Browse all of our articles below, or choose from the following topics:
Browse all of our articles below, or choose from the following topics:
The events and conditions around us heavily impact our behavioural and language choices every second of every day. Students behave in certain ways, both positively and negatively in response to the conditions in the classroom. But they are also incredibly impacted by the things that happened in their lives long before getting anywhere near your classroom door.
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I have the wonderful privilege of speaking with teachers around Australia about both the immense rewards and the challenges of being a contemporary educator. While there’s a little bit of Pollyanna in all of us, the truth is we speak a lot about the challenges. There are an enormous number of accountabilities in being a modern teacher and with the plethora of compliances that come with the profession, there never seem to be quite enough hours in the day.
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A memory I have from very early on was being told by one experienced staff member not to be too nice. “Huh?” I muttered, thinking that this wasn’t mentioned in my four years at university. “You know” he went on, “don’t let them walk all over you.”
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We all like to know why we need to do things, far more than we like to know what we need to do or how we are expected to do it. Human motivation is largely driven by a clear purpose. Many of us chose teaching as a profession because we wanted to make a big difference in the lives of students, a why, and not because of the occasional opportunity to show students how to conjugate verbs, that’s a how or what.
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I remember teaching a fabulous class of Year 6 students who had a special sense of humour. They were also characterised by a wonderful camaraderie which made hearing about their regular escapades on weekends or even during lunch breaks a real joy. There was little ego, but a pervading inclusivity that has made me remember them fondly despite the passage of fifteen years since teaching them.
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Teachers are adept at chunking and sequencing academic learning, yet we forget to chunk the time that students will be required to listen to instruction or to sustain effort. In much the same way that adults fidget when we don’t know how long the movie will be, students will resist our instruction if they have no idea how long they’ll be required to listen, or to sustain silence, or to work collaboratively.
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The lesson for us in schools is to stop the vain attempt to build self-esteem through merit awards, ranking systems, competitive structures and tokens that reinforce already well established student hierarchies. The challenge is differentiating the academic program so that all of our students experience and value their own success.
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We have to be more determined about giving respect before we get it.
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This article is designed to provoke. Occasionally, we all need to hear something provocative, forcing us to place our beliefs, our practice and our status quo under the microscope. This provocative statement is that we’re doing conflict all wrong in Australian schools and that the most significant mistake we make is to focus on the student who is being bullied. I believe that, when conflict or a fight or a bullying situation emerges, then the first person we should speak to is the student engaging in the bullying behaviour.
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Most of us are comfortable in the belief that any good and effective behaviour management work needs to be both firm and fair.
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