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. I'm gonna get straight into it today, teachers, because I have something that's been grinding my goat. And what grinds my goat is that teachers are constantly being told to move away from punitive approaches, but they're never truly given the practical, actual skills to execute it in a meaningful way. So it leads to us feeling incredibly disempowered. We're often told that we need to use uh, you know, restorative discussions and we need to get students to reflect, take accountability, and like the way we're taught to have these discussions is like this really long-winded process. I am completely in favor of a non-punitive approach, clearly. Like my approach to behavior is all non-punitive. My approach to behavior is one that is holistic and it centers the humans in the room. And uh, spoiler alert, we are also a human
in the room and we deserve the like the same amount of respect and uh you know like grace that we afford our students as well. But there's a problem here we are moving at like this fast pace away from this traditional way of doing things, which is great, but we need to catch up with the actual like what do we do here? Like when when teachers come and speak to me about what they're doing in their practice and how they're struggling, it really is a similar story. Like my class is chaotic and they won't listen to me and I can't teach them, and I'm told to have restorative conversations and I don't have the time to do that, and it's not working, it's not working, it's not working. That's because we don't have those conversations for those kind of behaviors, like the low low-level behaviors in our classroom. Uh, okay, I'm gonna get off my soapbox now, and I'm just gonna actually talk about what I was gonna talk about in this episode, which is the exact strategies that I use to help students build real accountability after behavior challenges. Today I'm gonna talk about students actually understanding what happened when they do something that requires a conversation around it, why it happened, what they're going to do to make that right, and how we can actually facilitate that in a way that works, in a way that's not taking us too long, but also not in a way that's forcing students to apologize or shaming them or issuing consequences that actually aren't teaching them anything. This is the work that does need to happen, but you deserve the actual support to do so. You deserve the actual steps to do so, which is why I wanted to record this episode and start to give you an idea of my exact like step-by-step to doing this in real time in a real classroom. First, let's get a bit clear on what we're aiming for because accountability gets thrown around a lot and we want accountability, and teachers want accountability, but most of the time it does just mean we want them to be punished. But real accountability isn't like forcing an apology or making them feel bad or issuing a consequence and like calling it a day. We really need to get students, number one, buy-in is really important. I spoke about that last episode, but real accountability is the student understanding what happened and why it happened, that student recognizing the impact of their behavior on themselves and others, and that student taking genuine ownership and making a plan to repair that behavior and to do better next time and having the skills to do that. We can't force any of those things to happen. We can only create the conditions for it to happen. That's another problem as well. Like, I think that we're
pushed into this situation as teachers where we're set, we're told, okay, we'll have a restorative discussion with that student, but then we're not told, like, actually, it takes a lot of work and it takes a long time. And most of the time, these discussions alone aren't enough to actually change any behaviors because these are such like automated things that are happening in their brains. These are these are patterns that they've created, like not creative, but like these are patterns that they have, you know, had going on and on and on for a long time. It's like we can't interrupt that pattern like with a one-off conversation. Anyway, again, that was a total aside. Realistic, like being realistic about what we can actually do and what we can control here. And that really is just creating the conditions for accountability to happen and being really confident in leaving like leading these discussions with our students. So here is the framework that I use after those big behavior moments. And I say big because low-level behaviors are not the same. And if we were going to be doing this with every single student who just can't stop blurting out, there just isn't enough hours in the day. And I don't say that to minimize those behaviors because low-level disruptions end up adding up into the biggest, most disempowering soup of behavior. But these discussions aren't meant for those behaviors. I've got a lot of other strategies for low-level disruption. Like I'm writing a book about it, and in that book on low-level disruptions, these this doesn't even come into it. Like the discussions around doesn't even come into it. So this is my framework. It is regulate, reflect, repair, and record. So I'm going to go through each of these steps. It's going to be super quick. Like, I just want you to take away kind of an idea around how I approach these big behaviors in a way that gives me the best chance of
