But  the fact is that adults don’t really do shock when kids behave badly. Even when the behaviour is worse than just bad – appalling and even criminal…  Behaviour that is so awful that not that long ago would have adults reeling with shock. They’d have been rightly shocked and appalled.

What replaces ‘shocked and appalled’ these days then?

Adults’ reaction is pathetic really.  I see abject acceptance, lethargy and frequent shoulder shrugging in a, ‘What can I do about it?’ sort of way.

I’m often asked why kids behave so badly when they know the behaviour’s wrong!  Well many of them are just trying to find out how much you’ll put up with before you start putting limits and boundaries in place… Testing the boundaries? No, they’re looking for the boundaries…  Not much to test when the boundaries don’t exist is there?

Adults really have to get a grip and show a bit of grit and determination…

I had an amazingly shocking conversation with someone in a school a few months ago. This person is lovely, but like so many adults these days, totally wet. What’s wet? Well, nice but soppy, soft, lacking in oomph and energy. An unquestionning willingness to accept the totally unacceptable behaviour that’s frequently thrown at them.

I’m hedging my bets a bit here and not giving this ‘nice person’ a gender?  The many people I meet in my work are great, really pleasant and well meaning and I know that they want to do their best.

But, nice as these people are their idea of doing their best for kids isn’t good enough…

They need to toughen up and show that they’re shocked by appalling behaviour. They’re allowing kids to get away with totally appalling behaviour  and it’s gone on for too long and it’s time to take action…

I really don’t want to cause offence but on the other hand people have to be shaken out out of their lethargy and learned helplessness when dealing with children in their care…

The head teacher in question faced massive behaviour problems in the school – disrespect, aggression, violence, poor learning standards. And it was getting worse each day.

the head teacher admitted that he didn’t know what the answer was…

‘Well, showing a bit of shock wouldn’t go amiss,’ I said quite firmly.

How he responded astounded me!

He asked me at what point should he show that he was displeased!!

It’s not often that I’m speechless, but to not have a clue when to stop accepting bad behaviour is beyond comprehension… I think he should be off to look for alternative employment!!

Action has to be taken before this bad behaviour situation becomes totally lost!

Adults have to stop making excuses and allowing kids to behave so badly. And stop making excuses for adults doing nothing about kids behaving badly!

All adults from parents to those in all areas of authority have to take the blame for abandoning kids to bad behaviour. It’s every adults’ duty to guide, discipline and manage behaviour. So stop reneging on this responsibility by making excuses and doing nothing. It just won’t do!

Adults have to learn what to do to manage behaviour.  It’s really not difficult.  A bit of effort is involved but it’s something everyone can do…

What’s the alternative?  Admit that you can’t be bothered to summon the effort or that you have no substance or strength of character?

If that’s the case you don’t deserve to be working with kids. Sorry, but that’s the truth!

I can help you learn to manage behaviour with ease.  Just download your copy of Behaviour Bible and you’ll soon be on your way…

Cheers for now.   Liz Marsden @  Behaviour Bible.

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My first teaching practice when on teacher training was the first time I’d been in a primary classroom since I’d been a primary school pupil…   I was surprised for two reasons…

Firstly, the classrooms were so small – well they were huge when I was little!

Secondly, the desks (tables by now) were arranged differently in the classroom. They were now set around in groups with half a dozen children sitting around tables facing each other – very different…

Hm, what’s going on here, I thought?

I never really found the answer to that question and I’ve never came even close to being convinced that anything about this arrangement was of any benefit to anyone…

I’ve often questioned who thought that it was a good idea in the first place and what they were thinking of. Even the most well behaved children will be tempted or even encouraged to chatter and not concentrate properly on their lessons when they’re sitting around in a group.

I have never set any of my classrooms in this way.  But, teachers I’ve spoken to appear to be averse to making any changes in their classroom layout.  They’re so reluctant to implement anything new even if an alternative plan can alleviate many of the  problem behaviours they encounter it their classrooms.

A frequent excuse given for the ‘sitting round tables’ arrangement is so the children can take part in group work…

What teachers don’t realise is that research indicates that over 90% of teachers who claim group work as the reason for their classroom layout never do genuine group work in their classes.  The research asserts that this layout only encourages negative behaviour such as chatter, unacceptable behaviour and lack of focus in class.

