Running the Room: The Teacher's Guide to Behaviour

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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. For things to be seen as normal, they must be seen frequently, consistently and over a long period of time." We do not seek the happiness of the student - not directly. Rather, we aim to enrich their lives, minds and abilities in ways that will enable them to flourish independently of our direction, long after we cease to be part of their lives.'

If a behaviour occurs frequently, then it is vital that the student realises that multiple misdemeanours add up" This insight leads to another Principle: ‘behaviour is a curriculum.’ Creating a culture of good behaviour in a school is every bit as complicated and hard work as teaching the curriculum to get A grades in Mathematics and English. Yet, once again, few if any schools typically have a ‘behaviour curriculum.’ They’ll typically have some lists of explicit whole-school rules and routines, and then individual teachers will have some customs in their own classrooms. But where is the actual ‘curriculum?’ with its methodology for teaching and embedding good behaviour? 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. Currently he is the Director and founder of researchED, a grass-roots organisation that aims to make teachers research-literate and pseudo-science proof.We can find this demonstrated neatly. In 1969 the Montreal police went on strike in protest about pay and conditions. The next day, this was the way the television news described what happened: Since 2013 researchED has grown from a tweet to an international conference movement that so far has spanned three continents and six countries. He is also the series editor for the best-selling range of researchED books, and the editor of the quarterly researchED magazine. My first classes brayed and shouted at me and asked when the real teacher was turning up. It was awful, truly awful. A few schools later and it was still pretty bad. I used to go home every night, frustrated to the point of tears, and wonder, “Why can’t I do this?” What I should have been asking was, “Why has no one shown me how to do this?” Teacher authority is oppressive, because everyone is equally important. Everyone is important, it’s This aphorism is usually mangled, though, to mean “It’s wrong to tell children what to do.” But the teacher needs to be the authority in the room, for very good reasons we’ll explore throughout this book.

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). It’s all presented in a very amenable fashion. He is clear up right up front: “ None of this makes me any better than a good teacher in any school.” He also shares brilliant anecdotes from his time on the front line, like this one: 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 During the October school holidays, I read Running the Room: The Teacher’s Guide to Behaviour by Tom Bennett. As indicated in the title, the book is on managing student behaviour in the classroom. I’ve been teaching for nearly 13 years and I don’t think I have nailed classroom management (but I don’t think any teacher can say they have perfected any part of their practice, in any stage of their career). Classroom management is complex and this book offers lots of evidence-informed and practical strategies for all teachers, regardless of their experience and career stage, in a non-preachy way. The key messages I got from the book areHis point about how it really is a 'two school' experience is so correct it stings. Some mentors can even struggle to realise that and might not properly equip the trainee to teach a classroom with the non-model students and simply remark "you'll learn as you teach". While that's fine when the mentor is in the room and, through their reputation, the more disengaged pupils keep quiet, this doesn't work once that trainee teacher is left alone, without them to help. The trouble starts: talking over the teacher, the turning round, the throwing of paper planes, the refusal to work, getting out of seats. Only once a trainee teacher teaches without a mentor in the room can they truly realise how difficult teaching can be. And Bennett knows that and he's wrote a great book to help new teachers and perhaps even more experienced teachers too. In 2009 he was made a Teacher Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge University. From 2008-2016 he wrote a weekly column for the TES and TES online, and is the author of five books on teacher-training, behaviour management and educational research. In 2015 he was long listed for the GEMS Global Teacher Prize, and in that year was listed as one of the Huffington Post’s ‘Top Ten Global Educational Bloggers’. It’s equally crazy to walk into a classroom without planning for the most common problems that occur. But we do it. It reminds me of a complaint I sometimes hear from people who object to managing behavior at all. “I’m paid to teach,” they say, “not to manage their behavior.” Brother, are you in the wrong job.

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. all. I’m not a whore. I did this for the good of the community. And there’s nothing I want to plug Craig Barton.Children do not behave well by default, and nor do we. We, as adults, need to make sure that our conduct is of a high standard, otherwise how can we expect children to change their behavior? All this is accompanied by strategies, tips and solid advice, bringing together the best of what we know works. It should save teachers old or new from reinventing or rediscovering things, improving their lives and those of their pupils.