leading discussions that lead students towards accountability. So the first step is to regulate. And I you can never have a conversation with a student who's still heightened or activated. It's just pointless if they're defensive, if they're shut down, if they're still in their fight or flight mode. Nothing you say is going to go in. They can't access their thinking brain. It's not happening. So the first thing we always need to do is to help them to regulate. That might be time, it might be space, it might be a visual, a calming strategy, whatever they need to get back to baseline. And that's going to look very different depending on your context and who you teach. The kind of things that I use are things like what will help right now cards. That gives them agency over their regulation and gives them options to choose what they need in that moment. But the reason I love these what will help right now cards is because when there is a situation happening in the lesson, we can't drop everything and
just be with that one student because we also have 29 other students in that room that we're going to have to be around, like be with and lead. And if we're then leaving those other 29 students to just work on strategies with one student, it is so hard. Like we're just going to get an increase of those low-level disruptions and it's not going to help us to get back to teaching. So the reason I love these little cards that I've made is because I can cut out a bunch of them and put them in a folder and just hand them out to students when I need to hand them out to students. So students know they're coming. Otherwise, I'll be like, what the hell are you giving me? I'll say something like, when you're struggling with your behavior, with your regulation, when something's going on, I might hand you one of these cards. And when I hand you one of these cards, I'd like you to choose an option from that card and go and do that option. So on the card, it might be take five deep breaths. It might be, you know, answer this question or go get a drink, or like just talking off the top of my head. They're editable cards anyway, so you can put whatever you want on them. Um, whatever works for your students, it just gives them some options without you needing to be present for the whole thing. Sometimes you will need to. Like sometimes you will really struggle to get a student to regulate and you'll need to use your time. Like it's just, it feels like an impossible puzzle. Like it really does. And all of the things that I teach through my work here, it's just giving you the best chance possible of responding in the moment. It's never going to be perfect. There are too many things at play. Um, but I know that some of you are probably out there going, yeah, but what about this, this, this, this? It's never gonna be perfect. It is teaching is like an impossible puzzle. Um, I'm just giving you some strategies and skills that can actually help you in the moment. But everything's nuanced and everything needs like your professional lens to look through. Okay, that's the first thing. Regulate. Like the conversation can wait. Regulation needs to come first. Otherwise, they're not gonna be able to reflect. They're not gonna take accountability. The second step is reflection, not lecturing. Once they're calm, it's all about that reflection. I'm not telling them what they did wrong. I'm just helping them unpack what happened. My job is to facilitate those kind of those reflections and to ask questions, not like talk at them, not tell them what happened. The more that they do the talking and the more they do the thinking, the more they're going to own it. So the kind of questions you're gonna ask are like, you know, what was happening for you at the time? Like, what were you feeling? What did you need in that moment? You know, walk me through what happened. Like that was a really hard lesson. Can you tell me a little bit like about what happened? Or from like my perspective, what might I have seen? What was happening with you? So really unpacking what happened, and then you can explore the impact with students, you know, like how do you think that impacted the class, the learning, yourself, me, like what
was actually going on for other people? And then you can build the emotional literacy in with these conversations as well. Like, sounds like you're feeling really frustrated or overwhelmed or disrespected. And that came out as you yelling at across the room and calling someone a, you know, see you next Tuesday. Like helping them name the feeling is such a battle when they can name it, when they can see underneath that iceberg, they can start to manage their behaviors, and they'll actually have some kind of buy-in then to go, oh my gosh, yes, I was feeling really frustrated. And next time I'm feeling that way, like, what can I do? So the kind of resources I use for these particular situations are guided reflection sheets that walk them through these questions. Because as teachers, having the right language to use in the moment to structure these conversations, it's really hard. I don't know what your memory is like, but my memory is not good enough, especially in these situations, to be like, okay, I've got this huge bank of things in my brain, and I can just pull the perfect sentence out in any given time. And I'm really experienced at doing this, and I still struggle sometimes to find the right words. I also find something really like visual in front of students immensely helps with them being able to reflect because now it's not about me lecturing a student, it's about me sitting beside them and helping them through these guided reflections. Um, so one that I really, really love is the iceberg reflection. So it kind of helps them to see what was happening underneath the behavior with some guided questions. It's like an