The 30 second intervention

First published in the Times Educational Supplement (TESPro Magazine) in 2012.

Strip out all the ‘magic’ systems, reward catalogues, funky behaviour data tracking software and general frippery that now seems to accompany behaviour in many schools and you are left with what really matters – real conversations with angry young people at the point of crisis. It is these moments that lie at the heart of good behaviour and relationship management. It is these moments that are the difference between calm and chaos, confrontation and compliance, inclusion or exclusion. When students dig their heels in and tell you with passion that ‘it’s shit, I won’t do it and you can’t make me’, it is not just your behaviour management skills that are being tested. It is your values, your emotional resilience and your humanity that is under the microscope. Interrupt and disrupt thought patterns quickly and efficiently you become expert at diffusing behaviour bombs that others allow to explode.

The longer each negotiation around behaviour takes for the few, the less time you can give to the many. Students who behave badly in class will inevitably need more of your time outside of lessons. Don’t give it to them in class too.

Limit your formal one-to-one interventions for poor behaviour in class to 30 seconds each time. Get in, deliver the message, ‘anchor’ their behaviour with an example of the student’s previous good behaviour and get out. With your dignity intact and the student’s dignity intact. That is the ‘win, win’. The 30 second intervention demands careful often scripted language. The idea is simple. The performance takes practice. The 30 second intervention is not designed to force the student to play ‘good puppy’, beg for forgiveness and turn their life around before break time. It is carefully planned, utterly predictable and safe way to send a clear messages to the learner. ‘You own your behaviour, your poor behaviour does not deserve my time, you are better than the behaviour you are showing today (and I can prove it!).

The moment you deliver a sanction is the moment that confrontation/complaint/protest will emerge. Counter this defensive response in your 30 second intervention by immediately reminding the student of a previous example of their personal discipline, ‘Do you remember yesterday/last week when you: helped me tidy up/led the group/gave me that excellent homework? Remember Mum’s face when she got the note? That is the person I know, that is the Chelsea I need to see today’. Then use ‘Thank you for listening’ as an excuse to move away and leave the student to their choice. Walk away. Don’t be tempted to ‘loom’ over the student waiting for them to decide what to do. Walk away. Don’t turn back. Even if you have just perfectly performed the 30 second intervention the student may need time to make a choice, time to get back to work and yes time for other learners to turn their attention away.

As you walk away Chelsea will be busy baiting a hook to fish you back. Her bait box box is full of tasty teacher triggers, a loud sweary mutter, perhaps the classic ‘finger’ or the utterly disrespectful teeth kissing coupled with quietly insulting murmurs. Don’t be tempted to take the bait. Keep walking. The rest of the class will realise that you didn’t let it go soon enough. If you rush back in to confront the secondary behaviours you pass over control to the child. You have lost. A full blown confrontation is the ultimate reward for the learner who likes to provoke. All your hard work is soon undone as the emotion accelerates to sweary door slamming report writing segregation cell nastiness.

Of course as you walk away your first job is to write down, discreetly, what just happened so that you can you can speak to the student when everyone is calm. You might prefer to wait until the cold light of the morning to share the note you made with the student. In my experience a blurry faced teenager gives apology and shows regret with more ease. Fully awake and fuelled with sugar/caffeine/stimulant of choice can be trickier beasts. In time the certainty of your ‘follow up’ soon ripples through the rest of the class “He’ll get you, he won’t do anything now, but he’ll get you”. A pointy finger, looming presence or sarcastic tone will undermine the technique. Everything about your physical and tonal approach must scream “I HAVEN’T COME HERE FOR AN ARGUMENT!” Pull up a chair or get on your knees. Take away every nuance of anger, every drop of anger fuel that some young people crave. Strip out the negative reinforces and leave the student feeling that they can have control of their behaviour themselves.

With a 30 second intervention you no longer need to improvise. The script is set, the pace predetermined and the arc of the intervention fine tuned. The brevity of the intervention affords no time for the gradual crescendo of the improvised castigation. Neither is driven by big sticks and heavy punishment. It leaves the student thinking about their actions, knowing that someone important believes they are better. At the pivotal point of behaviour management you can address difficult behaviour while leaving your relationship perfectly in tact.

Performing the 30 second intervention well is truly skilful behaviour and emotion management. It takes a great deal of self control to stop your emotion creeping out. Reminding students of their good behaviour in the middle of dealing with their poor behaviour takes practice. Matching humility and certainty takes some emotional resilience on your part. Yet when everyone sees that poor behaviour is no longer rewarded, that interventions are quick, efficient and predictable the classroom becomes safer and less explosive place to learn.

