More videos from Tom Bennett
Video transcript
right let’s dive straight in what’s the first tip you’ve got for us today the first tip is um i’m going to focus on behavior which is you know probably for the best my first tip is um about the new students and and for new student teachers when they come to school first thing is this use the school behavior policy now that doesn’t sound particularly ground shaking it doesn’t sound like it’s gonna set anyone’s boats on fire but it’s amazing the number of people in schools who don’t know what the behavioral policy is and don’t use it and and then they kind of wonder well you know i wish i wish i knew how to improve behavior here because the first thing the school is going to do is say to you did you use the school behavior policy right so the first thing to do is read the bloody thing now they’re not gripping i mean i’ve read about 500 they’re not gripping i assure you um there’s no shock twist or surprise earnings but this is what the school is expecting to do now if everybody does it then the impact of that is magnified and while specific rules do matter and there’s loads of rules i don’t agree with if the school’s got a rule on like no mobile phones do it i mean they say confiscate it do it and it makes a huge impact because you take all that energy from everyone in the school and it drills down like a laser into one spot and you can cut through steel and incidentally there’s a kind of there’s a follow-up tip from this i hope you don’t mind if i just sneak this thing which is that if you use the school behavior policy and again it sounds so simple and something obvious then if the school comes to you and says oh the behavior’s not very good in your lessons and you say i’m using the school behavior policy then you’re totally entitled to stay at the school what would you like me to do and i’ll tell you what the answer is often we’re not really sure we’d just like you to just be better and that then exposes if i may say so difficulties and weaknesses and flaws in the school system that they’re not able to support you because if somebody comes up to you and says we’ve noticed you’ve been setting a lot of school consequences or something like that some kind of dreary kafka s bureaucrat wants to try to drag your ass over the cold right you say oh really that’s interesting so you’re so you’re picking me up for using the school behavior policy what would you like me to do and they probably wouldn’t know what to do because they couldn’t manage a class themselves so anyway that’s my first top tip i like it tom just a couple of follow-up questions to this if that’s okay and the first is if you’re if you’re a student teacher or any teacher and you you read the behavior policy and you think i’m not so sure about this it’s a bit ropey this one would you still advise following it because it’s consistency is more important than kind of picking or choosing so a bad behavior policy followed by everybody’s better than a kind of piecemeal approach well this is basically that’s a really good point i think that i if i may say so i think it’s so important to remember that when you’re a teacher you’re a member of an institution it’s an institutional hierarchy you know it’s not a democracy you’re not a private tutor teaching the queen of sweden’s children you know you you work in a bloody school and and if you start thinking oh i don’t like that rule i don’t like it then then you’re undermining the rest of the school because the problem is what if somebody else doesn’t like a rule that you like right and my point for teachers is this i’ve never worked in a school where i liked every single one of the rules but you’ve got to put your back into it and the weird thing is is that the net result is usually much more peace cam order and structure now if the school rules are impossibly bad like for example you know you got one of these skills that says give children 15 warnings before you do anything right you know i’ve seen schools which are almost as bad as i’ve seen schools that use like seven or eight warnings before anything happens right which is basically i think the kids do as you please you know go you’ve got seven figures on you go and if this really is that bad then still stick to the system but try as much as possible with other members of staff to say to the leadership management look we’re using the system and this is the result because very often people who design these bone-headed systems are completely oblivious to the impact of their outcomes of these systems they just like them they just think they’re nice and they’ll never have to deal with the consequences of the problem themselves so make them aware of the consequences and try to kind of bring change from within and if the school’s really that bad just leave i said i say just leave it’s not that easy but make that your long-term old goal because schools that don’t know how to provide safe learning cultures for teachers don’t deserve to have any enough final question on this tip tom so obviously you’ve said that that kind of tweaking the behavior policies perhaps not a good idea to try and stick to it what about kind of adding your own elements to it in the sense that you’re following everything with the school behavior policy but there are extra things you want to put in place within your classroom whether it’s just you know an extra rule or an extra way that the kids respond is is that something you’d advise is kind of adding okay but kind of taken away from the policy not absolutely and you as long as what you want to do doesn’t doesn’t clash with school behavior politics then you add what you like you know and the beauty about this is that the school behavior policy it probably doesn’t micromanage people so for example you might have a school policy on you know walking on the left-hand side of the corridor or the right-hand side of the corridor but there won’t be any school behavior policy for an art teacher about you know where you know where to store your your masterpieces or how to distribute equipment at the beginning of the lesson that’s fine you create your own rules and norms and routines about those types of things as long as they could hear with the whole school systems fantastic