Title: It’s Never Just About The Behaviour: A holistic approach to classroom behaviour management

Author: Claire English

Completed: Jan 2025 (Full list of books)

Overview: This book did a good job articulating many of the concepts that I’ve been thinking but not always putting into words about effective teaching and classroom management. It’s strange to me how long teachers, schools, and society have depended on punishment as a way to correct behavior despite so many studies showing that it is ineffective at best or counterproductive at worst. A common question from teachers is something along the lines of, “If I can’t give them detention, how am I supposed to get them to pay attention to me?” The approaches in this book help teachers get to the stage where they no longer feel the need to fall back on this outdated philosophy. Although most of this information is already available in most schools (at least in the Renton-Seattle area), if you talk to the right people, this did a good job of condensing it into a fairly short book. Each chapter also offered suggested podcast or other media that goes over the same content, in case someone wants to look at it another way.

Highlights:

• Seven pillars: be curious, calm, compassionate, consistent, clear, challenging, and connected
• Nobody behaved for behavior’s sake. There’s no action that is without purpose, a goal, some kind of driving force
• No classroom management strategy will ever cancel out a dysregulated teacher
• How we move around the room in a lesson physically and energetically models the expectations we have for our students
• Golden Rule 1: Behavior talks, you just need to know how to listen
• Golden Rule 2: Be what you want to see
• Golden Rule 3: Happy students are rarely disengaged and destructive students
• Golden Rule 4: Be consistent, minimize the unknown
• Golden Rule 5: If you expect it, you must explain it
• Golden Rule 6: If you set the bar low, that’s exactly where they’ll go
• Golden Rule 7: When building connections with students, the small things are the big things
• The core of most behavior management systems is the idea that punishment will deter future misbehavior; however, studies show that ‘rather than reducing the likelihood of disruption, school suspension in general appears to predict higher future rates of misbehavior and suspension among those students who are suspended’
• If we want to have understanding, growth, reflection, and real accountability after disruptive behaviors, we must understand that the pedagogical journey to the consequence matters far more than the consequence itself
• Consistent classrooms calm students: greet then at the door by name, have a seating chart so they know where they’re expected to be every day, start with a learning map on the board so students know what they’re learning that day and how, have a starter activity for them as begin as soon as they enter the classroom that is achievable by all students and related to the day’s content, consistent nonverbals to bring attention back to you when needed
• Be Clear: Use visuals to should students how to do the work and provide succinct success criteria so they know when they succeed
• Exit tickets show for a quick check of understanding and also demonstrate to students that opting out of learning is not an option. You hold higher expectations for them
• Increasing felt safety in the classroom reduces dysregulated behaviors