The Unteachables Podcast

#121: 4 steps to building confidence in your classroom management

• Claire English • Season 6 • Episode 121

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If you’re drowning in behaviour…
If you’re thinking, “I actually can’t keep doing this”…
If you’re exhausted from trying everything and nothing’s sticking…
You are not alone. And you are not the problem.

Confidence in classroom management can come with time and experience. But often, it doesn’t. That’s why I created a clear path forward.

In this episode, I’m walking you through the four steps of my Classroom Compass Approach – a simple structure I designed to help teachers move from overwhelmed to in control. It’s the exact approach I’ve used to help over 1,000 educators take back the reins in their classroom.

IN THIS EPISODE, I DISCUSS:

  • Why classroom confidence doesn’t always come with time – and what actually helps
  • The four steps of my Classroom Compass Approach
  • What to focus on before behaviour even happens
  • How to respond and resolve without escalating
  • Why this is the stuff that truly transforms your practice

Here’s the beauty of this whole approach: it puts you back in the driver’s seat.
We can’t control behaviour. But we can control how we show up, how we plan, how we respond, and how we connect.

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

Enrolments for The Classroom Management Lab are now OPEN... but not for long! Join the 2025 cohort before doors close on May 11th.

JOIN MY FREE LIVE TRAINING: TURN YOUR TEACHING INTO A CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT MACHINE

RESOURCES AND MORE SUPPORT:

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Speaker 1:

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 behavior nerd on a mission to demystify and simplify that little thing called classroom management. The way we've all been taught to manage behavior 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.

Speaker 1:

Hello, beautiful teacher, welcome back to the Unteachables podcast. I am Claire English, I'm your host and today I would love to talk to you about your confidence in the classroom and how you feel when you step into that classroom in front of your 30 odd students. How do you feel when you're faced with behavior? How do you feel when you know there's a bunch of chit chat and you feel like you can't get the chit chat to die down Like how do you feel in those moments? Because building confidence in the classroom it can come with time, it can come with experience, it can come with personality. I say can because sometimes time and experience still doesn't lead to classroom management confidence. I know this because a lot of the teachers that I work with have been teaching for 10, 15, 20 years and you know they don't feel confident, they don't feel all over things. They still feel frazzled and out of their depth when it comes to standing in front of a class of 30 students who are all chatting away and not listening to what they're saying and walking them out of the room and all have different behaviors and all have different needs and like it's just, it's a lot. It's a lot to be a teacher, it's a lot to classroom manage and, bloody hell, it does take a lot of confidence to be able to stand in front of a classroom and walk in and be like, yep, I'm here and I'm going to leave this room in the most epic way that I possibly can.

Speaker 1:

But if you're drowning in behavior, if you're struggling with classroom management, you might be thinking, bloody hell, I can't keep doing this for the foreseeable, I can't keep throwing pasta at the water, see if it's cooked. I can't keep continuing the cycle, not knowing if it's going to end. Like I just can't keep doing this. That's why I have a lot of teachers coming to me and saying I just don't know if I can keep teaching anymore. Like I just don't know if it's for me, I just yeah, it's that job, isn't it?

Speaker 1:

Where you know it can really shake your confidence. It can really make you feel like you're not good enough. It can really make you feel like you're not cut out for this job. And it doesn't help that when you go to get support, sometimes you get told to build a relationship or to not take it personally or you know, just to what are you doing with your teaching and learning. Like it's just not helpful when you go to seek support around these things and the support that you're getting is not adequate.

Speaker 1:

So I just wanted to say that, like you know, it can be really really hard to keep continuing like keep, keep on, keeping on, really without knowing if there's an end in sight and feeling really hopeless. That is why I do this work. Yes, of course you need to go through it, to grow through it, but you also should have some awareness of what you're doing. That can change things. And when I say go through it to grow through it, I mean like get the experience and do the miles and actually hardwire the skills. Like I wasn't good at classroom management, overnight, it was me trying and hardwiring and practicing and having observations with some incredible mentors and being able to, you know, see where I was, you know, maybe needing to tighten things up. Or like recording. I remember looking at a recording of myself teaching and I'd be like my mentor would point some stuff out and I'm like, oh my God, I am doing that. I'm cringing right now because I am only teaching to one side of the room accidentally or I am, you know, like shuffling around on both feet and not looking confident sitting at the front of the room and my teacher presence need work and you know there's so many things. But you do need to go through it to grow through it in terms of experience.