Micro-script model Key messages about intervention scripts:

Key messages about intervention scripts:

• No judgement is ever made about the students identity during interventions.
• The relationship between teacher and student is paramount and must be protected.
• People are not their behaviour.
• Students must take responsibility for their behaviour and not have the opportunity to blame their adults for it.
• In 20 years your students will not remember much of what you taught them but they will remember how you treated them.
• Behaviours should be shifted to the past tense as soon as possible.We are not interested in dwelling on poor choices but on creating positive expectations for the rest of the lesson. Conversations are heavily weighted to what is going to happen next rather than what has just happened.
• Presupposition is used to influence limiting self belief.When unspoken positive assumptions lie behind your language they can affect the student’s expectations of their own behaviour. ‘I know that you can…’ beats ‘Why oh why!’ every time.
• It is essential that scripts are complemented with skilled use of physical language and a tone that is calm, kind and nurturing. Any script can be undermined by careless physical language or tone that mixes the message.

Examples of micro scripts used by experienced teachers working with challenging students

1. (Drop tone) I’m limited with what I can do here. You have left me no choice in the matter. We have to follow procedure, this is the situation.
2. I am happy to discuss this later but at the moment I have to get on with the lesson.
3. I’ve noticed that it’s not working. Come out of the classroom to give you a chance to have some time away from the group. I shall come out in a few minutes.
4. Jack you are not focusing on your work. The consequence of this is that I need you to move to the front so that you can work better.
5. You need to make the right decision now. You normally work well in this lesson.
6. I’ve seen how well you can work, that’s not happening today. I am going to give you the opportunity to achieve the work you can do.
7. That may well be the case but I still need you to follow the instructions.
8. I have noticed that you have chosen not to make good choices. We have now reached the point where if you continue to behave like this you can spend the rest of the day/lesson with a senior member of staff.
9. You can make the right decision and a senior member of staff can take you to the hotspot where you can complete the work and return to me at the end of the lesson.
10. Altaf, do you understand why the situation has reached this point? Mr Turner is going to take you to the hotspot. I would like you to come and see me later as I know that you are a nice lad and I don’t know why you are behaving like this.

The importance of importance

This article by Chris Sweeney was first published on the Pivotal Education blog in 2010.

The deepest desire in human nature is the desire to feel important. That’s why we praise and reward work. Of course it’s not always the size of reward that matters it’s how you give it. I can give you a star and make you feel like a king. I can give you 20 quid and make you feel utterly worthless. So we should focus on how we give rewards and praise.

Read the article below written by Pivotal Education Trainer, Chris Sweeney. He talks about someone he worked with who had mastered the art of making people feel important and the knock on effect that had on everyone else. So while you read the article think about how you make your students feel important.

Giving Importance

Before I became a teacher I worked in a pub for a year. It was a “classic” country pub in an old building with a head barman who’d been there longer than the foundations. Peter was to me the perfect barman, he had a knack of working with people and putting them at their ease.

Whether it was the regulars who came in every day or once a week. Or whether it was a new customer who had just found the pub, Peter would make them feel that he was privileged that they had come into the pub.

With the regulars he would know those who liked to have a particular drink in a particular glass and that would be poured and on the bar ready for them before they asked; he’d know those who had something different each time and so would wait to check what they wanted; he’d know those who always had the same drink but were worried about being predictable or boring. He would patiently wait whilst they went through the charade of deciding what they were going to have before choosing the same drink they had every day. He would keep up to speed with their lives, their interests asking after weekends, spouses and families. But he would also know the difference between those who wanted to discuss their lives in great detail and those who wanted to keep “distance”.

When new people walked into the bar he would adjust his greeting according to what he felt would suit them best. He would get the balance right between welcoming them in without being overpowering.

He could see when trouble was brewing and would intervene early with a subtle comment, diversion or a joke to defuse the situation.

In short Peter had the skill of making every person who came into that pub feel important.

Giving importance is an essential skill in the classroom as well. Ask yourself the question how do you make your students feel important? I’m not talking here about the whole class, I’m talking about individuals. Take the time to make each student feel that you’re glad they came, you’re pleased they’re here, they’re important.

This doesn’t take a lot of time or effort but it has a huge impact. Greeting students as they come in at the start of the session - with a smile; a brief comment / question about something you know they’re interested in; marking moments with genuine, meaningful praise. Giving importance is different for everyone - we all value different approaches and have different interests.

Sadly Peter died a few years ago. I remember going to his funeral - it was standing room only. There were family and friends there but there were also large numbers of people who had known Peter as the barman of their local. They came because they wanted to pay their respects to Peter but also because he had an impact on their lives - he had made a difference.

In schools and colleges we are immensely privileged to be in the position where we can have a huge impact on the lives of children and young people - every day.

