When the Adults Change, Everything Changes: Seismic shifts in school behavior

by Paul Dix

Overview

In When the Adults Change, Everything Changes: Seismic Shifts in School Behaviour, Paul Dix upends the debate on behaviour management in schools and offers effective tips and strategies that serve to end the search for change in children and turn the focus back on the adults.

You can buy in the best behaviour tracking software, introduce 24/7 detentions or scream 'NO EXCUSES' as often as you want - but ultimately the solution lies with the behaviour of the adults. It is the only behaviour over which we have absolute control.

Drawing on anecdotal case studies, scripted interventions and approaches which have been tried and tested in a range of contexts, from the most challenging urban comprehensives to the most privileged international schools, behaviour training expert and Pivotal Education director Paul Dix advocates an inclusive approach that is practical, transformative and rippling with respect for staff and learners. An approach in which behavioural expectations and boundaries are exemplified by people, not by a thousand rules that nobody can recall.

When the Adults Change, Everything Changes illustrates how, with their traditional sanction- and exclusion-led methods, the 'punishment brigade' are losing the argument. It outlines how each school can build authentic practice on a stable platform, resulting in shifts in daily rules and routines, in how we deal with the angriest learners, in restorative practice and in how we appreciate positive behaviour.

Each chapter is themed and concludes with three helpful checklists - Testing, Watch out for and Nuggets - designed to help you form your own behaviour blueprint. Throughout the book both class teachers and school leaders will find indispensable advice about how to involve all staff in developing a whole school ethos built on kindness, empathy and understanding.

Suitable for all head teachers, school leaders, teachers, NQTs and classroom assistants - in any phase or context, including SEND and alternative provision settings - who are looking to upgrade their own classroom management or school behaviour plan.

Contents include:

1. Visible Consistency, Visible Kindness

2. The Counter-Intuitive Classroom

3. Deliberate Botheredness

4. Certainty in Adult Behaviour

5. Keystone Classroom Routines

6. Universal Microscripts: Flipping the Script

7. Punishment Addiction, Humiliation Hangover

8. Restore, Redraw, Repair

9. Some Children Follow Rules, Some Follow People

10. Your Behaviour Policy Sucks!

11. The 30 Day Magic

When the Adults Change Everything Changes was a silver winner 2017 Foreword INDIES Awards in the Education category.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781781352731
Publisher:	Crown House Publishing
Publication date:	08/30/2017
Pages:	200
Sales rank:	105,997
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Paul Dix is a speaker, author and notorious teacher-wrangler who is in huge demand. He is founder and director of Pivotal Education. As a teacher, leader and teacher trainer, Paul has been working to transform the most difficult behaviour in the most challenging schools, referral units and colleges for the last 25 years. Paul co-hosts the Pivotal Podcast, providing free training to over 250,000 teachers worldwide every week. pivotaleducation.com @pivotalpaul

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 Visible Consistency, Visible Kindness 3

This is how we do it here 4

Meeting and greeting 6

Fantastic walking 7

Nobody gets to see the head without a tour! 9

Grinding out consistency 11

How consistency crumbles 11

Turning around behaviour in a large inner city secondary school 13

Testing 15

Watch out for 16

Nuggets 16

2 The Counter-Intuitive Classroom 19

The corrosion at the heart of classroom practice 20

You should know how to behave 22

A tonne of bricks 23

Recognition boards 24

Behaviour games 25

Rewards that shouldn't work but do 28

Token economies are corrupt 29

One million merits 31

Robert and the skip 31

Testing 34

Watch out for 35

Nuggets 35

3 Deliberate Botheredness 37

Bribery 38

The drip effect 39

Extreme botheredness 39

Over and above 42

Emotional currency 42

The incredible power of the positive note 43

Fractions of positive notes 44

Worksheet weary 46

Noticing the unnoticed: Hot Chocolate Friday 48

Show you belong 49

Testing 51

Watch out for 51

Nuggets 52

4 Certainty in Adult Behaviour 55

The cost of adult emotion 57

What expert teachers teach us about 'certainty' 58

A visit to the Department 59

Picking up your own tab 60

Certainty beats weight of sanction every time 61

Being certain even when you are not! 63

Over-promising punishment 65

Seismic shifts in primary behaviour 65

Watch our for 69

Nuggets 70

5 Keystone Classroom Routines 73

Going too far 74

Wall of death 75

The keystone five 76

Juggling, routines and 'natural' talent 82

Ending and sending 83

Punctuality problems 84

Testing 86

Watch out for 87

Nuggets 88

6 Universal Microscripts: Flipping the Script 89

Freestyling 90

The 30 second intervention 92

A 30 second script 94

Flipping the script in Denmark 95

Advanced assertiveness 97

Beginning brilliantly 100

A difficult proposition 101

Testing 103

Watch our for 104

Nuggets 105

7 Punishment Addiction, Humiliation Hangover 107

The punishment road 107

Excuses? 109

The madness of chasing secondary behaviours 112

Punishment contradiction 113

Booths 114

Creative isolation 116

Classroom plan 117

Impositions 119

Removing detention from a large urban secondary school 120

Testing 121

Watch out for 122

Nuggets 122

8 Restore, Redraw, Repair 125

The meeting 126

The restorative five 128

Restorative questions with young children 131

Picking up your own tab 132

Adults who say sorry 135

Improving on exclusion 135

Rebuilding a school with restorative practice 137

Testing 138

Watch out for 138

Nuggets 138

9 Some Children Follow Rules, Some Follow People 141

Angry learners 141

Six changes to your approach to manage the most difficult behaviours 143

The tutting chair 146

A word on trauma and attachment 151

Goat mentoring 152

Learning from the alternative 154

Where's the bit on behavioural disorders? 156

Tricky calls with parents 157

Testing 158

Watch out for 158

Nuggets 159

10 Your Behaviour Policy Sucks! 161

How much does your behaviour policy weigh? 162

Rules made of gold 162

A chaos of rules 164

Policy language: education or incarceration 165

The power of ready, respectful, safe 168

The punishment buffet 170

Whole class punishments 170

What is the financial cost of a sanction heavy policy? 171

The behaviour blueprint on a single A4 sheet 172

The grey suits of doom 173

Redesigning cliff edges 174

Testing 174

Watch out for 175

Nuggets 175

11 The 30 Day Magic 177

Ribbons and pebbles 178

The INSET hare 179

Saying hello 180

Help! The advisor is telling me to punish more! 183

Watch out for 184

Nuggets 184

Conclusion 185

Acknowledgements 187

About the Author 189