, tired, yawning, lacking motivation, disengaged, they are in a low arousal state. If students are in a high arousal state, they might be exhibiting like a lot of movement, they might be excessively chatty, high energy, having a you know difficult time sitting still. And then in the center of that, it's like a spectrum. And in the center of that is an optimal arousal state, which is alert, it's focused, it's wakeful, is able to take on tasks and tackle those tasks really well. If we're at the low end of the arousal spectrum, then the goal would be to upregulate so they can move up to the optimal arousal state. And if they are in a high arousal state, the goal would be to downregulate them into the optimal. So optimal sitting in the middle, you've got low and high on either end of that. If they're high, let's get them down into optimal. If they're low, let's push them up to optimal. That's where we get the upregulation and downregulation from. In this episode, I'll be talking about upregulating from that low arousal state into that more optimal arousal state, because when you're trying to teach a class, having students who are droopy and disengaged and yawning and lacking motivation is not the goal. That's not it. It's not going to be helpful. What we want is students who are alert and focused, they're wakeful, they're able to take on those tasks and do so in the best way that they can. So here are some ways to do it. The first thing that I always suggest is to kind of just shake things up a little bit. The brain loves a bit of novelty, and novel or unexpected things in the classroom release dopamine. And dopamine is a neurotransmitter that fuels that motivation and that focus. What this novel or unexpected stuff can do is pull students out of that low arousal because it's sparking their interest. So the kinds of things that you can do, there's a bunch of ways that you can introduce some novelty into your classroom. You can do a couple of fun games, you can package things up as team challenges, timed activities, uh, yeah, a bit of competition, heated debates, any opportunities for like a bit of a laugh that can bring up those energy levels. And when you do something like that, you get more buy-in for the rest of the lesson. One way that I love to do this because it's really important that we're still keeping the routines in place. It's very important because if we let go of the routines that are kind of holding the room, what's going to happen if you let go of those routines? Things are just gonna get a little bit more loosey-goosey and it's gonna be even harder to classroom manage. So we want to keep the same routines, we want to keep things consistent, keep things predictable. I love to introduce novelty in my routine. So my entry routine, I might have a particular task that is like beat the clock or a this or that question, or something that sparks their interest and is a little bit different. I've also before moved their tables around, given them a new seating plan, and gotten them into different groups. And in that lesson, they have to work with different groups to do a certain task or, you know, do a certain challenge. So that also the difference, the novelty will wake them up out of that low raisal arousal state instead of just slumping over in the same old chair, they usually would immediately we're demanding in the kindest way possible for them to be moving into a different space, whether it's physically, like I mean, and physically and mentally into a different space. So that's shaking things up. The next one is to get them talking. If we can capture their attention, capture their engagement, and do a task that's getting them to actually discuss things with other peers, we are pulling them again out of that low arousal state and we are activating their brains. We're activating their prefrontal cortex, we're getting them closer to a state where they are going to be engaging in the lesson. I love doing this by putting out a this or that question, as I said before, and they can chat with the rest of the class. You know, putting out a quick debate question because it gets them talking and having a laugh or thinking about something like a debate question could be something like uh humans are the most dangerous animals on the planet. Do you agree or disagree? And that's a really great one to get them talking. Or what do you think kids know more about than adults? Or trying to think of other ones. Uh, do you think we should be spending more money on um space exploration, or should we be worrying about things on Earth? Or should we be exploring the ocean? Or things like that can really spark students' interest and get them talking. And if we're sparking their interest, if we're lighting up that prefrontal cortex, we're going to have a better chance of getting them primed for learning. Uh, it just yeah, gets them talking and laughing. The next one is incorporating physical movement. Again, something like this will just pull them out of that low arousal state or boost them up, or will upregulate them and help them to better focus on their learning. The way you can do this, and I know it's not possible for every context to do a great deal of movement, like taking them out of the room. If you can, you know, take them, like for example, right? If we're sitting in the middle of a lesson and I'm looking around and I've got a bunch of 16-year-olds there going, Oh, I don't want to do this. Right, everyone, get up. We're gonna go outside and we're going to do some star jumps, we're going to do some stretches, we're going to go for a walk and talk outside. I'm going to give you a debate question. You're going to talk to your peer, I'm your partner about it, then we're going to come back and we're going to talk about it as a class. So something like that, those kind of small actions can help wake students up. It'll re-engage their attention. So instead of slogging it out and having to go on and on about something, instead of asking the class that question and getting the class to kind of sit there and stare blankly at me, I might take them outside for a walk and talk. As well as this, it's so say you can't go outside because the context doesn't like allow that or whatever the reason might be. I love to give students activities that increase the movement in the lesson without having to do anything extreme. So for example, I might get them all standing up and I might say, right, okay, we're going to have a rock, paper, scissors battle, or we're going to stand in a circle and we're going to play a game of getting to 21. I don't know if anyone's played Get