Ask yourself the question at the end of each day: Have I made my students feel important today?

Recognition not reward

This article was first published by Teach Primary Magazine in 2010.

You can’t buy students off with material rewards and expect them to sustain good behaviour. Young people like money, toys, stationary and stuff; but they like pride, self-esteem and a sense of belonging much, much more. The people who are best placed to reward your students are their parents. Let parents know that things are going well and encourage them to connect rewards at home with effort in class. End your message on a positive postcard or note with, ‘If you would like to follow up with a reward at home it would be well deserved’. Make it clear what you expect from the parents, what their role is and precisely how they can reinforce what you are doing. Give them an excuse to make the weekend special. Encourage them to echo the success to the family. Allow them to reward in the way they feel is appropriate. After all. We know how to reward our own children perfectly. It often doesn’t even cost us money. But we are just guessing with other people’s children. As a teacher, your responsibility is to send a clear message and let the parents do their part.

In classrooms students’ poor behaviour is recognised all the time. It is easy to reward poor behaviour with instant attention, fuelling it with emotion and encouraging it with low expectations. The thrill of an angry adult, with a ‘naughty’ badge and no responsibility can be an attractive package to some students. The benefits include admiration from friends and a reputation in the staff room: recognition, essentially. The forgotten majority who behave beautifully, work diligently and never demand attention deserve more. It is time to radically change our focus. Obviously notice those pupils who keep themselves under the radar and go unrecognised. They deserve our attention, our encouragement and our energy. Spend all of your time chasing the sheep who are trying to escape over the fence and it is easy to lose sight of the flock. Parents, children and teachers have been complaining for years that the children engaged in challenging behaviour get all the rewards. They are right. Perhaps it is time to redress the balance. Time to take away the rewards from poor behaviour.

Do a quick audit. How many students in your class come in every day, keep within the rules and work hard? 80%, 90%? How many positive notes have you given in the last three weeks? How many positive phone calls? What about those students who have had contact with parents because of their poor behaviour. Do you contact home when things are going well? Do you make sure that parents are constantly in the loop or is contact with home just an emergency measure. If I am not informed as a parent I find it difficult to truly connect reward at home with effort at school. If my child comes home with a prize I don’t feel that I need to reinforce any further.

The best recognition is when reinforcement is written down. Recognition that can be held, re-read, shown to others and displayed at home. A note, certificate, postcard or your written comments at the end of a piece of work. For many the pride of having their work on display has a similar effect. Remember, the moment is marked, the routine confirmed and self-esteem lifted. The student is consistently reminded of the behaviour that best represents them. Reminded of the behaviour that they can be most proud of. Money, stuff and material rewards are not the responsibility of the teacher. They are better delivered at home. In the classroom they can be divisive and perceived as unfair ‘Altaf, I am extremely impressed that you managed to stop throwing missiles at Colette, have some golden time, gift tokens and an all expenses paid trip for your trouble’. The line between reward and bribery is blurred in some teaching spaces. Teachers have no need to encourage material desires in young people. We have a duty to develop an understanding of what truly motivates for the long term. Pride, ambition and a sense of belonging pervade the best classrooms and laboratories. You can see it on the walls, on the faces of the students and in the relationships that develop.

Young people thrive on recognition from more than one source. The student’s recognition of the efforts of their peers can be a powerful driver of self-esteem and positive self-image. Young people who cannot recognise their own positive attributes, learn by identifying the good in others. In fact all human beings value recognition. Your colleagues respond well to the same strategies. At the end of a training session I ran, a teacher thanked me for the day and put a sticker on my jumper. A doggy sticker with ’terrific’ written underneath. I smiled. I brimmed with pleasure and pride. I kept the sticker, took it home and stuck in on the wall next to my desk. I tell people about it. I am telling you now! I am 44 years old and still a small sticker boosts my confidence and tweaks my pride. Now, either I am a uniquely sad individual for whom a doggy sticker means more than anything. Or it is not what you give but the way that you give it. This applies to your colleagues as much as your class. A note, a kind word, a positive reference are irresistible.

In the end it is not what you give but the way that you give it. Prizes gleam and then fade in moments. Positive recognition lasts for a lifetime. It’s the reward that keeps giving.

Ladder of recognition

Positive behaviour can be recognised and celebrated in numerous ways. Try following these simple steps…

• Positive reinforcement
• Sincere, private verbal praise
• Addition comments on written work
• Peer congratulations
• Work on display in the classroom
• Work on display in public areas/website
• Positive referral to another teacher
• Positive text home
• Positive note home
• Positive phone call home
• ‘Mentioned in dispatches’ in assembly and in staff meetings
• Extra class responsibility
• Class award certificate
• Year award certificate
• Extra school responsibility School Honours