Speaker 1:

But you can't just keep going through it and growing. You can't grow through what you're going through unless you have the actual awareness and skills and strategy to what you can do to change things. I hope that made sense. That was like a lot of me saying go through and go through. But this is exactly why I created my classroom compass method. When it comes to my holistic classroom management approach, it's actual action steps that you can take to build your confidence and know what to change in your situation. So, no matter if you've been teaching for zero years or 20 years, you can use the classroom compass method to be able to go okay, this is where I'm at and this can guide me in this direction. This can help me to change this, or I can use this to be able to identify what the problem is here. That is exactly why I created this holistic approach so you just can build your confidence and know what to do to change your situation and not feel helpless and hopeless and stuck going. God, I'm just, I'm going through it, but I'm not growing through it, because I'm just ending the day wanting to curl up into a little ball under my desk and cry I've been there, I've done that.

Speaker 1:

So in this episode, I am going to be introducing you to my classroom compass method and stepping you through those four steps. However, if you want to dive deeper into this with me, I ran my live training. If you're listening to this in real time. I ran it this week, so it's already done and dusted, but you can still watch the replay at the moment. So if you would rather go and watch the training around this and dig deeper straight away, just pause this episode and head to the-unteachablescom forward, slash, learn, and you can just watch the live training there, where I step you through what I'm about to step you through in this podcast episode, but in more depth and with visuals, and, yes, there's going to be more information for you. If you would rather pause this episode and go and watch the training instead, so go and do that now, or stick with me and I will step you through the classroom compass method that I have established over my career to make things a whole lot easier for me and those that I support.

Speaker 1:

So let's crack on. There are four steps to this pathway, or, if you want to call it the compass. There's four little prongs, the four little directions. You can tell that I wasn't you know in some kind of orienteering. Four prongs to a compass. There's four parts of this. That's all you need to know, and each part of this makes up a different module in the Classroom Management Lab. So I've really tried to structure it in a way that just makes sense and you can just you know kind of learn things and apply them in your classroom and then use them as that beautiful compass to guide the way when you're struggling with things in your classroom.

Speaker 1:

The first part of this model is prepare, that is, your behavior backpack. The whole purpose of prepare is literally, as it says, the behavior backpack is to fill your backpack up with the foundational and essential behavior theories and you know the neuroscience behind the brain and how it's shaped and why. You know behaviors happen and you know knowing what's developmentally appropriate, all of those things that are really important for us to understand, to then be autonomous in our classroom management, to then have an understanding about all of the things to follow in the pathway, all of the things to follow in the model. Everything is then contextually relevant and makes sense to your understanding of behavior, because you could use all of the strategies in my model without having your behavior backpack, but you'll never be truly autonomous in saying, oh, that's happening. I understand why this is happening and I can choose one of these to make that better or to mitigate those behaviors, or to support other teachers to then mitigate their behaviors in the classroom that are happening. With your behavior backpack it's like literally putting on a behavior backpack, putting on your backpack, putting things in and then just carrying that through with you for the whole rest of the model. With this behavior backpack you're able to get curious, you can understand the approach in a deeper way and you can make the right decisions and respond appropriately. In the moment, without this behavior backpack you're going to really struggle to do that because without the behavior backpack you don't understand the context around the behaviors you're seeing. So let's say you've got your behavior backpack on Brilliant, you've got all of that foundational information around behavior.