So, what works?  Call me old fashioned, but kids sitting in rows works just fine… Great in fact…

Research shows that primary pupils (particularly those with behaviour difficulties) work for twice as long in lessons when they’re sitting in rows rather than in groups around tables.

So, what did I see in a school that impressed me?

After noticing a decline in behaviour standards a teacher had taken advice and changed from a grouped class layout and set out her class in rows.

What was the result?

The change was dramatic and she couldn’t believe what had happened.   The class was far quieter, there was more focus and the children concentrated more. The children said that they liked having the temptation to behave badly removed from them.

Why not try it out – it really has an immediate impact.  Even the worst behaviour is managed with the strategies I teach, but the simple tactic of changing your classroom layout can be done so easily, without having to learn any new techniques.  It really couldn’t be easier…

More advice can be yours by downloading Behaviour Bible.  Make your class more relaxed with more learning taking place.

Cheers for now.  Liz Marsden @ Behaviour Bible.

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What’s happened (or not happened!) for the situation to become this bad?

As usual, he’s been diagnosed as having ADHD and various other behaviour syndromes – and of course it’s all his fault!

Well what else do you expect? That’s the way the world of children’s behaviour works these days. A great deal of ‘multi agency’ people sitting around tables at endless meetings contemplating and procrastinating and doing precisely nothing – well, nothing positive anyway.

Endless talking has gone on but in the meantime the child’s behaviour has got worse and worse. The adults persuade themselves that they’re doing all they can, and of course everything is being done correctly. So the conclusion has to be that there must be something drastically wrong with the child. There can’t be any other answer, can there?

What had this boy’s behaviour been like?

From the his start in school he’d been violent, aggressive and disruptive. The first day saw him running out of the classroom and along the top of the coat stands in the cloakrooms…

Hm, were warning bells ringing about a potential behaviour nightmare if action wasn’t taken? Well no, not really… They thought he’d settle down… That he’d be ok given time… That he’d grow out of it…

Oh dear, big mistake…

So, fast forward 6 years and they’re in a real mess. Plus they’ve given up… They’d done all they could and nothing worked…

Why had things not worked out?

Well, they told him what they want him to do but he took no notice. No surprise there! It’s adult action that’s needed – forget the words!   He really isn’t at all interested in what they want or what they have to say to him. It’s what the adults do that’s important… And I’m afraid they haven’t done anything that’s had any positive impact on his behaviour.

One and then two adults together tried to deal with his behaviour away from the main classroom – that failed because limits and boundaries weren’t set on his behaviour.

The adults actually think they’ve set proper limits and boundaries but unless these are seen to work by the child’s behaviour changing then the strategies simply haven’t worked. So, again, he hasn’t taken a blind bit of notice and carried on his own path of disruption and destruction.

This boy was taken to see a doctor who duly diagnosed behaviour syndromes and prescribed powerful drugs which made absolutely no difference to his behaviour.

Adults had taken action but to no avail because their actions have been wrong and they’re left with the chaos we have now…

What’s meant when I say that teachers ‘think they’ve put limits and boundaries in place to manage behaviour’? That’s true. Teachers are taking action but unless it’s done properly – and if you’re not getting the intended result then it’s not being done properly – you’ll just make the problems worse. Boundaries and limits have to be set at the right time and in the right way.

Let’s give you an example…

This particular boy, when he was in infant classes had proved himself in desperate need of adults to take control of his behaviour and put boundaries in place. On one occasion he picked up a pointed piece of maths equipment (one of those big set squares used for board demos) and rushed towards an adult, aiming it at her middle like a jouster on a horse!

And what did the teacher do? She didn’t move and let him shudder to a halt, the plastic very close to her, a pointed ‘weapon’ close to impaling her…

She said that she was sure he would stop rather than injure her!

I think she should consider herself lucky that he stopped in time and could judge the stopping distance…

There we have an example of setting limits and boundaries on behaviour – and the catastrophic outcome when it’s done incorrectly! And there were plenty of other examples. It was all on his terms – he was allowed to start behaving badly and just stop when he felt like it. No chance of his behaviour improving in this scenario…

Sorry, they’d got it all wrong.

