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Behaviour Management Professional Learning Workshops

The workshops are available on site in schools and any number of staff can attend, but must be arranged by the school, the school cluster, or the regional office.

In dialogue with ourselves, schools can mandate all workshop content.

Our workshops are very practical and emphasize the acquisition of practical behaviour management skills and planning for behaviour.

(For teachers in Victoria, all BME Jenny Mackay professional learning workshops reference the Victoria Institute of Teachers' Standards of Professional Practice in the following elements: 1, 3, 4, 5, & 6 and the Principles of Effective Professional Learning elements: 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 & 9) VIT credits apply.

Suggested Workshop Topics

Section 'A' Workshops  lend themselves to an effective one day seminar workshop format but can be condensed into 2 or 4 hour presentations with reduced intended outcomes.  Click here to view topics.

Section 'B' Workshops  are best dealt with over two days but if necessary can be presented in condensed form in one day. Click here to view topics.

 

Special Projects

5-Step  A self-sustaining cost effective whole school behaviour management programme. Click here for details.

Managing the "Hidden" Curriculum  Click here for course details
 

Please contact us for costs, workshop content queries or bookings. Email - Training query, or just phone us on 03 9399 8491.

 

Section 'A' Workshops

A1: Teachers' strategies & skills: Turning behaviour around

This full day workshop is designed to teach teachers a broad range of practical interpersonal skills for use in the classroom - to use as the occasion arises and to build resiliency. All forms of classroom behaviour can be successfully dealt with especially confronting and challenging behaviour.

Topics covered: How to choose an appropriate response, convey needs and gain cooperation, avoid stereotyped reactions; being creative & taking 'safe' risks, tuning-in, being flexible and adaptable to situations; using modelling to build relationships. How to turn situations around and avoid being 'sucked-in'. How controlling yourself and your responses produces "good discipline".

Intended outcomes: Effectively taking control in any situation, managing minor disruptions and major disturbances, preventing escalation and repetition of misbehavior, enabling responsibility and ensuring accountability for classroom and school behaviour.

(VIT Professional development activity hours:  6)

 

A2:  Positive behaviour management:  Dealing with apathy and negativity

The workshop teaches practical planning for positive classroom management.  The course content also addresses the 'anti-learning' ethos pervading many schools and classrooms.  

Topics covered: Planning methodology.  Changing attitudes - changing behaviour. dealing with negativity, how to get them on your side, enabling students to change their perceived roles, encouraging a sense of worth in both student and teacher, building resiliency.  Managing groups.

Intended outcomes: A positive classroom, improved participation, greater productivity, higher levels of achievement, more positive attitudes towards learning, teaching and school, happier teachers.

 

(VIT Professional development activity hours: 2, 4 or 6)

A3:  Building responsible young adults:  Actions and consequences

The workshop teaches the skills and techniques with which to foster taking responsibility for actions.  Teachers learn to build an awareness of the relationships between rights &  responsibilities, and actions & consequences, and to develop new social competencies and resiliency in their students.

Topics covered:  Discipline and punishment - what am I teaching?, the concept of choice in behavior, following through and teachers' options,  teaching for responsibility; the importance of reparation.

Intended outcomes: Teachers distinguish between discipline and punishment and internal vs. external control.  Students acquire insight into their behavior, enabling self discipline and self control. Teachers learn to use the 'space' between a classroom behaviour and their response to that behaviour.

(VIT Professional development activity hours: 2, 4 or 6)

 

A4:  Classroom control:  discipline, teaching styles & techniques

A workshop focusing on how teaching styles cause and influence situations in the classroom.  Individual teaching styles are compared. 

Topics covered: The advantages and disadvantages of different styles, the importance of being 'skilled' in addition to personal style.  Using new interpersonal responses to replace unhelpful ones. Learning and practising these skills.  Resiliency.

Intended outcomes:  Through insight gained, teachers are able to assess and make appropriate changes to their individual teaching style.  This results in lowered classroom tension, less teacher stress, and more effective teaching and learning.

 

(VIT Professional development activity hours: 2, 4 or 6)

A5:  Working in the here & now:  applying and working with practical behaviour management skills

Three 2 hour back-to-back practical sessions focusing on today's classroom behaviour management needs.  Each session works interactively with participants using case studies relevant to situations faced by participating teachers.  Participants' own concerns are also addressed.

Topics covered:  How to put on the "Coat of Many Pockets."  Becoming aware of covert issues disrupting the classroom.  Tuning-in to students.  How to know when to act and what skills to use.

Intended outcomes:  The acquisition of practical skilled responses to a wide range of common classroom misbehaviours.  In addition, participants will learn targeted strategies for dealing with ongoing misbehaviour.

(VIT Professional development activity hours:  6)

 

 General Training Options

All courses can be modified to match the needs of the school, or teacher group.

Schools can also stipulate the whole content of their seminar / workshop.

Each seminar or workshop is planned around the school's specific needs, requirements and objectives.

 

Every school and each teacher face a unique set of issues and problems.  All workshops and seminars are prefaced by consultation with the school and staff, and the workshop topic content is planned around day to day needs, issues and difficulties.

