As a teacher, the most important thing you need to develop is a professional life that is totally separate from your 'normal' life. You put skills and interests into this professional life that relate only to teaching, communication between your normal life and professional life is one-way, you only transfer skills and interests from your 'normal' life to your professional life. So, anything that happens in your professional life does not filter into your personal life. This is key to realising that when you are infront of your pupils, you are not the same person who loves to eat chocolate, or smoosh infront of the television, instead you are an objective individual. Neither do your pupils get to know 'you'. They don't need to. They need someone to teach them and tend to them in a professional manner, not to be their friend. Also, if a pupil calls you a name to provoke a reaction, or shouts out an insult, it is not personal, because they don't know you personally. So, you must not react to it as you would in your personal life, but professionally.

The next key point is that you need to have a clear line drawn between what is acceptable, and what isn't. You need to make it absolutely clear what you accept and what you don't. As you will see, this doesn't have to involve shouting, or stating your 'rules'! It can be through subtle indications and other minor body language you may use in your everyday life. (However, if you are working with autistic children, subtle clues may go unmissed, so you must be careful how you use them).

Dealing with misbehaviour

How are you going to deal with bouts of misbehaviour? Well, there are levels of misbehaviour, from the absolute grande, to the minor, and you should have different responses for each level. We all remember a teacher from our schooling days who shouted at every little minor incident, so you need the skills of dealing with such levels. Your levels may be:

1. Shouting out during a question time
2. Talking while you are talking
3. Telling a joke at your expense
4. Being rude to another pupil
5. Hitting another child (primary-only hopefully!)
6. Hitting teacher (hopefully you will never experience this!)

What would you do if someone shouted out in class? It may go against your rule of 'no shouting', or 'raising your hand to speak'. Maybe ignoring them, or giving them a - what we like to call - 'parental' glance, that is, to look disappointed at their response, but not angry, and thank them when they follow the correct procedure. Subtle facial expressions are important, more-so for young pupils, but even for secondary teachers! You need to be three steps ahead of your pupils at all times, not just educationally, but behaviourally as well! This includes knowing how you would respond to certain situations so you are not flustered when it occurs.

You need to understand that behaviour management for most of us is something to learn. You have studied for years for the subject you are teaching, however, teaching itself brings about new skills you need to learn. Behaviour management training is just one such skill!

We believe these classroom behaviour ideas are a great way to help throw a 'curveball' to your pupils, different things will interest them, if you have their interest, you have them on-side. If they're onside, they're not misbehaving!