Running the Room: The Teacher's Guide to Behaviour

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In my first ten or so years in education, I became increasingly convinced of what I did *NOT* want to see regarding classroom culture / management. I had felt (and still do) that too much emphasis is placed on controlling students, and that the school-to-prison-pipeline is deeply problematic. They need to run the room… If the teacher does not run it, the students will, because power abhors a vacuum. And if you permit students to do as they please, then ask how you would have behaved in such circumstances as a child?”

Running the room risks becoming a lost art in many schools. But the good news is that there is a body of knowledge teachers can learn, and strategies teachers can learn how to apply. There are things that tend to work well with some children, and strategies that work better with others. There are learnable micro-behaviors that are easy to practice once demonstrated, but hard to discover by oneself. To quote Dylan Wiliam, “Everything works somewhere, and nothing works everywhere.” Discerning the when and the where of effective strategies is every teacher’s task. When managing behavior, we can say with reasonable confidence that some things tend to work more reliably than some other strategies, and some things work rarely, if ever. Below are some of the routines for my Year 7 class, which I have further adjusted after reading the book, such as specifying the number of minutes that students must arrive to class after the bell (so there are no misunderstandings). Like all teachers, I’ve kept students in for detentions, called parents for misbehaviours and placed students on behaviour contracts. These things are bound to happen. Running the Room recommends planning and scripting how you will do these things BEFORE you have to do them. The purpose is to have a basic scaffold of what you are going to say and how you will respond in these situations. If you are an early career teacher, you can try role playing and practising what you are going to say to students/parents with a more experienced teacher. What you don’t do is hope fires don’t happen, and only think about how to respond when your smoke alarm is shrieking murder at you. The kind of caution that drives health and safety regulations is amongst the dullest but most necessary of human instincts, and as sure an indicator of social and civil flourishing as the invention of language. Be organised and plan ahead so that it is easy for students to behave and hard for them to misbehave.

Running the room

Create a class culture where it is the norm for students to behave in a way that lets them and others learn. Some people have ‘got it’ – the magic touch with It’s true that some have better interpersonal skills than others, but subscribing too much to this leads us to the sin of essentialism – that teaching is an innate gift rather than something that can be learned.

In many ways, there is nothing revolutionary here. What is important is the emphasis on behaviour needing to be taught, not told. Bennett maintains this is a systematic process like any other transference and retention of knowledge. He makes the allegedly intangible, tangible; asserting (correctly, in my opinion) that this approach takes the guesswork out of behaviour management and facilitates better learning for all. New teachers are far too often left to discover independently how to run the room, which leads inevitably to exhaustion and disillusion – and ultimately, poor retention of teaching personnel. Bennett (2020) mentions very informative and interesting methods for different types of behaviors and how a teacher should respond. For example, he states that there are specific steps or measures a teacher should take when bad behavior occurs. A few listed in the book is how to prevent negative behavior first, focusing on positive behavior as redirecting, and the removal strategy. Bennett (2020) states that one misbehavior occurs, it is imperative to be prepared for an intervention.It wasn’t the world’s funniest joke even then, but the humor rested on the then well-understood premise that New York was a violent and often dangerous city. At the time, it was famous for its muggings and inner-city unrest. The “gag” was that New Yorkers were legendarily brittle and cynical. Some common behaviour myths' include: 'Some people have got it' ('the sin of essentialism - that teaching is an innate gift rather than something can be learned') and 'Kids need love, not boundaries' ('They need both. Boundaries without love is tyranny but love without boundaries is indulgence'). Good behaviour is the beginning of great learning. All children deserve classrooms that are calm, safe spaces where everyone is treated with dignity. Creating that space is one of the most important things a teacher needs to be able to do. But all too often teachers begin their careers with the bare minimum of training – or worse, none. How students behave, socially and academically, dictates whether or not they will succeed or struggle in school. Every child comes to the classroom with different skills, habits, values and expectations of what to do. There’s no point just telling a child to behave; behaviour must be taught. Behaviour is a curriculum. This simple truth is the beginning of creating a classroom culture where everyone flourishes, pupils and staff. If a behaviour occurs frequently, then it is vital that the student realises that multiple misdemeanours add up" Well, it gives me great pleasure to welcome Mr. Tom Bennett to the tips for teachers podcast. Hello, Tom. How are you?

While we [teachers] may be expert behavers, new teachers are novices at running the room. No wonder we make so many mistakes.' Overall, this is a very readable book with language which makes it accessible to teachers, governors and anyone interested in education. Throughout, the concept of firefighting is used to demonstrate the need to make behaviour strategies preventative – to be proactive rather than reactive when it comes to poor behaviour. The unifying thread of the text is that prevention is better than cure – that “a fence at the top of a cliff is preferable to an ambulance at the bottom”.

Students need to know that if they take a risk and try in lessons, they won't be punished socially by the teacher or their peers. They need to feel that trying will be rewarded rather than stigmatised, no matter how well they do.

In my earlier years of teaching, I had reflection sheets for students to complete when they are in detention to facilitate a conversation to support them to choose more appropriate behaviours in the future. I have no idea why I stopped using these sheets (perhaps because as I became more experienced, the number of detentions I’ve had to give has decreased), but I have now revamped them and them printed and ready to be used. I’ve also decided to let my students know how detentions will be operated so we have a clear understanding before they happen. 3. Have a removal strategy in place before you need it

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Sadly, many mistaken approaches are explicitly taught to teachers at the beginning of their careers. For example, I was told that children will behave well if you let them follow their interests, if you make the lessons engaging enough, and if you permit them to express themselves. There is a commonly held view that children naturally want to learn, are innately inclined to learn, and it is the unnatural classroom model that creates friction, conflict and misbehavior as much as anything else. In this view, schools and teachers themselves are responsible for most bad behavior.