Circle time done right
There is no ONE way to run a circle at all. Teachers who run truly successful circles are incredibly creative with how these circles proceed and they know that wait time is lost time.
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Teachers, schools and cyber-bullying
Students almost universally have access to the online world and the opportunity for respite has disappeared. Worse, the bullying that occurs online is amplified by the availability of an immense audience and also by the real or perceived anonymity that comes with online activity. Students often arrive at school on Mondays not refreshed and reset, but emotional and upset.
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The five keys to successful circles
Getting everyone together in a circle is sometimes seen as the domain of the early childhood educator – but not for much longer. I see businesses running board meetings in circles. I see sporting coaches gathering their teams in circles at half time in preference to the usual clump. I see bands huddled in tight circles for a pep talk before bursting onto stage for a performance. What is making circles so universally popular?
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A fairer process
There is no fair outcome without a fair process. It’s the process, the rules, the patterns by which we get things done together that will ultimately determine our views of how fair things really are.
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Five ways to tame anger
Schools are emotional institutions perhaps even the most emotional. On a single site we cater for potentially hundreds of young people whose brains are not yet fully formed! We try to teach them things they don’t always want to learn, and we report their progress to their parents or carers whose emotional connections with them can be complex.
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This is your captain speaking
Your voice is one of your most potent tools in the classroom. Cultivate it, experiment with it, develop it, create with it and make it something that is a contextual feature of your high expectation environment.
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“Great Scott!” – Behaviour can improve!
Through this article, I’d like you to be fully versed in building a flux capacitor geared directly at improving student behaviour. You can talk about improving a targeted behaviour all you like, but if you ignore one of these components, you’re going to land in a time and place you’d rather not be in.
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Why parents and carers listen to shock jocks
The cult of expertise flooding the national schools conversation concerns me. These days it seems anybody who has walked past a school in the last three or four decades is fully qualified to comment on your decisions, your craft, your technical skill and your capacity for the task of educating.
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Effective Questioning
Most teachers automatically respond to conflict, questionable behaviour choices and even instances of student bullying by asking questions. It is well worth examining the purpose of our questioning, as this will drive the questions we ask, the order in which we ask them and the way we ask them.
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Why students lie
I look back with a wry smile at some of the odd things I’ve said to students as a teacher. Once I told my class that if they were all going to have a rubbish attitude that I’d be making each of them stand in the dumpster at recess. Clearly a ridiculous threat that would never be carried out, and all of us were falling about with laughter for a moment while I came back to my senses.
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