Have you ever had a difficult behaviour incident with a pupil? Maybe they've sworn at you, stormed out of the classroom or become aggressive, and then you've wondered, how am I supposed to work effectively with them the next time I see them? After working with schools and supporting them with SEMH for over 19 years, I've personally seen how the way adults handle those first interactions after an incident can either help rebuild the relationship with the pupil or set both them and the student up for another confrontation in class. So in this episode, I'm going to look at why repairing that relationship is fundamental to the adult's success in class, let alone the student's, why it's the adult's responsibility to take the first step and four practical things you can say and do to make that happen. Welcome to the School Behaviour Secrets podcast. I'm your host Simon Currigan, my co-host is Emma Shackleton, and we're obsessed with helping teachers, school leaders, parents and of course students when classroom behaviour gets in the way of success. We're going to share the tried and tested secrets to classroom management, behavioural special needs, whole school strategy and more, all with the aim of helping your students reach their true potential. Plus we'll be letting you eavesdrop on our conversations with thought leaders from around the world, so you'll get to hear the latest evidence-based strategies before anyone else. This is the School Behaviour Secrets podcast. Hi there, my name's Simon Currigan and welcome to this week's episode of School Behaviour Secrets and I'm the kind of man who makes Frodo Baggins look like a fashion icon, although to be fair I haven't quite reached the point of leaving the house without my shoes on yet. It's mostly because, and this is the literal truth, I've got baby soft feet and I'd feel every tiny piece of grit and gravel on the road and pavement. Anyway, enough oversharing, this week we're talking about what happens to the relationship between an adult and a pupil after a difficult behaviour incident, because just because the incident itself is over that doesn't necessarily mean everything is back to normal between the two of you. We'll look at why it's important to actively repair that relationship, why we shouldn't leave the responsibility for doing that with the child, and some simple things you can do to make the next interaction with them more positive when they return to class. And before we get into all of that, if you're finding these podcast episodes helpful make sure you've subscribed to School Behaviour Secrets in your podcast app and share this episode with a colleague who might find it helpful. It's free, it only takes a few seconds, and it helps us get these practical ideas in front of more teachers and school leaders. Okay, let's get into the meat of this podcast sandwich, which is not a sentence anyone should use ever. Imagine you've got a pupil in year eight, we'll call him Josh. Yesterday Josh had a pretty spectacular falling out with his teacher. He refused to follow an instruction, swore at her, made some really personal comments, and then stormed out of the room. The school dealt with the incident, Josh received an appropriate consequence not walking in bare feet like a hobbit for the day, because that would be weird, and now the following morning he's back in the classroom. So from the school's perspective the incident has been dealt with, job done, except there is still a problem. The teacher is understandably upset about what happened yesterday, and Josh is very aware of that. He comes into the room expecting the teacher to be annoyed with him, perhaps to be watching him more closely than the other pupils, or to jump on him the minute he puts a foot wrong, and the teacher, because of what happened yesterday, might be more difficult behaviour from Josh as well. It's all just awkward, treading on eggshells kind of stuff, and here's where things can go down the toilet, because when we're expecting someone to behave negatively towards us, we can start interpreting everything they do through a really negative prism. So the teacher gives Josh a perfectly ordinary instruction, and Josh just takes it as a mutter, something under his breath, and the teacher interprets that as the beginning of another confrontation. Both of them are looking for evidence that the other person's going to be difficult, and because they're looking for it, that means their brains are more likely to find it and lock onto it. And before you know it, yesterday's behaviour incident has become today's behaviour incident. Not because either of them necessarily wanted another confrontation, but because the damage to their relationship from yesterday hasn't been repaired yet. And I know I've said this before, but I think relationship is a really interesting word, because we use it in its noun form. The teacher and student had a tense relationship. The man and the woman had a romantic relationship. My baby soft feet had a difficult relationship with the pavement. That makes it sound like the relationship is this kind of independent thing, but the verb relate is much more important than the noun relationship. It's a much more accurate way of framing what's happening here, because it shows the people are in control of the way they interact with each other. The teacher and the student related tensely with each other. The man and the woman related romantically with each other. My baby soft feet relate... well, you get the idea. Relate creates agency for the people in the