The Unteachables Podcast

#154: How to build back confidence and credibility after a tough year with behaviour [+ whats coming in 2026]

• Claire English • Season 8 • Episode 153

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Feeling like last year’s behaviour battles stole your joy? Let’s change the energy at the door. We kick off the new season with a grounded, practical roadmap to reset expectations, reclaim credibility, and build calm with routines that do the heavy lifting—even if you’re returning to the same challenging group.

In this episode, I’m giving you a front seat to:

  • What to do when you’re dreading going back to school after a chaotic year
  • Why co-disregulation is real—and how to avoid it
  • How to reset your credibility and teaching presence with students who’ve seen you struggle
  • The difference between being approachable vs credible (and why it matters)
  • Why routines do the heavy lifting for classroom management
  • How to press "reset" without shame or defensiveness—yes, even mid-year!

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SPEAKER_00:

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 dancers, we're teachers. So listen in as I walk you through the game-changing strategies and I've seen the things that we can actually do in 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. Well, hello there. Welcome to the Unteachables Podcast for 2026. I am so excited to be back. I actually need to start with an apology because I just I said last episode, ah, so next episode's gonna be the last one for the year. And then I just ghosted my podcast. Not intentionally. I had an episode recorded, but I just forgot to schedule it because the whole festive period has been absolute carnage. I underestimated all that I bit off. Um I have my daughter's third birthday right after Christmas, so and I've got like issues with needing to make sure that it's like as maybe it's not a me thing, maybe it's a whole parent thing, but I just felt really anxious, like I just need to make it really special. And so I was planning her birthday party and just everything just got on top of me. So silly me recorded the podcast episode, but I forgot to actually press the schedule button. And now that episode is just going to go into the ether because it'd be really weird to record um to release that now because it speaks about the end of 2025. Alas, we are back. I am very excited to be here. I hope that you all had a really, really nice break. I've actually intentionally waited a little bit longer to bring the podcast back. Mainly because I wanted, number one, I don't think anyone wants to hear from me when it's the holidays. Like I said that on Instagram the other day. I'm like, actually, you know what? I'm not gonna keep pushing forward for the sake of the algorithm and because I'm afraid that Instagram will like, you know, put me on their naughty list because I haven't posted in a while. Because teachers, you actually probably don't want to hear from me when you're having a break as well. So I thought, you know what, I'm just gonna like take a step back from Instagram, the podcast, and just give everybody a bit of breathing space for me talking about classroom management all the time, just so you can not have that pop up. Um either way, I'm back now, so you don't have to listen. You can listen, you can come along for the ride this year. And I have a lot planned for the year ahead. Speaking of the year ahead, each month on the podcast this year, I'm going to have a loose theme that will just help us do a bit of a deep dive into certain topics. For example, this month is back to school for all of my friends in the antipodes who are going back to school for a new school year. Uh, if you are in the northern hemisphere and you're going back into the same school year, you're already in mid-year, of course, these things are going to be really relevant when you go back to school in uh June, July, August, September, whenever you go back to school around uh that mark. But I'm sure it'll still be relevant. I'm sure it'll still be interesting for you. There are certain things that I talk about that are useful year-round. These themes also coincide with my behavior club training schedule, where I'll be then doing a comprehensive deep dive into each of those topics with the resources to support it and all of those things. That's just to go and like it's just gonna help me streamline things in my brain and make sure that everything I'm doing is really focusing on one specific thing. This year I have got a lot going on with writing the book. I've got a lot going on with well, I was gonna say this in a second, but another exciting thing that's happening this year is I've just signed on to be the podcast partner for EduTech 2026. And that might not mean something to some people, but this is huge because EduTech is the biggest education conference in the Southern Hemisphere. So watch for more news on that. I am so honored and I'm so excited to be able to jump on with the EduTech team to uh like produce the podcast. It's going to be like I'm gonna be at a big stall there right next to the main stage. I'm going to be interviewing keynote speakers. It's going to be so exciting and it's going to be something that is coming onto the podcast around the June time period. So uh keep your ears out for that. 2026 is also going to be a huge year if you're looking to