Behaviour Management is one of the greatest challenges facing teachers. And it is not only new teachers who can feel overwhelmed by classroom demands.
Because of the ever-evolving nature of teaching, the growing diversity of students and increasing societal pressures, teachers are constantly learning different ways to manage stress, workload and expectations.
Teachers who adopt a positive approach to behaviour are more likely to have improved wellbeing through increased job satisfaction since they are not looking for a quick fix, but recognise that like all learning, we need long term solutions that take the needs of the student into account.
When you are giving instructions, think about the words and tone you use. There is often a more positive way to say most things which will provide a better learning opportunity for your students.
In schools where teachers don’t feel safe themselves, they are more likely to ignore poor student behaviour because they don’t feel supported or valued. Here are 7 ways that schools can work to change the culture of ignoring bad behaviour.
Focus on teaching the skill of listening (yes those acronyms do help). Break the skill into identifiable components for students and then practise, role play, make posters and dramatise scenarios. Use positive reinforcement to help with this and/or reward students for using the skill appropriately.
The beginning of the school year is undoubtedly exciting, but it can also be an overwhelming time for new teachers, or even for experienced teachers and if you are changing schools, teaching a new grade level or a new subject area or going back to teaching after a break, this time can be even more stressful.
There are three things that will make a huge difference to your classroom, your sanity and your students’ success and they are not about curriculum, they are about behaviour.
Discipline must come through liberty. . . . We do not consider an individual disciplined only when he has been rendered as artificially silent as a mute and as immovable as a paralytic. He is an individual annihilated, not disciplined.
Here is an outstanding list of Behaviour Management Resources for Teachers.
Put these 7 strategies in place to reduce parental anxiety (and your own) in meetings with parents.
Your guide to solving behaviour problems in the classroom
A Year 5 boy is in trouble again. He continually refuses to do his work, he wanders around the room annoying other students by touching their work and talking about random topics, he talks to the teacher in a disrespectful tone and uses some low level swearing in class. When the teacher approaches him, he moves away and threatens to leave the room.