 

Comprehensive training option:

— A 4 module comprehensive training programme is available.  This is spread over four terms and involves two 2 to 4 hour workshops per term.

 

Our discipline ethos

Children must individuate to function successfully as adults.  They must be allowed to develop within boundaries which enhance that process.  This implies that teachers must live with the ambiguity of permitting some appropriate acting-out and having to impose limits.  The limits appropriate to school are different from those in the home, but only different in extent, not in character.  The consequences of transgressing clear limits lies with the transgressor and not with the limit-setter, the "system", or the social milieu.

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For all course enquiries

 

Section 'B' Workshops

Are best dealt with over two days but if necessary can be presented in condensed form in one day.

B1:  Beginning and Returning Teachers: essential behaviour management skills

This two day seminar/workshop is designed to equip teachers with essential insights into childhood and adolescent behaviour.  The understanding gained forms the basis for techniques and strategies with which to manage student conduct.  Practical classroom skills are introduced and practised.

Topics covered:  Discipline planning, behaviour management planning, teacher responses and behaviour messages, how to develop a management strategy and practical skills for managing student behaviour.  Resiliency.  Skills for managing challenging students and all acting-out behaviour.

Intended outcomes:    Teachers acquire a process of management that is simple in outline, easy to apply and extremely practical.  They gain an understanding of behaviour that enables effective classroom management. Teachers learn the impact of their response and are then able to change student behaviour.

(VIT Professional development activity hours:  12)

B2:  The middle years:  moving into adolescence and young adulthood (Upper primary and high school years)

A two day seminar workshop focusing on the issues of adolescent behaviour in the school and classroom.

Dealing with and managing the challenging and often difficult behaviours. How to respond in a manner which guides the young adolescent into responsible young adulthood

Age appropriate acting-out and other behaviours are dealt with by looking closely at the developmental needs of this age group.  Skills to manage these behaviours are practiced and role-played.

 

(VIT Professional development activity hours:  6 or 12)

B3:  Early years behaviour management:  behavior issues (Pre school - elementary / primary years)

A two day seminar workshop focusing on the behaviour issues faced by teachers in the early childhood teaching years.

The workshop content looks closely at the developmental needs of young children.  It lays the foundations for social and emotional competency and resiliency.  Skills enabling teachers to manage the behaviours of this age group are practised and role-played.

(VIT Professional development activity hours:  12)

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For all course enquiries

 

 "5-Step"©

Incorporating the "Interactive Management Process"©

 

Five Steps to Effective School Wide Behaviour Management

5-Step is a self-sustaining cost effective whole school behaviour management programme. It develops a team approach to behaviour management in which the teaching staff as a whole is engaged and committed to managing student behaviour positively and proactively. This alters the school culture to one which can confidently contain challenging student behaviour where it happens most; in the classroom between teachers and students and between students themselves.

Overview

The practical skills needed to manage any challenging student teacher or student student interactions is the basis of the initial training.  The skills are learned, practised, easily internalized and then integrated into a proactive student management process, including planning for behaviour.

Teacher behaviour support teams are then created to sustain, reinforce and perpetuate the programme while providing a safe collegial environment which enhances the behaviour management skills as well as professional practice in general.

There is no right or wrong way to manage behaviour, but some ways are more effective than others.  The essence of the skills taught is that they enable teachers to have firm control of their classrooms while enabling their students a maximum amount of autonomy within clearly delineated boundaries.  This creates a controlled learning environment in which both teacher and student have safety in the knowledge that their roles and expectations are mutually understood, and that this reflects the whole school’s values.

The interactive interpersonal skills learned by teachers are a synthesis of the most useful and practical cognitive techniques from all prominent seminal thinkers and researchers in the field of student behaviour management.  These include Haim Ginott, Rudolf Dreikurs, William Glasser, Sternberg & Salovey and others.

The 5-step programme empowers teachers to be better managers of behaviour, to develop a cohesive school behaviour management team and to build long lasting positive changes into their management of student behaviour.  The principles of prevention and positive action underlie this process.

To achieve the programme’s goals, teachers are guided to constantly use and practice the new skills they learn.  This facilitates the internalisation of the values inherent in the programme.  The methodology is designed to provide teachers with both practice and support.  The support ensures that teachers commit themselves to being actively involved in the creation and management of their own and the school’s new behaviour management approach.

The programme provides teachers with consultant support both personally in the classroom and electronically by email thereafter, - enhancing successful implementation and achievement of required outcomes.   By the time the consultant has completed the 5 steps the team is thereafter able to provide the support role and guide the programme themselves.

It is recommended that the 5 steps be spread over a year but this can be adapted to needs.

 

Outcomes

Using the Interactive Management Process© teachers develop a commitment to use the skills in their everyday activities and to continuously manage and plan for behaviour.  This produces teachers skilled in managing all classroom interactions and results in substantial change in student behaviour and attitude to learning.

Teachers become aware of the impact their responses have on student behaviour.  They realize and act on the knowledge that to manage students effectively, they must manage themselves first and by understanding student needs and motivations, are then able to manage student behaviour skillfully and efficiently.

