So says learning specialist and inclusion outreach coach Charlotte Peverett, who says the rigorously structured approach used by special educators to create calm and orderly classrooms is rich in detail and ripe for the picking.

“I think it’s our bread and butter,” she says of nailing behaviour management across a school.

 “…we put a lot of rules, norms and practices in place, and we have been doing this for many, many years, because we found that the students benefit from knowing what’s happening every day, knowing what the rules are, knowing how the adults behave.”

Peverett says when teachers and school leaders witness classes in action at Victoria’s Colac Specialist School, they are “just amazed at how many systems and processes we have in place for seemingly little things”.

“We are so structured, we have so many guides, we have so much clarity around how we manage behaviour.

“It’s that consistency across the school that makes it successful for our students,” she adds.

Mainstream schools looking to establish behaviour protocols across all year levels should consider linking up with special educators –they have a wealth of experience and practical insights to offer in this realm, Peverett suggests.

“It’s a partnership, and that’s what I encourage," she says. 

In his recent tour of Australia, Tom Bennett, the chief behaviour advisor to the UK’s Department for Education, has shared his take on the strategies and approaches that stamp out bad behaviours in the classroom.

Peverett is a big fan of Bennett’s approach, and was thrilled to meet him in person at a PD event last week.

 

“He’s pragmatic, [he’s] just about all the kids – not just about some kids.

“And he promotes calm, safe environments with dignity. So, what more can you ask for in a classroom and for our students?” she says.

Peverett agrees with Bennett on one fundamental point: structures and routines work best for all students, and especially for those with special needs.

“You reduce a lot of cognitive load when schools are set up with really specific norms around how behaviour is managed, and also how classrooms are run or how the school runs,” she says.

Various scripts, role plays and routines have been a staple of the educator’s toolkit for many years now, but she says these do need to be used consistently across the school to be truly effective.

“A simple script is ‘we don’t do this here’, as in, ‘we don’t do that behaviour here’," she explains. 

“But it doesn’t have to be complicated. When children are a bit dysregulated, less language is best.

 “And when the teachers practice them and practice them, it just becomes a habit,” she notes.

Ignoring low-level disruptive behaviour is a particularly powerful tactic too, Peverett says.

“We call it ‘planned ignoring’ of students for low-level stuff,” she explains.

“We might encourage other students to ignore some of their peers’ behaviour in order to minimise attention … you’re telling them that you’re acknowledging what they’re doing, but you’re not going to kind of buy into it, I guess.”

By not responding to minor disruptions, the teacher says you reduce the interruption factor for the whole class.

“I’ve recommended [this] in schools, and I’ve heard teachers using it and the student responds really well to it … and it reduces dobbing of other students as well,” she adds.

One of Peverett’s biggest lessons has been understanding that most of the time, student behaviour is ‘not about you’.

Bennett has called out the ‘enormous deficiencies’ in initial teacher training that he says have left many teachers without the skills they need to run classrooms free from disruption.

“There are so many astonishingly good practitioners, often sometimes despite their training, rather than because of it – it’s not the fault of the teacher or the fault of the leader, it’s a systematic error, but one we can correct,” he told delegates at a University of Notre Dame lecture last week.

Peverett underwent her teaching training over a decade ago, and says her course didn’t instill much in the way of effective behaviour management techniques.

“I did a lot of behaviour [PD sessions] after I left initial teacher education,” she says.

“I was ahead of the game, because I was already working in a special school as a teacher aide. And so, I learned a lot from some of the really, really fantastic mentors there.”

One of her biggest lessons has been understanding that most of the time, student behaviour is ‘not about you’.

“A lot of behaviour isn’t personal,” Peverett says.

“And sometimes when we take it personally, we lose our ability to manage it properly.”

Echoing a call covered by EducationHQ last year, Peverett wants at least one placement in a special education setting to be made mandatory for all aspiring teachers as part of their training.

As well as give ITE students a solid grounding in behaviour management, the experience would chip away at the stigma that still surrounds special schools, Peverett argues.

“I feel that when I go out into mainstream schools, a lot of [what I say] is that ‘children are children, and students with disabilities are still children’.

“I think there is a misconception about the types of students that we have in our schools sometimes, we’re seeing less and less children with [complex physical disabilities].

“When people come to us, they’re always surprised about, number one, what our students can do, but also how we manage different complexities with our students.”

Mandatory placements, if only for two weeks, would help to break down the barriers that separate our school sectors, she indicates.

“I feel that you don’t really learn it until you’re in it.

“And that’s the biggest learning journey that our teachers that come from mainstream schools have, is realising that we’re not probably they’re preconceived idea of what is talked about in the disability space…”

Very few people studying to become a teacher actively want to pursue a career in special education “as a rule”, the educator reports.

“I believe we should have the best teachers and the best practitioners.

"If we can get those really highly skilled teachers into our schools, then our students are going to have the best of the best, for all the complexity (that’s there).”