What’s your school behaviour policy like?

[noblegiraffe]

My school has the old C1, C2, C3 and you’re out style of policy, but from reading threads on here, and from the news (Michaela, Great Yarmouth, Plymouth) there seem to be more and more schools heading down the really strict route.

Then you’ve got schools that aren’t the full Michaela, but much stricter than before where you’re booted out of a lesson for mucking around and put in isolation all day instead of lunchtime detentions and the like.

Is the trend towards being much stricter? What does your school do?

My school 'owns' an APU : essentially this was meant to make things more seamless and offer a better transition (and quicker outcomes for referrals). To begin with this seemed to work but the connection really doesn not seem very strong any more.

Apparenlty when he (or one of his acolytes) turns up to deliver training it is all very inspiring.

three Paddington bear hard stares

This is fab. The kids would have a field day. Miss was that a stare or were you just looking at me?

If you're in a normal secondary, you have signed up to teaching students from the most problematic backgrounds

I expressed myself poorly. Signed up to dealing with the very poor behaviour exhibited by those pupils you might find in a PRU. It’s not in the teaching adverts, or your PGCE training. Recruitment would be a lot harder than it already is if it said ‘what can you expect? You can expect to be told to fuck off’.

Dix tells his cheery anecdote about the kid he said hello to every morning who responded with ‘fuck off”. Dix, our hero, brushes it off as a moment of bonding.

Snorting at "the power of three", and I am Queen of the hard stare. I do rate Paul Dix. I think SLT who read his book and get staff to apply the stuff without realising this is is the very definition of a whole school approach for which they are responsible are deluded. But then that is true about any behaviour policy.

TheFallenMadonna
You can do lots of what you say without needing to go down the Dix route though. Equally, additional support, counselling mentoring can all be offered as part of a simple behaviour policy.

Best features I've seen:

1. Clear and simple rules.
2. Consistency from staff with expectations and sanctions
3. Positive relationships between staff and students

Dix tells his cheery anecdote about the kid he said hello to every morning who responded with ‘fuck off”. Dix, our hero, brushes it off as a moment of bonding.
Whilst also leading the campaign against isolation because it's clearly a human rights abuse to want a class to be able to learn in a classroom and to expect a child to work in a silent classroom out of circulation.

And I agree. You have signed up to teach the students. You have not signed up to put up with abusive behaviour. But then neither have I nor anyone else in my AP school. So we try to change it.

Paul Dix is an idiot.

Everything in education does seem to be an ideological battleground at the moment : or maybe that is just how it appears because of social media. Notwithstanding the Banthebooths hashtag on Twitter is quite amusing. In places.

Ugh , and I have just noticed Dix writing 'we gonna' . Because cool.

I think there's always been a bit of philosophical differences in teaching.

At the moment there seems to be a band of people (Dix included) who seem to have an odd pride in being some sort of hero for education and victim of the other group. All I see is a lot of inflammatory posting and then playing the victim when challenged (on both sides).

Well yes Maisypops. As I said, any behaviour policy telly.

Really. Not telly!

It might not be a human rights abuses to expect a persistently disruptive and abusive child to work in silence in an isolation room, but it doesn't seem like an idea that's going to work. Which is really the thing that matters.

I'm with you.

It's why I find the likes of Dix annoying because it's patronising. And I also have a dislike of any consultant types who claim to be some kind of hero.

Cross post there.

The benefit of isolation is that it enables other children to learn.
On it's own it's not going to solve deeper issues but it's not right or fair to expect other students to have their learning persistently disrupted by one child. Equally, seeing one child who seems to be beyond any sanction creates issues across cohorts where others will create issues and misbehave and if challenged say "but so and so..."
For persistent behaviour issues other things may be needed to support change but other students shouldn't be sacrificed in the process.

And I've said they need to be removed. We remove children who are stopping others from learning! But expecting them to then sit in silence in an isolation booth is a bit ambitious, and doing it over and over again with no other intervention solves nothing.

I need no persuading about the need to ensure other children can learn in my classroom! I generally have a lot of ground to make up in a short time.

What’s the alternative removing kids to a quiet room? A chaos room?

In one place I worked it was essentially a nice comfy room with a member of support staff who was more concerned with being their mate under the guise of 'getting to know their issues' (they'd also be in the Dix mindset of blame the teachers).
If you were expecting basic standards and kids couldn't be bothered then they'd get themselves a C4 to go in the room and you'd get a few who'd walk out of class to go down and see Mrs Blogs/ Mr Smith.

It was meant to be a reflection room but in reality it was a reward room because they didn't want to work and they never had to.

I've just had a look at some tweets on #banthebooths (some from Dix himself and / or he has agreed with)

Isolation strips people of humanity
Schools create criminals by using isolation. Rooms
Schools should have to publish their isolation use
Use of isolation is a safeguarding issue
Get everyone who has experienced isolation to call ofsted and report a safeguarding issue
#stoptheshaming (I assume because we shouldn't say some behaviours are inappropriate)
Isolation is leaving a vulnerable child who has responded badly to a situation to cope with the fallout alone (again always quick yo argue that children can choose to tell a member of staff to fuck off and defiance must be viewed through a therapeutic lens)

The best ones:
the true statement that if the rooms were painted in bright primary colours and called peaceful rooms nobody would be complaining.
Claiming you want an open review of behaviour policies whilst using a hashtag #banthebooths proves there's zero intention for debate.

I just went to twitter too. Apparently Dix is in favour of removal and separation and his only problem is kids sitting in work pods when they’re removed.

But that’s so you don’t have a room of naughty kids all catching each other’s eye and acting up.

He's backtracking quite a bit from the initial arguments.

I don't get what the need is for many of his ideas.
E.g. every lesson of every day I greet my students as they come in. I with them good morning and welcome them in.
Meet and greet is in Dix philosophy
Meeting and greeting is also in Teach Like a Champion.
Two very different approaches.

But then Dix suggests handshaking every child on the way In, or making up handshakes or having secret codes or even better having dances and let the children decide how they want to be greeted.

What's the need for wasting precious learning time.doing 32 different dances, fistbumps, coded handshakes etc? What does it actually add that a polite and friendly smile and greeting doesn't give?