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Bus Lane Assembly: We all gain from enforcing the rules. – teacherhead

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The material in this post is the basis of an assembly I've given before about the need for enforcing rules. I'm about to use this particular preach again as we continue to push forward on our drive for impeccable behaviour. It's been an intense few weeks as students learn where the boundaries lie, with literally hundreds of students in detentions every day. But the numbers are dropping and, so far, it's working really well. In fact, the improvement has been dramatic.
Bus Lane Assembly
Early on in my life as a commuter between London and Chelmsford, I had to learn the boundaries of the journey. It was painful. I'm ashamed to admit that within a few months I'd been given three speeding tickets. They came in quick succession from the notorious speed camera at the end of the M11 where the speed limit drops from 70 to 50 mph. There are no pavements or pedestrians; it just feels like the same road - but as most people are going at 80 mph, they make you slow...right...down as the motorway ends. Travelling home late at night, I messed this up three times in a matter of months, tired after work and not taking enough notice. I was fined for each offence. On the last occasion my failure to attend the court hearing (which I thought was optional) was interpreted as contempt - and I was fined £670! That hurt. In addition, I have been driving around with 10 points on my license for the last 5 years. Wow - what an effect that has had. The enforcement worked. With suspension only one violation away, it forced me to change my behaviour in a fundamental way. I've been the very most diligent driver imaginable ever since.

However, on top of the speeding, one morning I received a penalty notice for a Bus Lane Violation; it cost me £60. The evidence was clear:

Bang to rights?!

Well, no. I was furious. It just wasn't fair. Not only am I 'eco-Man' who cares about public transport, I had a cast iron excuse. Take a look at the bigger picture:

As you can see, a big white truck is pulling into the lane behind me, right across the path of any bus. I turned into the bus lane because I thought that, since no buses would actually be able to use it, blocked by the truck, it was perfectly sensible for me to use it. I told myself that I wasn't doing anything wrong (lucky me for spotting the opportunity), that it was only for a few seconds and - truth be told - I didn't think anyone would notice.

I appealed. I lost. The fine stood and ever since then I have never ever driven into a bus lane. Now I see those Bus Lane Enforcement Camera signs everywhere. Even though I felt it was harsh, the enforcement worked. I've become a Bus Lane Saint.

After a short period of raging, I realised that, of course, the camera operator was just doing his job. Buses matter; people rely on them and if we're serious about reducing traffic congestion and emissions, then people need confidence that the buses really work. Bus Lanes are a great idea and it must be a huge drain on resources for the enforcement team to have to assess every single situation in minute detail. I also reflected that, in truth, the camera operator who logged my violation was working for me and the community I live in - keeping the buses running.

I once heard it put that "integrity means doing the right thing when nobody is looking". I'd been trying to cheat a little, hoping no-one would notice. When I thought about it, all my raging and outrage was my way of deflecting from the fact that I knew I'd done the wrong thing. I was annoyed because I got caught doing something other people seem to do all the time. Of course, that's no excuse. If one person is on a double yellow line, it doesn't make it OK for others to join them; it makes it worse.

Rightly or wrongly, there is something in human nature that leads people to seek advantage for themselves; to cut corners and bend the rules - whilst expecting that the rules are there when they need them. We're individuals as well as social animals - it's complicated. As a community, we are stronger when we support each other to stick to our rules; it's more fair for everyone and we get a better outcome. Safer roads and better bus services are great successes of enforcement of rules that most of us happily sign up to. The fact is that, without the enforcement, even rules that we all agree on would soon fall apart. The enforcement is part of the process of a community working out the rules that we agree to live by. We can't look for exemptions and excuses without putting pressure on the system - with negative consequences for everyone, especially if the excuses are weak.

So, let's embrace that. The rules are there for all of us; the people who enforce them do an important job. It's not about being unfairly controlled or being subjected to an unjust authoritarian power; it's about making our community better for the maximum benefit to everyone in it. A great school community functions best when the rules are clear and the enforcement is consistent and relentless: we all have our part to play in that. Take it from me, if you make a deliberate choice to break the rules or act thoughtlessly - it's a lot healthier to take a good look at yourself before you get angry with the system.

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Bus Lane Assembly: We all gain from enforcing the rules.

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The material in this post is the basis of an assembly I've given before about the need for enforcing rules. I'm about to use this particular preach again as we continue to push forward on our drive for impeccable behaviour. It's been an intense few weeks as students learn where the boundaries lie, with literally...

