It’s strange how words in teaching get to mean things rather different from what you would expect. One such is ‘behaviour’. There is even a forum on the Times Educational Supplement (tes) staffroom entitled behaviour.
Behaviour is what you do from the time you’re born until the time you die. I suppose lying there slowly decomposing after death is a kind of behaviour too, but I’ll leave that.
From a school’s point of view, the kind of behaviour required is of the reading, writing, experimenting, making things, exercising… variety, that accords with the teacher’s wishes. There are other behaviours that are acceptable too and some that are not. The problem is that the word ‘behaviour’ is simply too broad to be useful.
A more appropriate word, despite its more authoritarian connotations, is discipline, which rather more accurately defines the set of formal and informal rules that moderate some aspects ofbehaviour in a school. Discipline isn’t without its problems but is a better concept.
“Tell me about your attitude to behaviour,” or a variation on the theme, is a question that is always asked at interviews for a teaching job and too often, candidates fall into the trap of thinking it’s about a specific sort of behaviour.
Maybe the interviewers do want to know how you deal with dissent, but a more sensible approach is to deal with the broad theme of behaviour and the intention that the class will be on task, with learning and teaching happening most of the time. That’s the optimum situation and you should really try to plan your lessons to ensure that the kids don’t get bored and don’t have cause to find inappropriate things to do.
If things don’t go according to plan you have to look at discipline. How do I deal with the situation. There’s a well known line when you’re a performer. “If there’s unexpected laughter, check your flies.” You really must check what you are doing first. Are you the cause of the problem? That’s a hard one because the kids who misbehave do it for many teachers and it becomes such a habit that you can easily lose sight of the fact that the kid is struggling, bored, confused or otherwise driven to dissent and every time the teacher responds the real issue is ignored.
Discipline is about good behaviour too. I am sickened, having worked in mental health and teaching to see people recording behaviour, often on specially designed charts, and without fail it is always about what the person is doing wrong, never about the positive things they do. It seems so obvious that it is ignored that what they are doingright is what you want more of. What is it about what they are doing right that motivates them in this way and how can we get more of this behaviour and less of the other sort. The positives tell you what you want and that’s where you should be looking. You already know what you don’t want.
The last point is about consistency. If there are rules they are the same for everyone. “I’ll let you off this time because you’re usually good,” is giving a very wrong message to the kid who is often in trouble because he or she never gets let off. Be consistent even if it hurts.
To repeat the most important message, look for what is right and build on that. If you have to record behaviour, record all of it, with particular emphasis on the positive. The notion that you’re collecting evidence for a statement or a Ritalin prescription has to stop. You’re looking for ways to help the child succeed. It really does help if you are positive too.
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