Supportive Behaviour Management

Welcome to Supportive Behaviour Management

Does your school suffer from high numbers of unauthorised absences, long detention lists (many not completed), high rates of internal isolation, exclusions and too many pupils out of classes for misbehaviour?
 
Are you are looking for a more emotionally intelligent and inclusive way to manage behaviour in your school?

Please read the short article 'Challenging behaviour'

Then read on

For an overview:

Teachers TV interview with Mike Jan 2009

Supportive Behaviour Management (SBM), as a strategy, endeavours to help schools to implement changes or modifications to their culture, with the aim of instilling a more responsible, emotionally intelligent, self-aware and self-managed approach for the students.

SBM is an inclusive, emotionally intelligent approach to behaviour management which open the doors for teachers and pupils to access on-demand support and strategies to manage the sometimes difficult situations that can occur in the classroom. These can include short-term positive in-class support as well as positive proactive exit strategies when issues pass the emotionally critical threshold.

With that in mind, it is important to stress that this strategy is not a quick fix for a school's issues, but is a comprehensive approach based on emotionally literate, self esteem building and sustainable, longer term views of what our schools should look like and more importantly, feel like. 

We have all been into schools where there is a warmth that we can't quite put our finger on, but that we know it is a strong part of the institution you are in;children feel valued and teachers feel part of a strong team

Sir Alan Steer's Behaviour Review for the Secretary of State (26 March 2008) said:

 "To enable the most vulnerable or disengaged children to gain full benefit from strategies in behaviour management, schools need the capacity to provide high quality support to the child and to the parents. Without that capacity schools will be unable to meet the aspirations contained within the Children’s Plan."

The interim review, Feb 2009 stated on behaviour

..schools need more support in this area and that …unofficial or informal exclusions should stop - such exclusions can be particularly harmful to children with special needs,
..many children with SEN were failed by the school system as a lack of awareness and understanding could mean they were labelled as "badly-behaved

Read the full review here

Here is an article I wrote for the TES looking at a supportive style of conflict management - click on the + button at the bottom of the page to get a better view

I have also produced an extended article: "An emotionally intelligent approach to behaviour management"; which compares the Compliant and the Supportive styles of BM.

If you would like a copy of this,

There are no solutions, only strategies

So before you click off onto another site, take a bit of time to reflect why this statement stands.

We all are people dealing with people and each of us, adult and child, is unique, and have to have tailor-made personalised programmes if we are to reach our joint objective of helping students to engage with a curriculum that may not meet all of their needs

More often than not, this can also be translated into "When you allow me to teach you, I think you might find that what I have to offer is perhaps worth your time and effort, and I will praise you for what you have done. That way, we can both be a little happier, day by day"

So, successful teachers manage most behaviours successfully most of the time, but not always

Most people will have come across the Assertive Discipline system (under copyright in the UK to Behaviour & Learning Management), used by many schools with varying success.  A variance of this is described as a 'Consequence based' behaviour management programme - and these programmes will meet the needs of the majority of students - probably around 85-95% according to context.

One of the main proponents of this consequences system is Ninestyles school in Birmingham.  In order to get a contrasting view, check out their system and also take a look at this video which outlines both approaches

The Supportive Behaviour Management  programme outlined on this site looks at setting up a system that helps all students to reach their potential, regardless of their additional needs - particularly those with emotional difficulties.  So if your school has a consequence-based model of behaviour management and yet you still would like to succeed with those challenging 10-15% of students, I think there might be an opportunity to review your policy direction and consider an SBM model instead.

Most children, around 85-95% of your school, most of the time will manage to work within assertive discipline and consequence-based guidelines day in and day out, but there are some for which this type of sometimes inflexible and robust approach is not appropriate.  It is this 10% which is the most challenging group for any school to manage and that this system copes with extremely well

The Supportive Behaviour programme is designed to meet the needs of the majority of students but also enables the most challenging children, around 10 - 15% of your school, to have a pathway to success as well. Within this 10 - 15%, 5% are most likely a problem on a daily basis, but generally manageable, 4% are very challenging and oppositional, and 1% will seem to be outside anything you set up or do.

These final 5% will require the most input, sometimes give the least visible results and will still continue to be challenging and demanding.