work with me and get me to be in your corner and help with your classroom management and work with you on, you know, a more personal basis. Because in the age of AI, I have been so burnt out by AI content. I've been so disillusioned by it. Like logging onto Instagram and seeing the same thing kind of reiterated in the same kind of way. Like, you know, you just can tell when copy from people is written by AI. It has the same flavor, it has the same like phrasy, like, you know, phraseology. But I feel like in this climate with AI, with people taking the route of doing a lot with AI, no judgment, by the way. I use AI to support me with certain things, but I don't let her write my content for me because I know that it is so important to focus on authenticity and connection. Those are two huge words for me this year. Connection is going to drive everything that I do. So I'm really leaning into that as much as possible. And I am actually going to run two live cohorts of my classroom management lab course. This is my signature course. It is incredible. It is so amazing. Usually I would kind of drip feed that content over the eight weeks. I'll sit there, I'll record it, I'll make it pretty polished, and then I'll release it to anybody who's in that course. However, this year I'm like, you know, stuff being overly polished and worrying about the editing and all of that because I think that we're all just yearning for that connection. So I'll be showing up, doing those eight weeks live with you. You can follow that along. Um, and I'll do two cohorts of that this year. So that is the first thing that's going to change about the support that I'm providing. Uh, of course, on the behavior club front, we are just going full steam ahead with a packed calendar of just incredible training, incredible resources, everything that is going to help my behavior clubbers. If you're in the behavior club, massive shout-out to you. Uh, anything that's going to just lighten the load. So, for example, this month I'm doing a back to school focus on the podcast, but it's also a back to school focus inside of the club. And for that focus area, I've literally just done a three-day step-by-step of what you should do when you go back to school. And I've just linked to every single resource that you could possibly need. So any behavior club art, go into the behavior club, go to current month, and you'll be able to follow that roadmap, that calendar, click on the resources, print straight away. It is just the path of least resistance to get you to having that first week be super streamlined and make it so you're not getting to week six and the behavior will start to fall off and you're wondering why. So that is something that's happening inside of the Behavior Club. And finally, after a seven-minute podcast news update on today's episode, we're going to be talking a bit about going back to school. If you are going back to school for the 2026 school year, so if you are one of my Australian Kiwi or any other Southern Hemisphere dweller, um, I am running my back to school boot camp on Wednesday the 21st of this month, which I think is next Wednesday. This is usually something that is exclusive to behavior club members, but I've taken that one course and I've plonked it in separately just for you to be able to do. If you are going back to school and you just want that one piece of the pie, um, I'm gonna run this session live for anybody out there who wants just support in this season, but you're not necessarily uh 100% you know keen to come into the behavior club just yet. You're not sure what it's all about, or you're not sure if you want to make that investment over a period of time. If you just want to do that back to school program, running it live next week, just head to the com forward slash back to school boot camp. But the behavior club's also open in January, so I've opened it up today, and you can also come in and do all of that, get all the resources, have all of those goodies immediately if you want that as well. So you can just head to instead the unteachables.com forward slash TBC for the Behavior Club. Uh, and that is everything I needed to talk about when it came to 2026. Well, I think there's a lot more, but that's all I can think about at the top of my head. So without further ado, why don't we crack into the actual podcast, which is what to do if last year was an absolute write-off for behavior, and you're just feeling super anxious and horrible thinking about stepping into the classroom again, and you're getting in your own head, and you feel like you've lost credibility with the students you're about to teach or go back into the room with, you feel like you've got, you know, a lack of confidence in your own leadership standing up in the front of the room. This episode is going to be for you because I remember that feeling so vividly. I remember one year I had got my class list. I think we got the class list very late at my first school because there was just so many moving parts. So I got my class list probably about a week before we went back. And one of the classes that I was assigned was a year nine class. And that year nine class had a bunch of students that I had taught the year before. But this group of students were so tough, but they really knew how to push my buttons. They knew how to, you know, feed off each other and the like the cheeky responses and just the public