actual visual of an iceberg with some guided prompts for them. And then they say, like, what was on the surface, what behaviors were happening. That in itself will help them to take accountability for what they did. But then it'll give them the emotional literacy and that reflection and exploring the impact underneath what was happening to then be able to make some different choices next time. That's the goal, right? There's a bunch of other resources that I have, um, like the telling my story prompts, lets them narrate what happened in their own words, like lots of different guided reflections, and they'll all be like dependent upon what students, you know, you're working with and yeah, what needs they have and all of that kind of stuff. But reflection done well, it just builds so much self-awareness and emotional literacy. And in this stage here, the goal is to get them to acknowledge that harm was done. That is them taking accountability. When they have taken accountability, when you're able to kind of get to the heart of what happened, then you plan for that rep that repair. Like the repair needs to happen, whatever that repair might look like. You know, what are they going to do about it? I never force apologies. Like forced apologies are worthless and actually makes it harder for the person who was harmed if there was harm involved. Instead, it's about helping them figure out what needs to happen to make that right. I spoke about this a couple of episodes ago. I gave like a little bit of a list as to like the the core consequences that I have. I don't call them consequences, I just say like, you know, what is needed to like how can we move forward? But this is the time where you can get students together for a conflict resolution or facilitate a conflict resolution with a teacher if that's what happened, or you know, get students to pick up the mess that they made or like and support them to do that. So this is all about thinking, okay, well, this happened. That's what was happening on the surface, that's what was happening underneath. Regardless of what was happening underneath, we still need to repair this, we still need to do this to then have
like a really nice clean slate. Um, you know, you can ask them, like, what do you think needs to happen next? Like, what would help this other person feel okay? What's one thing you can do to make this right? I use resources like my logical consequence list, like I just went through, um, repair notes. So even though I don't force an apology, sometimes they do want to apologize and sometimes they need the scaffolding to do that. So I have like certain repair notes, um, scaffolds for preparing for repair helps them plan out conversations before they go and have them. Because sometimes if students have done something and there's been some kind of um, you know, harm that's been caused, if there's a fracture in a relationship, going into a conversation and understanding what they need to say can be really daunting. So you can help them prepare for that repair. The most important thing to take away from this is when students come up with their own pathway forward, there's so much more buy-in, there's so much more ownership. It's not something that you're then forcing upon them, it's something that they're choosing to do. We can't we can't control our students. We can't control whether they come on board with these conversations. We can only facilitate. So if we're able to facilitate them to understand what happened, to reflect on that, to then choose what is needed for a pair, that is so much more effective than just going sit here for lunchtime, don't talk to me like this happened, it's just so much more impactful and it's gonna have so much more impact on like what they do in the future. And then the fourth step is record and like communicate what happened. And again, this is gonna be totally dependent on the behavior, but I love to keep things recorded and documented because if this is an ongoing behavior, if this is something that the student's struggling with over time, you can only access support in a bigger way. You can only escalate that support if you've got a trail of it. And oh my gosh, like the amount of years I've spent, like not being able to do that because I'm painfully type B and I really struggle with those fine details. And I've gotten myself into situations where they're like, okay, well, you're struggling with this student. What have you done? And I'm like, I don't know what I've done. I have done things, I just haven't actually recorded it. Um, I forget what's been said, I forget what's been agreed upon, especially when you've got a million other things going on. So I like to keep any recording or communication in my own place, even if it's something like a little bit smaller, because then I can um pull it out at things like teacher interview nights. This