sentence. Relationship? Well, that sounds like something that's beyond your control. Now let's think about this from the teacher's perspective. If she's teaching Josh five times a week and they've got another six months together, leaving that relationship or the way they relate to each other in a damaged state isn't going to make her life any easier. In fact, it could make every future interaction more difficult than it needs to be. And that's why I think relationship repair is so important. It's not just something we do because it's kind or because we want students to feel accepted and valued. Although those things can still be true, it's something we do because as adults working in schools, it's directly in our own selfish professional interest to have positive functional relationships with the pupils we teach. We're more likely to see them cooperate. We're less likely to end up in unnecessary confrontations and frankly it makes the working day more pleasant for everyone including ourselves. Now I want to be clear about something before I go any further with this. I'm not saying that we should ignore unacceptable behaviour. If a pupil's hurt someone, broken a school rule or behaved aggressively, there may well need to be consequences. They may need to take responsibility for what they've done and make amends. And depending on the incident, that might involve a separate restorative conversation. But relationship repair is not the same thing as a restorative conversation. They do different jobs. A restorative conversation is about understanding what happened, recognising the harm done and working out how to put things right. Relationship repair is about rebuilding the connection between the child and the adult so they can continue working together in a positive way. And you can start doing that without having a big conversation about what happened yesterday. So here's the next question. Who should take responsibility for making this conversation happen? Because I can imagine some teachers listening to this will be thinking, hang on a minute, Joss was the one who swore at me. He was the one who stormed out. Made me feel uncomfortable. Why should I have to make the effort to rebuild the relationship? Surely he should be the one coming to me and apologizing. And I do understand that reaction when someone's rude or aggressive towards you. It's completely natural to feel that they should be the one putting things right. But I think we have to separate blame for the original behaviour from responsibility for repairing the relationship. Joss may be to blame or be responsible to take a more needs-led view for his actions. But as the professional, the teacher needs to take responsibility for opening the door to repairing that relationship. Sometimes we aren't to blame for what happens in class as the adult, but it remains our responsibility to fix it. And there are some very good reasons for that. Think about a child who's experienced trauma, for example. Perhaps they've grown up with adults who were unpredictable, whose default was to reject or push the child away or be emotionally unavailable. For some of those children, making a mistake or doing something wrong can trigger a deep sense of shame. Not just the feeling that they've done something bad, but that they are bad and that other people will reject them because of it. So after a behaviour incident, the child might genuinely believe that their relationship with the teacher is damaged beyond repair. They might want to reconnect, but have no idea how to do it because it's never been modeled or taught to them all because they don't believe they deserve another chance. And sometimes that can come out as even more rejection of the adult. They push the teacher away, perhaps... because they're expecting to be rejected themselves. Or take an autistic pupil. Now, obviously, autistic kids are all different, and I'm not suggesting this applies to all of them, but some autistic pupils may find the social and communication demands of repairing a relationship particularly difficult. They might struggle to interpret how the adult is feeling, work out whether they're still upset, or understand the unwritten social rules about what they're expected to say next in that situation. They might know that they want things to be okay again, but find it difficult to initiate that conversation and see it through. And other children, autistic or not, might simply feel so overwhelmed by embarrassment or anxiety that they can't bring themselves to approach the adult at all. So if we sit back and wait for the child to make the first move, we might be asking them to demonstrate emotional or social skills that they don't yet have. Skills that actually we may need to help them develop over time, but they don't have right now. And that's the important distinction. Again, taking responsibility for initiating that repair process doesn't mean the adult is taking responsibility for the child's behaviour. It means recognising that, as the adult, you are in a better position to get the relationship moving in a positive direction again, or how you relate to each other moving in a positive direction again. You've got more experience, more emotional maturity, and a professional responsibility and self-interest to make that relationship work. And even if you put all the arguments about the child's needs to one side for a moment, remember doing this will likely make your own job hour after hour in that classroom easier as well. So what does relationship repair actually look like? Well, the good news is it