responses to me. And I was always shrinking into myself with this class because I didn't know how to address those behaviors. And I felt like they had the upper hand, they had the power in the room. And I immediately spiraled, of course, because I felt like before I'd even been able to press that reset button and get back into the classroom for a fresh year, you know, trying again with classroom management, trying from the drawing board, you know, having a fresh a clean slate with other students, I felt like I'd already lost my credibility. So there was no way that I could get that back. It was a horrible feeling, like this feeling of impending dread and doom, going, well, I just what's the point? Like I can't even start afresh with this class. So I walked into that year and things felt horrible. I just shrunk into myself. I didn't know how to re-establish myself as a credible leader in that room. I actually didn't know that there was a way to re-establish myself as that credible leader. So here is what I wish I knew back then. And here's what I would do if my if I had my time over again. If I went back to that version of myself going into that year nine class with all of those students who I felt like I'd already lost my leadership and credibility with, here is what I would do differently. First of all, you are the captain of your ship. Just that one mindset shift can really, really help. You can change the way you lead your class, even if you're halfway through the school year right now and you're not going into a new school year. Even if you're going back with, or you're going back tomorrow with the same class that you taught yesterday or today. Like you can still do things differently and lead that ship down a different course. I don't know. I'm not good with an autical references. Anyway, you can change course with your ship. I've just been I've been listening to the podcast Adrift. So um, yeah, probably not the best, not the best metaphor if you haven't listened to Adrift. It's really, really good. Anyway, point is you are the captain of the ship and you can steer that boat steer in any direction that you want. At any point you can change it. And you can do this through co-regulation and your teaching presence and being very self-aware of your own stress response and the way the behaviors are triggering you. What really helps is reminding ourselves that we can't control the behavior of other people. We can never control another human being. Of course, the things that we do in the classroom, the way that we show up, our teacher presence, the routines, the lesson itself, all of those things, of course, will influence the behavior of the room. But at the end of the day, we can't control another human being ever. We can only control ourselves. And it's really helpful to remember that just as we can co-regulate with our students, uh, and you know, through our own regulation and through the way that we're showing up, just as easily our students can bring us into their chaos through co-disregulation. What this means on a very practical level is that we need to be showing up into that classroom as our most credible teaching self, our most regulated teaching self. That is one really significant way that we can take that. Do chips even have a steering wheel? Yeah, I think they do. You can get that steering wheel and just turn it in the other direction when you're walking in and you're embodying a credible teaching presence. So focusing on slowing down, slowing down and being really intentional with your movements, uh, your pacing of your words that you're using in the classroom, your teacher instructions, really thinking about the tone, the volume, uh, you know, not flipping around in the classroom from place to place, but really practicing that stillness. Um, those are the kind of things that will help you to show up as your most credible teaching self. The opposite of credible is approachable, and that doesn't mean that either one of those is bad, but being approachable is being more relaxed in your movements, you've got different intonation, you are faster paced, you're speaking differently, like you're speaking, you know, like, hey guys, how are we going? Like, how is everybody today? And even when we're trying to correct behavior in that way, come on, everybody, like we're talking a lot, we're raising our voice. That is being in our approachable, more relaxed, even when we're not feeling relaxed. It is our approachable body language, our our teacher presence is more approachable. By the way, that is from Michael Grinder, not me. I wish I came up with the terms approachable and credible. That is Michael Grinder and his envoy. I do have some really great podcast episodes about that concept of the credible and the approachable a little bit more, by the way. If you want to go and listen to those, I will uh link it in the show notes. Okay, so that's the first thing. Really trying to focus on showing up as our most credible teaching self because when we're presenting ourselves in that way, we are immediately shifting the energy in the room. And that is practically how we co-regulate with our students. That does come up from a place of us regulating ourselves, but that is what it looks like in action. The second thing that we can do on a really practical level is reset class norms and expectations. So if you are going into a class that you've been teaching already