Speaker 1:

The second step is the most crucial in my mind and that is reduce. The most important classroom management happens before there are any behaviors to manage. I'm such a big believer in that, I'm such a big advocate for supporting teachers to control the things in their classroom that they can control to mitigate behaviors and especially things like low-level behaviors. A lot of those can be mitigated by the things that we do before the behaviors happen. The goal for this step of the model is to mitigate the underlying factors that contribute to a lot of the challenging behaviors that manifest in the classroom. Doing the things we can control, which is surprisingly a lot. So in this part of the model we have things like our teaching presence and how we strengthen our teaching presence and how we develop a strong, confident presence in the classroom. That's non-verbal, that's compassionate, that is still calm and self-regulating and co-regulating and all of the things. Then we have routines what are we doing when we walk into the room? What are we doing in transitions? What are we doing when we're exiting the room? All of those things are so crucial to the overall classroom management that we are establishing in our room and being able to mitigate the behaviors that we're seeing.

Speaker 1:

The next is buy-in. How do we get buy-in Then? Lesson design, differentiation, lesson delivery, expectations, boundaries, rapport all of these things happen on a level of mitigation, before the behaviors even manifest in the classroom, and, of course, we can then drag those forward when behaviors are happening in the classroom. These things are something that's relevant. However, having an understanding around the things that we can control in our classroom these things are something that's relevant. However, having an understanding around the things that we can control in our classroom is golden. Like you will see, just by tweaking things in the reduced phase, you will see a significant reduction in the challenging behaviors that you are seeing in your classroom at the moment. And I know that because I've been there, I've done that and I've supported hundreds of teachers to do the same and see incredible changes in their classrooms and actually make them feel like, oh my gosh, I've got this, I can feel confident walking in here because I am all over X, y and Z and I know that when behaviors do pop up, I've then got a plan.

Speaker 1:

So, speaking of which, the third step. So you've got the prepare, you've got your behavior backpack, you're carrying your behavior backpack, you've carried it into reduce. You know, with your behavior backpack, why the reduction of behaviors are happening through these things. It's not just like throwing spaghetti at a wall and going, oh, that works, why does it work? You'll understand why it works. Then you've got the third step, which is respond. Behavior is still going to happen. No matter what we do, no matter how amazing our routines are, no matter how incredible our teaching presence is, no matter what we do with differentiation and our expectations and our boundaries, behavior is still going to pop up and every single choice that we make in the classroom has the potential to connect or disconnect, escalate or de-escalate, and the goal with this step here of respond is to de-escalate and address the behaviors which arise during the lesson so we can get back to teaching.

Speaker 1:

So this part of the compass is all about co-regulation, de-escalation, non-verbal communication and I take you through my five P's roadmap. If you've read my book or if you've been in any of my courses, you'll be familiar with some of my P's of nonverbal classroom management, the roadmap that I follow to actually responding to behaviors in the moment. But I take you through that. But all of this is managing behavior in a way that is the palm and not the fist Another metaphor you might've heard me talk about in the previous podcast episodes which just means managing behavior in a way that is non-confrontational and in a way that's actually going to work, to get buy-in and to support students to make different choices Thinking are you speaking to students publicly or privately? Is your body language threatening or non-threatening? Are things escalating or de-escalating when you address them? So all of those little things are things that we talk about when it comes to respond and if you do want to go and watch the replay of that live session, then you can go and do that and I go into that in a little bit more detail Then just say you've got your behavior backpack on, you've beautifully mitigated so many of those disruptive behaviors that were causing you to really struggle in the classroom and feeling really, you know, lacking confidence. Then you're able to respond effectively and deescalate those behaviors that are popping up. Then, when the storm has passed, if those big behaviors have happened in the room, then you need to resolve things. When things are de-escalated, when the lesson's over, then we can work with our young people that need additional support.

Speaker 1:

What I love about the classroom compass and the model that I teach is restorative practice. Right, a lot of teachers go don't like restorative practice because it takes me a long time. I can't have 20 conversations a day. I can't have that many conversations. It's not going to be impactful and no, you're right, it's not going to be possible. It's not realistic.

Speaker 1:

What is brilliant about this approach is you are addressing and reducing the behaviors along the way that don't warrant that kind of discussion. The behaviors that are left over at the end of the lesson are going to be the big behaviors that really warrant a proper resolution, and this is where we bring in things like the education, that true discipline, the accountability. So I teach you my transformative talk method in my classroom management lab course the connection, so really understanding what's going on with our student, the repair, like how do we give real consequences, like logical consequences in the moment, and really getting that buy-in. So that's what I go through in the resolve part of my classroom compass, because it shouldn't be that you're talking to multiple students every single lesson. It should be that the work that you're doing is creating space for that, because you're already doing the work to mitigate and resolve in the moment. So it's only those things that are, you know, you know, really pertinent to be able to resolve with that young person.

