Behaviour Management: A Bill Rogers Top 10 | headguruteacher. Behaviour Management Strategies from Bill Rogers Without doubt the greatest personal challenge I’ve faced as a teacher was moving from the Sixth Form college in Wigan where I started teaching, to Holland Park School in London in my mid-20s. Having established the idea in my mind that I was a pretty good teacher, it was a massive shock to discover that in my new context, I was a novice. It was humbling. To begin with I struggled just to get a class to listen (suffering routine humiliation at the hands of a certain Year 9 class) and I went through a terrible phase (2-3years?) Of being an appalling shouter, regularly losing my temper and committing various teacher atrocities (such as throwing a student’s book down the stairwell and telling him to get out and never come back at the top of my voice…).
Later I discovered the seminal Bill Rogers’ video series and watched them back-to-back. The series titles give a flavour of the Bill Rogers approach: Top Ten Ideas from Bill Rogers 1. 2. 3. 4. Should students be punished for poor behaviour? The following blog was written for Teachers Register – the online solution to supply teaching. Punishment is a bit of a dirty word for many teachers. There often seems to be a presumption that children are naturally good and that any attempt to control or impede their impulses is somehow akin to child abuse. I’ve seen enough cruelty and cynicism from children to inure me against the belief that being ‘good’ and ‘kind’ is in any way natural.
Children are capable of being as mean-spirited, spiteful and selfish as any adult. William Golding’s depiction in Lord of Flies of children left to their own devices to indulge their natural inclinations is a compellingly plausible account of a pattern repeated throughout history. The Romantic meta-belief that children are all little angels corrupted by the adult world is a dangerous but powerful anchor. Some years ago I taught a boy, let’s call him Ben, who had been diagnosed with ADHD. Ben: It’s not me, sir, it’s my ADHD. Like this: Like Loading... Five things every new teacher needs to know about behaviour management.
Managing students’ behaviour can be the most terrifying aspect of becoming a teacher. Although it’s the nightmare scenarios of being told to eff off on your first day, or having a chair hurled at your head that tend to keep new teachers awake at nights, these are – in most schools – relatively rare events. More often than not it’s the small stuff that undermines lessons and erodes the best efforts of teachers and students alike.
In my eventful (and often unsuccessful) picaresque to discover what actually works I’ve made scores of mistakes and wasted countless hours trying to tackle the horrifying banality of low-level disruption. So, distilled in vats of trial and error, and tempered in the crucible of hard knocks, these are the five most useful pearls of wisdom I have to offer: 1. What you permit you promote It may seem tempting to turn a blind eye to students’ misbehaviour, especially when it’s not that challenging, but you do so at a cost. 2. 3. 4. 5. Like this: Like Loading... Related.