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Behaviour Management: A Bill Rogers Top 10 – teacherhead

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Behaviour Management: A Bill Rogers Top 10

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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…

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Warm/Strict: we enforce rules because we care – TB blogs (wordpress.com)

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584540-3.-maximising-opportunity-to-learn.pdf (cambridgeinternational.org)

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Stating the Obvious or Getting Behaviour Right | Teaching it Real (wordpress.com)

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Compliance – teacherhead

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Compliance.

It's another of those ideas in education that drives people into their camps.

For some, compliance or systems that generate compliant children are an outrage; children suppressed, their natural creativity crushed, their rights and freedoms denied, victims of authoritarian power structures that have no place in the modern world.

For others, compliance is a necessary pre-requisite for creating a disciplined working environment in which children can learn and anyone who questions that is a woolly prog, culpable for a decline in educational standards and the erosion of our nation's moral fibre and backbone.

Over the last few years and months I have engaged with situations in schools - sometimes in the same school - where these two contrasting compliance phenomena appeared:

Too much compliance: students in teaching situations where it felt a bit 'lights out nobody home'. This can be either a continual blood-out-of-stone classroom culture with students too inhibited to engage or be remotely spontaneous for fear of making mistakes or simply because it is not normal for them to voice their ideas. Or, where teachers are too nervous about letting go to the point that even a discussion in pairs feels like taking a risk. I've had Headteachers asking me to challenge teachers because they felt their staff had become too risk averse which then had consequences for stretching the top end.

Linked to this is the speed-camera syndrome where students turn on the compliance at strict schools (or in specific classrooms with certain teachers) but are not actually learning intrinsic behaviours. I've seen this in operation as a teacher, leader and parent. One former colleague was always complaining that, when her children attended a school very famous for its impeccable enforced behaviour, there was no sign that this followed them beyond the school gates - including when they came to her house!

Not enough compliance: classrooms (and corridors) where standards of behaviour are so poor that learning is inhibited and students safety and well-being are compromised. There are situations I wish I could beam people into when they complain about over-compliant behaviour systems; situations where it is absolutely obvious that the children need to be a whole lot more compliant; to do what they are told and allow the teacher to teach and the learners to learn. Situations where I would suggest that no teacher would take a class and then say that the children needed more freedom and less compliance.

It is absolutely obvious to me (from my 30 years experience in lots of contexts) that a foundation of a great school and great learning, is that there is a disciplined environment with an acceptance of the authority structure inherent in the roles teachers and other adults have in relation to the children they are responsible for. It's also clear to me that discipline is absolutely compatible with warmth, love, care and respect - and this goes a bit deeper than whether students call you Sir or Nick.

Children are happier when they know where consistent boundaries are. I've never met a child who was happy to be constantly hitting the boundaries or one who felt secure when the boundaries (around learning or behaviour) fall down.

The challenge is to establish the level of compliance that fits the situation you are in - which is especially difficult when you have students that require very different levels of enforcement within one environment. There are hundreds of great schools which do not enforce silent corridors or run central detentions; where the inherent level of student compliance feels like willing cooperation at a level high enough for learning to flourish with light touch behaviour routines and a few simple rules. These schools are lovely. But it's unreasonable to work there and then project that set of parameters as a universal values system. At other schools, it's just absolutely necessary to direct student behaviour in a much more intense and controlling way - simply to keep order and to allow teachers across the experience and confidence range to function in their classrooms without drowning.

Another level of challenge is in the detail. Teachers are fallible. Injustices occur and these can be hard to resolve when your frontline policy is to back teachers to do their jobs at all costs. Children are emotional and do not always respond well to challenging situations including where they feel unfairly treated. It takes time to build a culture where children can feel listened to whilst also keeping boundaries tight. Again, it's way way easier in some schools than in others. Sometimes the sheer scale of non-compliance is the issue alongside the complexities of sanctions and parental engagement - not always the idealised principles of what is right and wrong or fair.

My final thought here is that, whenever people feel uncomfortable with behaviour management systems that seem too strict for them, they should take a moment to imagine all the teachers around the country on the brink of tears or a breakdown because the students in front of them do not have enough self-discipline to allow learning to proceed, destroying lesson after lesson. Compliance is not a dirty word. There are degrees.