To set limits and boundaries on children’s behaviour you set them at the point where the behaviour should stop and change. Don’t wait until too late otherwise you’re managing a crisis instead of preventing one and the child hasn’t a clue where the boundary should be… It’s all common sense really as are all the other aspects of managing children’s behaviour. Learn the strategies, use them consistently and they’re soon second nature – you’re doing it automatically before too long…

The secret is to act at the right time… Lots of problems are prevented that way…   If you’re not sure what to do then follow the link to access the advice in Behaviour Bible – I use my own advice every working day and get great results…

Cheers for now, Liz @ Behaviourbible.com

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I can’t believe some of the things I hear in schools. What’s happened this time?

I visited a school today to see one of my little guys — it keeps them on their toes when I just pop in unannounced. He was doing brilliantly — he’s the one that was shocked to the core last week to be brought to me on a ‘non-PRU’ morning due to his appalling behaviour the day before — he had to write about manners all morning. Well, learn the easy way or learn the hard way… He’s a great little kid though…

Another little story about him… because of his bad behaviour last week the school refused to take him on a school trip. A bit cruel? No, it isn’t cruel — he’s got to learn and he’d had enough warnings! To make it easier for school I said I’d accommodate him for the full day so they don’t have a staffing problem on the afternoon of the trip. Nice, aren’t I? ‘Yes’, is the answer to that question…

But do you know what he asked me? ‘When I come all day instead of going on the trip, do I have to write about manners all day?’ Oh bless him… ‘Yes,’ I said. NO, I didn’t – unless, of course he puts on a behaviour display that earned him the writing punishment last week — and he hasn’t so far, so he’ll have a regular day.

Sorry, I’ve digressed again.

After I’d left the little guy’s class I went to see one of the teachers and she was doing a maths assessment with a new Year 3 child (8 years old). I asked the child if he minded if I stayed and listened as I hadn’t seen the system they were using before. The teacher quietly told me the assessment was because he was struggling in maths classes and wasn’t achieving the level allegedly achieved in Year 2. The child was doing very well with the assessment — he was confident, was thinking well, self correcting… I wondered what the problem could be.

The result showed that the child could perform at the maths level attained in Year 2 — so no problem then? Well, yes there was a problem because the child wasn’t showing the same achievement in class. I asked if his hearing had been checked, was the class noisy, could he see the board? All these questions are important if a child is struggling.

What I was told astounded me!! I was told that the problem was probably that the pace of the lesson was too fast for him to keep up.

THE PACE WAS TOO FAST?

If a bright little boy like this one was struggling with the pace of the lesson, then heaven knows how the less able kids are managing — not very well, probably!

When I sensibly (I thought) suggested that maybe the pace should slow to suit the needs of the children so they had a chance of understanding what was going on, I was told that this wasn’t possible as Ofsted these days wanted, ‘pace, pace, pace’. So what about the kids? Aren’t they important?

How absolutely appalling — are schools misinterpreting what is wanted or expected by these inspectors?  Why aren’t they saying that considering the children are achieving well, the fact that they’re not working at break neck speed isn’t important? I think there’s practically no chance of that happening.  Schools seem terrified of standing up to these tyrants…

I’ll tell you what I do in my classes another time — the results I get are great… Children’s reading ages increasing by over 1 year in less than 6 months! Not bad, eh? Particularly when you think that all my kids are supposed to be out of control and unteachable!

What’s all this got to do with managing children’s behaviour? Because bad behaviour is often closely linked with children not having a clue what’s going on in class. They can’t do the work so they start messing around and misbehaving instead of working.

The positive thing was that this little boy doing the maths assessment hadn’t displayed behaviour problems — not yet anyway! No wonder children become so disenchanted with school and give up… Lessons must be a misery for so many kids these days — and the teachers are pretty miserable too.

Managing children’s behaviour effectively is about applying effective behaviour management techniques consistently, but without differentiating children’s work so they understand their lessons everything falls apart.

