Running the Room — Julian Girdham

Twenty years ago this month the Channel 4 documentary series Faking It made its début. You can see it now on the All 4 app, and it's very enjoyable entertainment, conceived well before the deluge of 'real life' transformation series of recent years.

The premise was simple: could an individual from one area pass as proficient in another, as judged by an expert panel? A vicar 'became' a car dealer, a house painter a conceptual artist, a bicycle courier a polo player, and so on. I don't think they ever tried to turn someone into a teacher, but at the time I was waiting for that programme to be made. 'Running the room', is the title of Tom Bennett's new book ('the teacher's guide to behaviour'), and it would have been fun seeing the trainers preparing a total novice to ‘run’ a classroom. For experts, this is second nature; for anyone else, it can be a terrifying prospect:

Expert room-runners take in everything that is happening and pick out exactly what they need in order to change the direction of the class behaviour sensibly. Newer teachers drown in all of the information flooding them. They can't discern so easily between relevant and irrelevant data. That's why, when you are new to teaching, you see all the misbehaviour and react to everything as you see it, tearing your lesson to shreds as you jump about from behaviour to behaviour.

Preparing student teachers for this fundamental skill (all learning depends on it) is notoriously thin in many teacher-training courses. A quick look at Irish universities' websites for details of the two-year Professional Masters in Education courses didn't turn up any 'behaviour' or 'classroom management' modules, but the no-doubt interesting topics of the philosophy, history and sociology of education frequently feature. Student teachers I've supervised report that they get little to no guidance: they do spend hours filling in detailed preparatory documents before teaching classes, and yet the bedrock is ignored. A few hours with Faking It type trainers would be more valuable than that paperwork. A few hours with Running the Room would be a lot more valuable.

Tom Bennett's book is not, of course, recommending that teachers might fake classroom practice. It is a rich and deep look into both the principles of classroom management, and the detailed routines we can use to apply these effectively. He has an entertaining turn of phrase, a polished way with anecdotes and a knack for compressing behavioural psychology into memorable metaphor.

Here are some notes and quotations:-

'Some common behaviour myths' include: 'Some people have got it' ('the sin of essentialism - that teaching is an innate gift rather than something can be learned') and 'Kids need love, not boundaries' ('They need both. Boundaries without love is tyranny but love without boundaries is indulgence').
'While we [teachers] may be expert behavers, new teachers are novices at running the room. No wonder we make so many mistakes.'
'Helping children to behave is one of the greatest acts of liberation there is.'
'We do not seek the happiness of the student - not directly. Rather, we aim to enrich their lives, minds and abilities in ways that will enable them to flourish independently of our direction, long after we cease to be part of their lives.'
page 84: 'Classrooms should be well ventilated'. Well, that's not a problem right now.
'We must act respectfully towards the vast plurality of value systems from which our students emerge ... it does mean teaching them to appreciate that the classroom - your classroom - has its own culture, and that here, if nowhere else, these specific values and beliefs should be held, and demonstrated through behaviour. It is specific to the space in which you teach.'
Page 164 has a list of the 'benefits of a routine'. At secondary level, we sometimes let routines slip (childcare workers and primary school teachers are better at this).
'The day a teacher lets their guard down and thinks 'I will never have to check students for this again, they seem to have cracked it' is the day that standards start to slide. It is reminiscent of the man who falls from the roof of a skyscraper. as he passes the 20th floor, someone leans out and shouts, 'My God, are you OK?' and he replies, 'So far, so good!'
The value of 'scripts' (preparing in advance what you want to say, so that you can lean on these when under pressure, such as when phoning a parent for a difficult conversation).
The danger of over-focussing on poorly-behaved children: 'I've seen schools where coaches have been hired for students as a reward trip to some theme park, and every seat is occupied by a little rascal/pirate, and all the well-behaved children left behind are gazing at them through the window and thinking 'Who do I have to punch to get on that?''
'You cannot judge a person's technique by simply watching them in the moment, if they have taught the class for some time. Much of what they have done to build these great relationships has been done in the past. All you are seeing is the fruit of their labour. So don't judge yourself against this, or simply try to copy it.'

There is so much more in this book that teachers will find helpful, and reassuring.