Incredible Years Programme- session 1

This term I began a course called Incredible Years. It's a course which helps teachers develop positive relationships and behaviour management strategies for those students, who putting it lightly...like to push the boundaries. I feel very privileged to be taking part, especially so early on in my career. Already I know that I'll be gaining some invaluable insight, which will set me up for the rest of my teaching career. 

The course is based on the research of Carolyn Webster who wrote a book called Incredible Teachers. In a nutshell, she discusses nurturing the social and emotional competence of students, so we can then focus on developing their academic competence. 

Being fresh off the university boat, many of the initial concepts are familiar. Encouraging meaningful and trusting relationships; providing a safe and nurturing classroom environment; and developing clear boundaries, rules and consequences etc. What I love about the book, is it is sectioned into many small suggestions and ideas- which can be so useful and easy to apply in a classroom.

Much of the initial chapters discusses the type and nature of the commands we give as teachers. Very often we use modal verbs e.g. "could you please close the window", "would you stop doing that" etc. In these cases, the teacher does not mean them as a question, however that is exactly how they come across. The issue is "the subtle distinction between a request and command. A request implies that the student has the option of choosing whether or not to do what is requested" (p. 111). As Carolyn states, "there are times when a teacher gives a student a choice between two different options or even a choice about whether or not to comply. At these times a student has real options and sometimes may legitimately refuse a teachers request" (p. 119). 

Further, we often give a command by highlighting the negative behaviour we'd like to stop, e.g "Please don't yell out". Research has shown, that highlighting the undesired behaviour can actually increase the chance of that behaviour occurring as the subject is visualising the last command given. Instead, we can frame our commands by highlighting the desired behaviour i.e. put your hand up if you'd like to say something. 

Often we hear that our feedback needs to be specific. Don't just tell them their writing was good, specifically feedforward what was good and what a next step could be. It is no different with our commands. Commands like, "Show me you are ready", could quickly be replaced with "I will know you are ready when your eyes are on me and your mouth is closed". In the latter, the students specifically know what behaviour is expected and are more likely to action it.

Another concept I found really useful was the "When-Then" command. This approach tells "students in advance the exact positive consequences of their actions"(p. 118). When giving students a command, we can say 'when you do abc, then you can...'. For example, "when you put your things away, then you can go outside". While this type of command still gives students an option, it also clearly states the positive consequences of following instructions. In the case of students still choosing non-compliance we can use "If-Then" statements. "If you don't put your things away, then you will stay in during lunch and do it". Following through with this warning statement, and the clear negative consequence means students are held accountable. (This is called compliance training- and we've not quite reached that part of the course yet!).

So far, I'm loving the little tit-bits that I am gaining from the course. We've got day 2 on Monday- so I'm really looking forward to getting into the nitty-gritty of behaviour management. 

More helpful hints to come!