to 21 before, where you just go around in a circle and you have to count. I think you can say like a maximum of like three numbers, but you have to say at least one number, and you have to not be the person that says 21 around the circle. And every time someone says 21, they're out and it's the last people that are remaining. Um, I love that one. I love categories again because it gets students up and moving and talking. Um, so any of those kinds of games are brilliant. Even things like, you know, giving them a this or that question, and rather than just getting them to talk through it, getting them to stand up and then move to either side of the room, you can do that even embedded into your lesson. So if you are asking them a question about the content, do you agree or disagree? Go to this side of the room or that side of the room. Do you think the answer's A, B, or C? A is over in that corner, B is over in this corner, just something to get them up and moving. Um, I love doing things like blobs and lines. So I might say, okay, right, everyone is a little bit droopy. And I'll just be really transparent and honest with them. I'm like, look at you, like we're all tired. Let's do something to get us moving, talking and thinking before we get started with this lesson. I'll get them up. Okay, line up by the time you wake up at up for school this morning and they'll have to talk amongst themselves and place them in the line. Um, blob by the pet that you have or the pet that you want. Again, they have to, they have to, like it's a requirement of that task that they talk to each other and they get moving. And they might groan, they might go, I don't want to do this. But by giving them a task like that, it will start to re-engage their brains into what's going on. It'll get them back into the present moment, get them into the learning mode. I guess we call it a learning mode. Anyway, those are my favorite kind of activities that I do to try to like upregulate students who are a little bit tired and apathetic. Just keep remembering like, can I put a little bit of novelty here? Is there something I can do that's different? How can I get them talking? How can I get them moving? What is something that I can do to get those prefrontal cortexes switched on so I'm not standing at the front of the room for the next still what three weeks nagging at them and talking at them? And it's like drawing blood from a stone. You don't want to spend your next three weeks like that. So give those a go and see how you get on with it. Uh, but also just remember that lower energy at this time of the year is so expected. It can be quite tough to overcome, but just do that. Use some tools to inject that novelty and still maintain that consistency in the everyday so we're not derailing our classroom management efforts as well. Also, do remember that energy is very contagious. So if you are feeling really like luster, if you are exhausted, if you're walking into the classroom, leaning on your table with a coffee, going, Oh, I can't do this anymore, then it's likely that your class is not going to, you know, farewell to the upregulation that you're that you're giving a go of. So uh be what you want to see. That works in every context when it comes to being a classroom teacher. Like if you can go in there and you can act the part, like get really energetic, get really excited. They're walking in, like, Mitch, it's so nice to see you. Yes, like really trying to upregulate that energy. Lead with a beat the clock, lead with something that's going to, yeah, just get them switched on, get them talking, get them excited. Uh, that is the best thing we can do as we lead into the holidays. But of course, be easy on yourself. If you're bloody tired, just be tired, you know, but just recognize that that is going to spread into the energy of the room as well. Uh, in terms of resources, if you are looking for things that I've spoken about or things that would work to be like used at a pinch to upregulate that energy, I have a huge, big brain break bundle. If you haven't grabbed that already or if you're not in the behavior club, it is this huge bundle of games and goodies that will help you upregulate the room, but then also channel that energy. Uh, I have the most epic regulation rooms resource as well that I've just created and just put into the Behavior Club. So that's in there this month. If you're one of my behavior clubbers, go and download that immediately. What it is is two clickable rooms in a slide deck. You click either the Zenden or you click on the boost base. The Zendens, obviously, to downregulate, the boost base is to upregulate. And if you click on one of those rooms, it takes you to another room with 40 doors. And behind each of those 40 doors is an activity to either upregulate or downregulate. I don't have that for sale at the moment. I just wanted to flag it for behavior clubbers who are in here to go and download that. But I might be making it available soon, just depends on time. So if I do make that available, I'll pop the link in the show notes. But the main point is just to have something there at a pinch that you don't have to think about. Have a couple of things. So if you've got a year eight class that you know is really lethargic, have a couple of things ready. Just have a couple of things in your mind that, okay, I know that if I'm struggling to get their attention, get their energy, if things are feeling really like luster, I am going to play a game of count to 20 and it's gonna get their attention. They're gonna be chatting, they're gonna be laughing, and then we can move on to the lesson and transition into the learning. So just have something up your sleeve for that. And that's it, really. I hope that was helpful. I trust that was helpful. Again, just, you know, be easy on yourself, be kind to yourself. I am sending you all of my love leading into the end of the year. And I know it's a slog, but it's the final push, and I'll be thinking about you. Next week, we're gonna be talking about how to downregulate. So, what to do when that room is high energy, chatty, you've got students running in and out and you can't manage it. That's what we're gonna be talking about next week. So, tune in, make sure you're following along if you're not, so you can get that straight into your podcast app. But until next time, give yourself a bunch of grace and of course keep sprinkling that classroom management magic into everything you do. Bye for now.

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Claire English

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