With the new year in mind, I’ve been thinking about behaviour management of my new classes… The vast majority of behaviour With the new year in mind, I’ve been thinking about behaviour management of my new classes…management lies beneath the social surface and a great deal of it goes on predominantly outside the […]
Tag: #jellybabiesarenaughtybutnice
Home Contact: What Difference Could It Make?
We all have some students whose behaviour or attitudes or despondency seems beyond our ability to impact. Those hard nuts to crack. Sometimes it’s that they continue to shout across the room and nothing we do seems to stop them. Sometimes it’s that they persistently do no work at all. Sometimes it’s that they just […]
If You See Behaviour Management As a Battle Ground, You May Win The Battle But You’ve Already Lost The War
Behaviour Management: Is There A Way To Practically Apply The Principles of Respect and Relationship? In writing my last blog post, I realised that respect and relationship as foundations for behaviour management might sound like some sort of impractical pixie dust solution for helping lessons to fly. I really don’t think that they are. They’re […]
Enablement: Creating a Can-Do Attitude
If we’re doing our jobs right, and I’m sure that we’re trying, we should be pushing our students to do things that, put simply, they can’t do. Not that they aren’t capable of it, but that they can’t do it on their own yet. If we aren’t, we’re only repeating what they’ve already done, what […]
Round Two: Skullduggery Pleasant
Recently, a colleague stopped me in the corridor. His face was a mixture of concern and outrage. Without knowing what was wrong or, indeed, what I had done wrong, I ploughed in with the question: “Is everything ok? Are you ok?” “Well,” he replied, “I thought that you were an English teacher.” “I am!” “But […]
Why Do We Even Do This Job?
It’s nearing the end of the school year and, exhausted as we are, I bet that most of us are actually feeling pretty nostalgic about it already. Why? Because this is the point in the year where some of our students say, “Thank you!” It might be that they randomly drop by our classroom or […]
Our Attitude Is Everything.
We’ve all faced difficult students. It was only last Friday that I dealt with one of the most difficult behaviour challenges of my career, facing a non-compliant, defiant, aggressive student. And yet, I still think that it is fair to say that it is our attitude which determines how effective our teaching is. We could […]
The Quiet Before The Storm…
Whilst firmly settled in the luxury of a massive sofa, enjoying all that the holiday has to offer in terms of time, coffee and calm, I thought that now might be the best time to think about behaviour management. Not so much how to manage behaviour but the principles behind it. The what and […]
‘I Love To Laugh’
Although I spend my time striving to be the best possible teacher that I can be, I don’t always succeed. Perhaps this could get me down, and at times it has and does, but I think it’s best to avoid personal criticism. Education is always moving forwards and that’s the direction we’re best going in. […]
Naughty but Nice…
I don’t know about you but my favourite classes are often those with an overabundance of personality. The naughty but nice… Like Jelly Babies! The ones where, years later, you’ll bump into them in town with their small children in tow and they’ll jump to greet you before swiftly apologising for all the hassle they […]