doesn't necessarily involve anything complicated. In fact, sometimes the simplest approaches are the most powerful. And I've got four practical ideas and strategies for you to think about next. The first strategy is to show that the relationship hasn't been completely broken. It's still workable. Let's go back to Josh coming into his classroom the after that difficult incident. Instead of ignoring him, giving him a cold look, or waiting for him to demonstrate some remorse before engaging with him, the teacher might simply say, Morning Josh, good to see you. That's it. Nothing big, nothing complicated. Or perhaps when there's a suitable moment, the teacher might say, Look, yesterday was difficult, but today's a fresh start. And the important thing here is the way it's communicated. We're not saying it through a warning underneath it, as in, Today's a fresh start, and you better not mess up because you know the way to isolation, right? We're genuinely communicating that whatever happened yesterday, the relationship hasn't been permanently damaged. There's a way forward. The pupil is still welcome in the classroom, and the adult is still willing to work with them. The second strategy is to try to connect with them through something ordinary, mundane, or boring that just happens in the pupil might find a direct conversation about the relationship kind of embarrassing, or threatening, or overpowering. So what I'm saying is you don't necessarily need to sit down face-to-face with them and announce, Hey Josh, it's time to repair our relationship. Let's start this with a trust fall. Sometimes a one-to-one focused conversation about putting things back to normal just is too So instead, look for a natural opportunity to have a normal interaction about something completely unrelated to what happened to the incident. Maybe Josh plays football, so the teacher asks, Look, how did your match go at the weekend? I didn't get to ask you yesterday. Or perhaps he's been working on a drawing, and she asks him how that's coming along. The subject itself isn't particularly important. What matters is that the adult is demonstrating an interest in the child as a person beyond their behaviour. It's a way of saying, without having to say it directly, I still see you as the same person I did before what happened yesterday. And for some pupils, chatting while you're doing something together rather than sitting face-to-face having an emotional conversation like a therapist and their patient can make that interaction easier. In fact, the very boringness of that interaction can kind of help kick-start the habits of the relationship, like restarting the engine in a car. And relationships are based on lots of tiny interactions that in themselves aren't earth-shattering. So it gets that process going again. Thirdly, separate the pupil from their behaviour. Okay, you've heard it and this is a distinction we bang on about loads in SEMH, but it's especially important to do it after something's gone wrong. We want the child to understand through what we say and what we do and how we say those things that we can be unhappy with their behaviour without simultaneously rejecting them as a person. So you might say, Josh, I wasn't happy about what happened yesterday and the way you spoke to me wasn't okay, but that doesn't mean we can't work together. It doesn't mean I've given up on you and we can still move forward from this. Notice that we're not excusing the behaviour there. We're still making our expectations clear. We're still kind of communicating that we're emotionally unhappy, but we're also making it clear that the pupil isn't forever defined by that moment in the classroom. And sometimes, by the way, the adult might need to take responsibility for their own part in what happened to help move things forward. Perhaps the teacher raised her voice unnecessarily or made an assumption that turned out to be wrong. In that situation, I've personally found there's nothing wrong with saying, I was right to stop what was happening yesterday, but I didn't handle that part of it as well as I could have and I'm sorry about that. And I'm not expecting a sudden rush of, oh sir, everything's absolutely fine from It doesn't mean that I, as the teacher, am apologizing for having boundaries or that I'm excusing Josh for taking responsibility for his behaviour. It means that I, as the adult, I'm modeling what accountability looks like. We're showing children that relationships can survive disagreements and mistakes and that people can acknowledge when they've got something wrong without losing their authority. The fourth approach is to create an opportunity for a positive experience together because, as I've already touched on, relationships are built through lots of small ordinary interactions throughout the school day. So perhaps the teacher gives Josh a small classroom responsibility or asks for his help with something or supports him to complete a piece of work successfully. And then when that interaction goes well, she can acknowledge it. Thanks Josh, that was really helpful. See, not overblown thanks. Thanks Josh, that was really helpful. Keeping it in perspective or you made a good start on that, well done. Again, it doesn't need to be a big production which is creating opportunities for the adult and the pupil to experience working together successfully. So yesterday's confrontation isn't the only recent interaction that kind of sets the tone for their expectations of one another and over time those positive experiences, a series of positive