So, to my original question? Who’s most important in today’s classrooms? The kids or keeping the Inspectors happy? More food for thought..

Need to know how to manage behaviour in class?  Take a look at Behaviour Bible and access all the tips and strategies I use successfully every day…

Cheers for now, Liz @ Behaviour Bible

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It seems to be universal that kids’ behaviour in schools is getting worse. Not only in schools it seems.  Newspaper reports highlight cases of people being driven to their deaths by the behaviour of thuggish kids in their neighbourhoods.

There have been a number of  appalling cases and one where a mother killed herself and her child.  She’d been driven to despair by the behaviour of kids. In a further case a house was set on fire by a firework and a mother died after ensuring her son’s safety.

Are the newspapers sensationalising the events?   Even if they are, the fact remains that innocent people are dead, driven beyond their endurance by the actions of others and the lack of protection by the authorities.

Some media reports claim to ‘debunk the myth’ of worsening behaviour in schools in recent years.   They claim that only 2% of schools have unsatisfactory levels of behaviour!   Hard to believe!!

Unsurprisingly, there seems to be a conflict of opinion on this subject.   There are those claiming thugs are creating a culture of fear and despair resulting in death against those claiming that behaviour has improved in schools.

It’s recently been claimed that 70% of teachers want to leave their jobs due to the appalling behaviour they encounter on a daily basis.

In contrast the official slant is that a small number of pupils cause problems but of acts of violence are rare.   Wow, let’s all be thankful for that, eh?

Another official report claims there is a lack of evidence suggesting there is any more violence in schools than in the past and that most children’s behaviour in schools is good and getting better.

The contradictions appear to between between the people who I always call those at the ‘sharp end’  – the teachers – and  those sitting in a comfortable office shuffling papers around all day.

One has to ask if the officials have a vested interest in promoting the idea that behaviour in schools is improving.  They seem to be the same people who insist that exams aren’t getting any easier…  That’s also hard to believe!!

I suspect a large number of people would find the idea of improving behaviour to be ridiculous!  Locally there has been an increase in numbers of exclusions, including much younger children.  And what do kids generally get excluded for?  What else but bad behaviour?

So, what’s changed?

Some people claim children have changed… Can that be true? Well, if their behaviour is worse then I suppose you could say they may have changed. But children simply haven’t had time to evolve and change so much.

But what has changed though is adults’ attitude towards children.

Many adults don’t know how to effectively discipline or manage children’s behaviour.   Some adults don’t even believe they have the responsibility or right to do so.  They tolerate  increasingly unacceptable behaviour and don’t know what to do to change things.   They have no idea what they’re ‘allowed’ to do.

Bad behaviour is increasingly being accepted as normal and that’s so damaging for children and very stressful for adults.

Many adults say they are frightened, thinking they’re not ‘allowed’ to discipline or correct children’s behaviour. If they only realised it, teachers already have a wide range of powers to manage pupil behaviour in and out of the classroom.

But, even though they have the right to discipline children, what’s the use of these rights if teachers don’t know how to manage children’s behaviour?

A further  complication is the lack of appropriate consequences for bad behaviour.

Oh dear, that last sentence is full of politically correct jargon!  The education system is full of such idiotic language. That’s pretty  much the same in most areas of modern life.  Messages that are soft on truth and full of euphemisms!

What should the sentence say?

Forget the ‘lack of appropriate consequences for bad behaviour’…   Bad behaviour should be punished… Now that really is controversial!

Maybe if there was punishment for bad behaviour then the situation would actually improve, and families could live with peace of mind, without being tormented by thugs.  If behaviour is unacceptable there should be punishment inflicted that reinforces the message that the behaviour is unacceptable and shouldn’t be repeated.   What a change from making endless excuses nothing being done about appalling behaviour.

Things can change…  You can learn how to manage children’s behaviour and it really isn’t difficult.   There are basic rules to successful behaviour management and when you know these, practise them and then use them consistently you’ll see improvements.

Believe that you can do it. We owe it to kids.  Download your copy of Behaviour Bible and access the behaviour management strategies that I use every day with great success…

Cheers for now, Liz Marsden @ Behaviour Bible

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