The black dot of behaviour...
Behaviour management - what does it make you think about?
Adults or children? Good or bad? Preventative or reactive? This was the first question of our first behaviour management session today. The reality is that the term in itself has quite negative connotations. When I hear the word behaviour management my first thought is controlling the unruly, 'naughty' children. Before today I would never have thought of it in a positive light but...
The session today highlighted what, as teachers we are able to control - or not control as the case may be. The reality is that we actually can do very little to control behaviour. What we can do is recognise behaviour patterns, trigger points etc and try to steer the behaviour and mould it to our expectations.
As a parent I am very familiar with how situations can escalate very quickly, and as a parent I acknowledge that I sometimes contribute to that escalation by emotional responses to my children's actions and reactions.
The illustration below is one of the slides from today's seminar.
This graph illustrates a typical incident, though not all points will always be identifiable. For instance, some children could go from trigger to peak in one giant leap. However the key thing to realise here is that intervention is possible at all phases - and the peak will be reached much quicker if the adult in the room i.e. the teacher, reacts emotionally which leads to instinctual and irrational actions.
There was a wealth of information shared with us today, but the key things that I have gleaned from these sessions are:
Individuals - remember the child is an individual and must be treated as such, a strategy used for one child may not work for another
Consistency, consistency, consistency and fairness -children have a very keen sense of justice and will pick up instantly on when there is any sense of favouritism or inequality
Choice - children have very little control in their lives, often the only control they have is whether they behave or not. Also let children contribute to their own class rules - they are the ones that have to adhere to them.
Realistic expectations - be aware of what children will/wont be able to do at their age or development stage. Is it reasonable to ask reception children to sit in silence, without fidgeting for an hour? I know a lot of adults that would struggle with that!
Positivity - ensure the positive behaviour is reinforce and try to use language that communicates that you have confidence that children can meet your expectations. And finally;
Lead by example - you cannot tell children they must exhibit certain behaviours, but do the exact opposite yourself. For instance insisting children do not talk whilst waiting for assembly to start, but chatting in the corner with colleagues. Or shouting, at the top of your voice "BE QUIET!" - making more noise than the children!
It is very easy with poor behaviour to focus only on what is wrong, but very often that is only a very small part of the picture. Rogers (2007) in Behaviour Management: a whole school approach referred to behaviour in this very way. But as educators we need to be able to see the bigger picture - are they playing up because they are hungry? Bored? Scared? Anxious? Children exhibit behaviours for many reasons but if we only focus on the top layer we may never be able to reach the child enough to help.
SMART Target: utilise more non-voice instructional cues such as sound signals, claps or give me five during volunteer placements.