because you're not at the start of a new school year, it's actually okay to go in and say, hey class, like things aren't working. The way that we're doing things in here, it's it's not working for us. And we're going to be pressing the reset button and we're going to be doing things differently. It is okay to say that. It is okay to re-establish those class norms and expectations halfway through. If you are going into a new school year and you are teaching students who you have taught before, when you are going through the process of setting your expectations, you can be really candid and say, I've taught some of you before, and we had a bit of a tough year. Things are going to be different this year. We're going to be doing things differently. You're going to smash it with your learning. Like we are going to be focused. We're going to be doing this. You know, you can say that candidly. Like I have on multiple occasions, like just be really open, honest, and authentic with your class. Um, really focusing on things like entry routines, transition routines, early finisher routines, exit routines. Because when it comes to expectations, expectation setting doesn't just mean, you know, really explicitly saying these are the expectations. Setting expectations and reinforcing expectations is also done every single day in every single moment, nonverbally. All of those routines nonverbally hold the room and again and again and again communicate that this is what you expect. And it communicates I am the credible leader in this room. These also give you a massive boost in confidence because they help run the room for you. Let me give you an example, right? So you have decided to, because your class is, you know, really struggling at the start of the lesson. You feel like the energy from the outside in is just chaotic. They aren't able to get settled, like they walk in, they put their bags down and they're chatting to each other, they're not getting unpacked. It takes ages to get them to listen to you. And he's standing up the front of the room. If that is you, you need a solid entry routine, an entry routine that is saying to every single student, I expect when you get to this class, you're going to be coming in quietly, sitting down, getting your pen out, and completing a five-minute pen to paper activity while I, you know, do attendance or whatever you want to be saying in that first five minutes. A solid entry routine can be absolutely gold for that, like an absolute game changer. And the way you run that really, really matters. And I had actually someone come into the behavior club and ask me this question the other day, which was I have a starter activity, but I still feel like they're faffing about and they're not getting started on it. So, what do I do here? I would always, with that first five minutes, the path of least resistance, like take away any pain points for our students to just get started. So I've had classes in the past before where I have been able to say, here's your starter activity when they get to the door. So I've lined them up at the door and I've sent them in one by one, created that invisible barrier. I've got a lot of podcast episodes about um entry routines as well, if you want to scroll back and have a look. But I've created that invisible barrier where I'm getting students to go in and sit down, I'm handing them a paper starter activity. And I've had classes where that still goes to crap when they sit down in their seats because they're rummaging through their bags, they don't have pens. Usually, if it's a class that has a lot of complex needs, um, schools that have a lot of, you know, challenges in terms of the context, maybe we're in a low socioeconomic area where they don't have access to as many, you know, things as other schools might. So I have thought, okay, how am I going to get them from point A to point B? And point B being them sitting there calmly completing their do not. Now, their starter activity without all of that faffing. So it's like, okay, let me put that starter activity on their desk or hand it out at the start of the lesson as they're walking through that door and get things set up. I've got a starter activity on their desk, a pen on their desk, I've got the timer up on the board. There's no barrier there for them to get started. And I make it really clear when you walk in here, don't even touch your bag. Like put your bag on the back of your chair or on the floor or at the back of the room, wherever you get them to put their bags and get started. Like you've got a pen, you've got the starter activity there. Let's get started. All of those little nuanced things, all of that pedagogical stuff, which I think is one of the greatest art forms in the universe, without getting too nerdy about it, all of that stuff helps us to communicate our expectations in the everyday, like every day, day after day. What that says to students is number one, I'm going to support you to meet my expectations because you've got the pen there, you've got the piece of paper there, that do now starter activity that is going to be extremely doable for every single student. There's no barrier to entry there. It doesn't hinge on them having prior knowledge. If it does, there's something there to support them to be able to complete that. So it's saying that I expect you to come in, I expect you to do that in a way that is, you know, appropriate to