Ideally you want students to volunteer to behave well, coming willingly based on an understanding of the dynamics of the social world they are part of. But, it can be that students simply need to experience discipline that is imposed on them and learn to appreciate it through habit before they fully understand or support it at an intrinsic level. The challenge for leaders should be to explain this to students and parents so that the endpoint is always clear. It takes persistence, sensitivity to parental concerns and a bit of a thick skin to succeed.

Of course it's complicated - I'm not doing the full behaviour system/school culture thing here. The solutions are out there. But they are complicated and context, as ever, is king.

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Compliance. It's another of those ideas in education that drives people into their camps. For some, compliance or systems that generate compliant children are an outrage; children suppressed, their natural creativity crushed, their rights and freedoms denied, victims of authoritarian power structures that have no place in the modern world.

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Strategies to Increase Pace – TomNeedham (wordpress.com)

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Teacherhead - The Five Forms of Feedback I Give To Teachers Most Often

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Teacherhead - The Five Forms of Feedback I Give To Teachers Most Often

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The five forms of feedback I give to teachers most often… – teacherhead

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In my work I have the privilege of being able to watch lots of teachers teach in a wide range of contexts. I see lots of superb teachers and lots of great lessons. Where I have constructive feedback to give, I find that there are a few common areas for improvement that come up time and time again. Here are the main things I find I say most often under the heading of 'even better if': - now updated to include youtube clips where I explain each one.

Behaviour: Be more assertive; establish what you want to establish

Where lessons do not have impeccable behaviour, most of the time (not all of the time) I find it is because the teacher falls short of absolutely insisting that students meet the standards they would like. They might continue to talk when there are clearly students talking in the room, they might allow off-task chatter to go un-challenged; they might let learning drift as students lose focus with a task without taking action to push them on; they might not sustain the level of reinforcement needed for their particular class.

There are lots of practical things teachers can do to address all of this, before needing to get into sanctions and wider school systems. I find this can usually be summed up by the need for more assertiveness and Bill Rogers' idea of ' you establish what you establish'. In detail this might require:

taking a more prominent position in the physical space of the classroom and being more conscious about using a whole-class radar to scan what is happening all the time.

reinforcing and rehearsing routines for entry, for questioning, for common practical tasks.

making more eye contact, setting up spaces so students can all be seen and looked in the eye.

using an agreed signal for attention instead of raised voices

pausing to secure attention before speaking - from absolutely everyone, always.

setting time cues for tasks and rehearsing good stop/start routines.

Sometimes it's about communicating a stronger, more intense sense of commitment to the standards so a teacher's disapproval for being late, not having equipment, calling out persistently, messing about in any way - is all that is needed to suggest 'do not do this'. Or it can be about using the warnings or consequences system in a way that is consistent and proportionate.

Of course all teachers need the back-up of some form of system - but what I see is that there is a lot of mileage in improving behaviour through teachers' actions setting higher expectations and then insisting on them being met. It's not about blaming teachers for students' behaviour; it's about saying - you have the power to engineer significant change simply through your own actions - so use it.

Questioning: Ask more students more questions; involve everyone.

With questioning, it's often not a black and white case of do X instead of Y - it's about degrees of intensity. Great teachers tend to ask lots of questions in a deep, probing fashion and consciously include everyone in the class. The most common feedback I give where questioning needs to improve includes the following:

Use cold-calling: Avoid letting a small number dominate by allowing them to call out answers or always taking hands-up.

Consciously include the students who are quiet, under the radar, not contributing spontaneously

Probe. For every answer, have a follow-up - or several follow-ups. Why, how did you know, is that always true, what else could you add, are you sure? (See Probing)

Check for understanding: after any exposition or giving instructions, ask students to repeat back what they've understood. Can named/cold-called students explain it back?

Avoid all these Bad Question Klaxons:

Does anyone have any questions?

Is everyone ok with that?

Does everyone understand?

Do you all know what to do?

Give students more practice with the same question type so they can consolidate the skills; I often find there is not enough repetition and students are moved on prematurely. Drills and over-learning can be very powerful - simply practising multiple examples, especially in maths but also in other areas.

Finally, it's often not about doing this stuff or not doing it - it's about how intense. A teacher might think 'I do cold calling; I do probe' - but I'm seeing that it needs to include lots more students. You can ask the same question to lots of students to check they are following, involved, engaged in the reasoning - even if the previous student gave a good response. It pays to keep bringing students in: Do you agree, what was your answer, say it back to me, can you explain it differently.?

Importantly, teachers need to mix the behaviour management with the questioning. Where they are less confident with holding attention, the questioning slips with students dropping out of the whole-class sphere, losing focus. The skill needed is to continually scan, hold attention and bring students into the questioning process; often students answer one question and then drop back assuming their work is done.