Speaker 1:

So the beauty of this whole approach is that it focuses on the things that we can control, the things that get us back in the driver's seat. This is all about the confidence that we bring into the classroom. If you aren't aware of the things that are going to put you back in control and put you in the driver's seat, you won't ever feel confident with your classroom management. Again, it's all about just throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks. You can't keep doing that. You need something to guide you in the right direction. So I'm such a big advocate for that.

Speaker 1:

So my model is, you know, having an understanding around behavior, those foundational things. It's not death by theory, it's not us going over theory time after time. So you feel empowered and walk away and go actually, what the heck do I do in my classroom Like it makes sense to me. I want to support my students, I want to support my students' nervous systems. I understand their behavior is from trauma or needs meeting all these things. Then you walk away and go actually, what do I do in the classroom? It's not that. So it's about putting things in that backpack to carry into the rest of the model, to then go okay, now I understand why this works. The second thing reducing the biggest step and it's actually the biggest module in my classroom management course for that reason All of the things that we can control to feel confident in mitigating the underlying factors of challenging behaviors. So you'll see a dramatic reduction in your low-level behaviors through that part of the roadmap.

Speaker 1:

Then it's about responding. So what we do in the moment. So really feeling confident in co-regulating with our students, making choices that are non-threatening and regulating and de-escalating with our students and getting that buy-in so we can get back to teaching in the moment and then be able to resolve it after, which is where part four comes in Resolve when the storm has passed, working with the students that really really need that additional work with true discipline, accountability, connection, getting those real consequences happening in ways that is going to shift behavior and make a beautiful plan for next time. It really is about what we can do, what we can action. We can't control behaviors. It's as simple as that. All we can do is influence them. All we can do is just create an environment that's safe and build our confidence in our structures and our routines and our intentional, nonverbal teaching presence. And you know, this is the stuff that transforms practice.

Speaker 1:

So I just need you to know that, no matter where you're at in your practice, no matter how long you've been teaching, if you don't feel confident in your classroom management right now, it's just because you don't have that compass, you don't have the right strategies, the right support to be able to, kind of, you know, go through it and grow through it. So, yes, if you'd want to dive deeper into that, if you kept listening to the podcast, maybe because you were driving and you couldn't stop this to go and watch the training. I highly suggest that you spend a bit of time going through that training. So the dash on teachablescom forward, slash, learn. Make sure you go there and watch that if you want to learn a little bit more. And I do go through some action steps so you know what does a good teaching presence look like and what are some routines and what does the transformative talk process look like. So I do step you through that in more detail and give you some quick wins to take away into the classroom in that free training. So please come and do that, say yes to that. But I promise you that it will put you in the right direction.

Speaker 1:

If you're feeling stuck and that's what it's all about getting unstuck and, you know, shaking off those feelings of like completely lacking hope for the future in our practice, because that is a horrible place to sit in. And, yeah, I would just love nothing more than to support you with this big, confusing, convoluting, under under supported area in our practice. If you listened to my episode a few episodes ago, I talked to you about how I got 20 minutes of classroom management training in the whole five years that I was in teacher training, so it's just so ridiculous how little support we get. Anyway, I cannot wait to help you bring out the most confident, wonderful version of your teaching self in the classroom. You deserve to feel like you're in control of what you can control. You went to university and studied this career for bloody four to five years, only to come out thinking what do I do? So one hour of your time is a pretty good investment. I really hope to see you there in any capacity.

Speaker 1:

If you watch the replay brilliant um, come and drop me a message on Instagram or send me an email at claire at the dash, unteachablescom. Let me know what you thought. Uh, it would be wonderful, wonderful, wonderful to be able to support you in the way that you deserve to be supported. And with that I'm going to stop rambling and I hope you have a wonderful week and I will see you at the same time in the same place next week on the Unteachables podcast. Bye for now, lovely teacher.

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Claire English

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