experiences, can help rebuild trust in a working relationship. Now if you're working with pupils who have experienced trauma or have SEND that affects their emotional regulation or relationships with adults, understanding the needs underneath their behaviour becomes especially important, especially when that behaviour has been embedded in the long term. And I've got a free SEND Behaviour Handbook that can help you with that. It looks at a range of needs including the effects of trauma and shame and ACEs and a range of other conditions and gives you practical advice for supporting those pupils in school. It includes practical useful strategies. You can download it for free. I'll put a link to download in the episode description. All you have to do is open up your podcast app, look at the description for this episode and you'll see the link and you can tap straight through. Or if you're listening to this in the car or you're listening to this in the gym, what you can do is you can go to beaconschoolsupport.co.uk when you've got off the treadmill or when you've finished your journey. Don't do this in the car, that'll be a nightmare. Go to beaconschoolsupport.co.uk. Yeah, don't get your laptop out on the dashboard, really don't do that. Go to beaconschoolsupport.co.uk when it's safe and then click on the free resources tab at the top of the screen and you will find the SCND behaviour handbook in the download section. So beaconschoolsupport.co.uk, click on the free resources tab and you'll see it near the top of the screen. Before we finish, there's one other point I want to make because it's easy to overlook. What if you make the first move and then the pupil doesn't respond positively? Let's say the teacher says, morning Josh, good to see you and Josh rolls his eyes, ignores her and walks straight past. Does that mean the attempt to repair the relationship has failed? Well, no, not necessarily because if a child learns through experience that adults reject them when things go wrong, one friendly greeting from the teacher isn't automatically going to change that belief. They may need to see the adult behaving consistently over time before they feel safe enough to start the process of reconnecting. So don't make their immediate reaction the measure of success. All you do is offer the opportunity to rebuild, reboot the relationship, you keep your expectations clear and you continue. treating them with warmth and respect. You can't force them to respond and you shouldn't keep pushing them if they aren't ready for it. All you do is keep the door open until hopefully they are ready in the future. And of course if an incident involves serious aggression or threats or safeguarding concerns, relationship repair needs to sit alongside, you know, appropriate safety arrangements and support from colleagues. Taking professional responsibility doesn't mean accepting abuse or putting yourself at risk. It means doing what you reasonably can in a safe and appropriate way to help rebuild that working relationship. So let's bring all of this together. After a difficult behaviour incident, it's worth remembering that resolving the incident and repairing the relationship are two different separate things. The people may need to face to take the responsibility for rebooting that relationship and that doesn't need to involve a lengthy, meaningful conversation. You can show that the relationship is still there, it's still workable. Start rebuilding it through ordinary interactions and remember to separate the child from their behaviour and create opportunities for positive experiences together, even if they are very small. And here's what I'd like you to think about this week. When you're working with students in school, is there a pupil you work with where the relationship has become a little strained, a little awkward, maybe after a previous behaviour incident? If there is, think about one small thing you could say or do today or tomorrow to start rebuilding that connection with them. Not a grand gesture, you're not giving them your last rolo. I mean, that's another reference that dates me, but the point's still solid. You're just doing something small but genuine that lets the child know that the door is still open. You're the expert in the children you work with, so you'll know what approach is most likely to help that particular student. And remember, repairing that relationship isn't something you're doing just for the child, you're doing it from self-interest because you've still got to teach them tomorrow, next week, and probably for quite a few months after that. And surely it's better for both of you if you're working together civilly and effectively rather than spending the rest of the school year expecting the worst from each other. If you found today's episode useful, please make sure you're following School Behaviour Secrets in your podcast app and leave us a quick rating or review. It really does help other teachers discover the podcast, and if you're already a regular listener but you haven't subscribed yet, I have to ask, what are you waiting for? Come here today, dress like an underfunded hobbit, to bring you this advice. The soles of my baby soft feet are on show, so the least you can do is press the follow or subscribe button. Or maybe I should frame that the other way around. Maybe it should be, if you press the follow or subscribe button, I'll stop showing the soles of my baby soft feet. Either way, I hope you have a brilliant week, and I can't wait to see you on the next episode of School Behaviour Secrets.