learning. I am going to expect you to complete that starter task. You've got a pen there. So we're really making sure that that's embedded into the day-to-day. That will run the room for you, and that is going to take such a huge load off in that first five minutes. And that is the same for transition routines, early finisher routines, exit routines, all of the routines that you use in the day-to-day. If you pack your lesson full of the right routines, it is such a game changer because then the learning fits in around that and it's so supportive and holds the class. And again, it just communicates all of the expectations we have for their behavior, their engagement, all of it, right? One final thing I want you to leave with is just the understanding that it's okay to not get it all right in that first week back. It is such a journey. If you have taught students who have been challenging in the past, it's likely they'll be challenging again. Like behaviors aren't just magically going to disappear because you're starting a new year, right? There are going to be challenges. They clearly are struggling with their dysregulation, with their learning, whatever it is that they've been struggling with the previous year, they probably will struggle with it again. What we're trying to do is remove barriers for them to access the learning and for us to make sure we're doing what we can to embed those routines. Honestly, little by little, you're making changes. Like if you start to embed these routines, if you start to practice your credible teaching presence, if you start to really be aware of your own regulation and your body and the way that you're showing up in that classroom, I'm telling you, little by little, you will be an absolute freaking pro at classroom management if you keep doing that. It is inevitable. And like that is the one thing I say to people like you might not be where you want to be now with classroom management, but I'm telling you, keep doing it, keep being reflective, keep making those small tweaks, keep trying new things. And it is absolutely inevitable that you'll be an absolute freaking pro at classroom management. Take that into 2026. Do you think that I was magically in a position to be able to sit here on this podcast supporting you through these things? No. I had incredible mentors who sat in front of me and said, Hey, Claire, do you know what an entry routine is? Do you know how to transition from whole class learning into independent learning, like, you know, group work to this, you know, without things falling apart. Like I have had to little by little learn over many, many, many years. So please don't feel disheartened if you're trying something and it's not working. It's about putting those reps in. It is a journey. Keep going. I want you to absolutely feel so confident and smash your classroom management, and that will happen. I promise you. Again, if you want to come in and do that back to school boot camp, head over to the unteachables.com forward slash back to school boot camp. That is the dashunteachables.com forward slash back to school boot camp. And I will be walking you through exactly how I put all of those so many little classroom management pieces together in the first three lessons of the year, like nailing down routines, the rapport building, the expectation setting, balancing those. Okay, well, I don't want to come across as like really harsh and, you know, mean and strict and all those kind of things, but I also need to set expectations and boundaries and I need to like balance that. I'll show you how to balance that and do it in the right order. This is your step-by-step roadmap. I have timed this back to school session for us, Aussies and Kiwis, and anybody else down under who starts their school year, end of Jan, early February. If you are in the US, UK, Europe, anywhere else in the sort in the northern hemisphere, and you're thinking, I would have loved this in back to school season. I will be running this again when you go back to school in June and August time. So don't worry, I have got you on that. But I do hope to see anybody there who is going back to school and would love this support just to feel much more confident going in, have the resources, all the things you need. Either way, whether you're there or not, I am so excited to be back for another year of the Unteachables podcast. We're going into our third year of the podcast, I believe. I think it's three years. Actually, no, my daughter's three years old, and I started it when I was pregnant. So, yes, we are into our third year now, and it is the one part of the Unteachables that lights me up the most. Just getting on the microphone and being able to speak through some big things and try to simplify it so you can go into your classroom and just make the changes and implement some practical stuff. Like that's what's missing. If that sounds like a plan this year, make sure please do me a favor and just hit that follow button on your podcast app. That way, every single episode is going to be automatically downloaded and packaged and delivered to you for your commute to work. And then let's just make incredible changes together this year. I will catch you on the next episode. Until then, keep sprinkling that classroom management magic all over the place. Bye for now, lovely teacher.

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Claire English

Host