Teachers Learn the 5 core elements of the Interactive Management Process© (IMP):

  1. Prevention:  How to prevent behaviour problems starting or recurring and how to limit those in progress.

  2. Correction: How to use Assertive Redirection of student misbehaviour to actively manage a student's behaviour.

  3. Support: How to teach students to manage their own behaviour.

  4. Follow-through: How to manage the whole situation and all its elements when the student has already transgressed, has gone too far and is in now in serious trouble (managing student, class, school and parents.)

  5. Affirmation: How to build a sense of self-worth out of small successes to improve motivation, cooperation and engagement.

Programme Delivery

The programme is spread over 4 consecutive terms and is adaptable to the school’s timetable. 

Schools can choose to run the workshops as two full day workshops or they may prefer to run them as half days or as two hour sessions after school over the 4 terms = total time 12 – 15 hours.   

There are 2 - 3 days of classroom observation and mentoring, plus 3 two hour sessions with support teams – once a term starting in the second term, plus an option of a parent evening workshop.  

There is close liaison for ongoing panning and assessment between the BME facilitator and the school’s behaviour team representative.

  (VIT Professional development activity hours:  30 - 39)

 

The 5-Step Programme

Incorporating the Interactive Management Process

Step 1:

Observation, Analysis, Assessment and Planning
 

A non threatening process of working beside teachers in the classroom, observing student behaviour, becoming familiar with the problems, the issues, classroom process and the students themselves.  This is followed by individual discussions with teachers who will then work together to plan practical management strategies to incorporate into their overall management plan to implement over the coming term.

This can take anything from 2 or 3 days to a week, depending on the number of teachers involved e.g. whole school or school teams, or year levels.

The facilitator monitors the process and liaises with the principal or appropriate staff member with regard to individual teacher needs for behaviour and classroom planning and support.

Teachers then work with these guidelines, calling upon support by email when needed.

Step 2:

Acquiring new Behaviour Management Skills and Establishing the School's Behaviour Management Team
 

A Seminar Workshop – full or half day – with whole staff or a section of the school involved in the programme e.g. middle years, junior primary/pre-school, years 2-5 years 7-10 or whole school.

Teachers are introduced to a process of management which focuses them on working proactively and positively.  They have planning guidelines, an increased understanding of why students misbehave and strategies for control.  They then begin to practise and build their repertoire of skills to best manage student behaviour.   As a staff, they begin to develop common goals and a common behaviour management language.  

All they have acquired in this seminar workshop is to be taken into the classroom and school, practised and reported on during the ensuing classroom visits and teacher discussions.  These are then reviewed in the follow up seminar workshop.

Step 3:

Ongoing Assessment, Analysis and Support
 

Return visit – working beside teachers in the classroom; to support, guide and assist in their management and assessment of behaviour and to guide the building of their interactive skills base and to facilitate their behaviour plan for the coming term.

Step 4:

Seminar Workshop
 

Reflecting on achievements, dealing with ongoing challenges, building on previous work done and developing further skills and strategies in response to specific issues.

The workshop focus is on following up and managing those more difficult behaviours and supporting teachers in their particular areas of need.

Step 5:

Preparation to Pass Over Support to the Behaviour Focus Team
 

Back in the classroom with teachers; supporting, assisting, enabling and empowering. Assessing achievements to date and planning together for future classes.   Establishing the team process to take over teacher support.  Leaving teachers enabled and empowered as members of a school team and feeling confident in their student and classroom management ability.

5-Step enquiries

 

Managing the Hidden Curriculum

Most misbehaviour is voluntary but other forms of undisciplined acting-out are driven by age-related developmental needs or by individual problems.  These 3 groups form an understanding that misbehaving students either; don’t behave, won’t behave, or can’t behave.  The different groups follow agendas which together form the Hidden Curriculum in every classroom.  Teachers must engage this “curriculum” throughout their teaching career by having to manage all forms of behaviour.

The 3 day course teaches the interactive interpersonal skills needed to effectively and efficiently manage behaviour generated by the Hidden Curriculum. 

You will learn

DAY 1:   PROACTIVE MANAGEMENT

  • Understand why students misbehave & what motivates behaviour

  • Prevent misbehaviour, so students can behave

  • Generate a positive mindset by learning how to establish cooperative student engagement

  • Plan for the hidden curriculum & classroom control

 

DAY 2:   INTERACTIVE MANAGEMENT

  • Gain knowledge of a working process and learn the skills and techniques of successful interactions

    • between students and teachers especially when students "don't" or "can't" behave and

    • between yourself and parents or colleagues to build better communication

  • Practice new engagement skills to improve relationships and motivation

 

DAY 3:   RESPONSIBLE MANAGEMENT

  • Model, manage and teach for responsibility, resilience and resolution

  • Develop strategies to bring about changes in behaviour when students can't or won't behave

  • Practice re-engagement skills to re-establish cooperative learning relationships

    •

 

(VIT Professional development activity hours:  18)

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