is not meant to be punitive. I don't mean this in a way that's like power over. This is just really important data for me, parents and carers, or any other stakeholders. This is just a mechanism for support. So, what I actually do is document what happened, um, what we discussed, what the repair plan was. I'll check in, you know, how did that conversation go for you? Like, you know, I'll just check in over time, I'll track some patterns. What I use is a very simple tracking system that I created that keeps everything in one place. So, like student profiles, behavior, reflections, follow-ups, um, positive things as well. I can pop on there. I use things like weekly goal trackers for students who need ongoing support because that helps me communicate with their parents and carers as well. Um, end-of-week reflections to help them see their progress. So anything where I'm communicating home or recording goes in this place. That is my classroom management hub. And like that's just a Google Sheets or PowerPoint that I have. And it just like takes you from each student profile over to like their main page, and like it's just a really great way to keep things in the same place. Of course, you can use your school system as well. Like, every school has like some kind of behavior tracking, attendance tracking, like that's kind of like a big thing. But uh, I like to use this because this is just for me. And I can write what I need to write on there, like what happens, how I'm following up, without it being like a big kind of thing. It doesn't have to be a big thing. I can just write it in my um in my notes. When I started to use this pathway, when I started to obviously I was doing little bits of it and I was um, you know, like I'd support their regulation, I'd support their reflection, I'd try to like, you know, create some kind of mechanisms for repair. I would try to record. When I started using it in this way, though, like when I started to really say, okay, well, I need to regulate with that student, I need to reflect, we need to repair. I started like really, because I really dreaded behavior conversations, but I stopped dreading it. I knew exactly what to do. I felt like things were so much more hardwired. Students stopped shutting down or getting defensive because that process felt really fair to them. If they were apologizing or if they were repairing, it became much more meaningful and accountability became something that was a given because I was guiding them through that. And I was really starting to see actual change, not just like compliance, but genuine overtime seeing that growth. And it's really not about being soft or, you know, the way that gentle parenting or gentle teaching is often like misconstrued. It's about being effective and it's about having a system that really genuinely supports us to support that accountability and that change for our students. It helps them to build skills, it helps them to better recognize what's going on for themselves, and that's so empowering for our students as well. So this is like the real work, right? And it is hard and it's so worthwhile. It really is. But when you're just told to like have a conversation with a student about their behavior, if that's falling flat, it's no wonder because there's so many different parts to it. And these are the different parts to it. And if we're missing one step in that kind of pathway, if we're not regulating first, we can't move forward. If the student's not reflecting, then you can't move to repair because they're not going to take that accountability. Every step in this process is just as important as the last. So when you go into your classrooms this week and something happens, just think, okay, I need to regulate with students. I need to get them to reflect in some way. And you can use one of those scaffolds to help them do that. I need to get them to do something to like repair this so they can have a fresh start. And how can I record that or communicate that home or whatever I need to do? If you've listened to this and you're like, I really need some more support with this, I need some more like help with this, I need the actual tools to do this. Everything is inside of my reflect and repair toolkit. There's dozens and dozens and dozens of different like think sheets, like I've got reflections, I've got like regulation tools, I even have my classroom management digital hub in there, so you can use that and you can record everything in one place. It's like a super cohesive system. But yeah, I just wanted to create something that took the kind of guesswork away from it. If you're in the behavior club, that's already inside of the club, just head into your um resource area and it'll be all there for you. If you're not in the behavior club, I'll just pop the link in the show notes so you can go and check that out because it really is worth having something there, especially if you're struggling with these conversations and you want to have um like more confidence around it and know what to say, how to say it, and know how to support like that authentic accountability
taking and reflection and repair. Because without that, there's no point in us having these conversations with our students. Like, there's no point in me just saying to you, like, go and have a discussion about their behavior, ask them what happened, get them to reflect like you need more support than that, and you deserve more support than that. And that is just such a huge missing piece in the classroom management support that's out there. So, just to recap for all of you lovely people who are listening, real accountability is not about punishment. It really is about students like understanding and unpacking what's happened and taking ownership and being able to repair that. The pathway is to regulate first, lead that reflection, plan for that repair, and then record whatever you need to record and follow through. And when you have a system behavior conversation, stop feeling so flipping hard and uncomfortable, and they actually start having an impact for the students you're working with. So yeah, let me know how that goes. If you have one of these discussions, if you're, you know, trying out anything, let me know. I look forward to hearing about what you're doing in your classrooms and all of the magic that you are making with your students. So I will catch you next time in the same place on the Unteachables podcast. Bye for now.