Does your school suffer from high numbers of unauthorised absences? Do you have long detention lists (many not completed), with the same children regularly involved? Do you have high rates of internal isolation and regular exclusions? On a daily basis, are you finding too many pupils out of classes for misbehaviour? Do you wish the children would take more responsibility for their behaviour? Are you looking for a more emotionally intelligent and inclusive way to manage behaviour in your school?
It's always difficult when you have to reflect on where you are. Self-analysis can be quite painful but, as a teacher, I felt it was key to do this on a regular basis and in doing so, improve one's practice. For a school, or a manager, to evaluate how well behaviour management is working within your institution, it's fairly important but difficult to try to be objective.
All of us went to school at some time and had behaviour management imposed on us. As teachers, on the whole, we are receptive to learning and coping with the management of our behaviour and as a consequence probably consider that the process we went through was reasonable.
So here's the first point - what if it wasn't well thought out and reasonable and was simply built on the experiences of your teachers and how they were treated by their teachers. If this is the case, and I think it may be, isn't it time that we bought behaviour management into the 21st century where it belongs.
_Just to quote an example, I
have read a behaviour management policy which states that if a
detention is not done properly by a student, then the detention should
be repeated only this time with the student standing up. If we follow
this to its logical conclusion, we need to start installing stocks into
schools and providing tomatoes for the students for break times. This
type of behaviour management, in my opinion, has no place in our
schools.
A good start point is to consider the basis on which you
set up your policy in the first place. Was it a review of an old
policy or did you bring a policy with you from your old school?