Marking and Feedback: Make all marking an instruction for action

When I see books during any lesson observation process, I'm usually looking to see how learning is mapped out over time in terms of curriculum progression, what resources students have to support their learning and the opportunities they have to improve. The 'even better if' feedback I give most often is this:

Don't mark work with comments or suggestions for improvement unless your students will be given time to act on them immediately. Try to regard all marking as an instruction for a task students will undertake as soon as they receive it. ( See this on feedback as actions.)

There is still quite a lot of 'marking to impress the scrutineer' or 'marking to show I read the work' - which is all time-consuming and ultimately pointless in terms of securing improvement unless it is responded to. Another way to see it is this: Marking that is not responded to looks worse than no marking at all - because it suggests that you didn't really mean it.

I suggest using simple systems like green pen (i.e. a commonly understood signal that work is being done in response to feedback) or simply using headings: 2nd draft; DIRT activity - or whatever. Evidence of work improving matters more than evidence of marking or the perverse idea of evidencing verbal feedback. It IS the evidence of feedback.

Knowledge and Recall: Specify what students should know; check that they do; give time for practice

In some lessons I find that the weaker learners can be unsure of what exactly they are meant to know as a result of an exposition or discussion. I often give the feedback that teachers need to be much more explicit about this. So, after reading a section of text, watching a video, hearing an extended discussion, completing a practical task or a comprehension activity - whatever it is - there is significant value in consolidating all the ideas:

The main facts to know are A,B,C,D,E,F

These are the key points in the argument: X,Y,Z.

The sequence of events is always 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,

The main advantages are A, B and C; the main disadvantage is D.

The steps in this type of problem are always 1, 2 and then 3.

These points then needed to be recorded. This can all be supported with knowledge organisers, structured note taking or any number of resources provided that everyone, especially the least confident learners, has access. Some students need a lot more scaffolding for note taking than others.

I often need to suggest teachers avoid the trap of assuming that students know things without checking that they do. The first and most important layer of assessment is questioning: Have you understood? This then requires numerous cold call questions checking in with students to establish whether the key points have registered.

I often feel that students needed more time for rehearsal of these key points. For example, with learning new words - have they said them, used them, written them, pronounced them correctly? (See this on learning vocabulary) Can they run through the three key points with their partner to check they've understood?

Finally, crucially, students need to be quizzed on these bits of knowledge at a later point with prior learning reviews forming a routine part of lessons, revisiting knowledge systematically with all students involved in the recall process: What were the main points from yesterday, last week, the previous unit?

Setting the standards: Define excellence for any task.

The last area of common feedback is around the issue of standards. This can sometimes be assumed or teachers focus heavily on task completion rather than the quality of what is meant to be completed - leaving students to see 'finishing' as more important than doing things well.

In nearly every activity students engage in, it is possible to define what would constitute excellence. If you have done this task extremely well, what would it look like? I often suggest that teachers would secure much better outcomes if they have that discussion explicitly before letting student get on:

What is the expected length/scale of the work?

Which features of presentation are expected?

How many questions should you aim to complete in the time given?

Which language features must be included?

Which common errors should you avoid?

If you have examples of excellence to share in advance, that helps to set the standards in a way students can relate to. Sometimes success criteria can be rather obscure until illustrated with an example.

Finally, I often suggest that standards setting begins in verbal exchanges.
That's a good start, but now say it again better; add the correct terminology and try to link those ideas together.
If teachers go through the standard-setting process routinely, expectations rise and students get used to formulating more sophisticated responses. If you always accept one-word answers or half-formed responses, that's what you continue to get. If students are left to guess the pace, the depth or the quality required, then you'll get mediocrity when excellence might have been within reach.

Obviously all of this 'even better if' feedback goes hand in hand with the 'what went well' and there is always a subject specific context and a teaching group context where the feedback needs to focus particular aspects of the curriculum or the needs of learners. However, I've been interested to see just how common improvement issues can be across disciplines that might seem radically different - from construction, to maths, to French, to barbering to history. The nature of the teaching process is basically the same so the feedback often is too.

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The five forms of feedback I give to teachers most often...

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In my work I have the privilege of being able to watch lots of teachers teach in a wide range of contexts. I see lots of superb teachers and lots of great lessons. Where I have constructive feedback to give, I find that there are a few common areas for improvement that come up time and...