First Response

One of the five types of circles we teach educators to deploy in their classrooms is Response Circles. The others are Check-in, Check-Out, Preparation and Learning Circles. I remember my very first Response Circle. I’d only just read a few initial pieces about practicing restoratively and was intrigued enough to try it. Unfortunately, I wasn’t…

The System Mismatch

Our judicial system has been the most leaned-on method of controlling the community’s behaviour for centuries. That system isn’t perfect, and that’s why we need more than one tool for encouraging the right behaviours and curbing the troubling ones.  For this reason, options like Restorative Justice have gained prominence in recent decades because of the…

The Bullying Games

Last week, a story from the US caught my attention for all of the usual depressing reasons. It’s the story of a teen who took her own life following horrendous violence and bullying. I read the story and then watched the public commentary on social media. I was saddened to read that the most common…

Slippage

I’ve heard many teachers bemoan that Term 1’s largest challenge is getting the students back into school shape. Many seem to have forgotten certain key knowledge pieces, fundamental skills, and behavioural traits. But what about us? Is there any teaching slippage over the break that leaves you performing just below your optimum or the level…

Bolted to the floor

To most Teachers, the notion that context is a primary driver of both behaviour and engagement stands to reason. If you’re reading this at home on the couch with the quiet hum of a kettle warming up in the background, you’ll likely engage with the message pretty well. And your behaviour is likely to also…

Why coping sucks

I cope with some stuff in my life that I probably shouldn’t be coping with. For instance, I have a troublesome right knee, and I live in a two-storey home.  So, I cope with the stairs.  On that knee’s worst days, it bloody hurts too.  The truth is, I should be heading to the physio…

Getting lucky

When you work in a highly variable environment you experience inconsistency of outcome, based on the variables in play that day. For example, as somebody who works in a school, you do completely bonkers things like plan for consistency of outcome … and then invite several hundred wild, unfinished brains to wander aimlessly into your…

My word

I suck at goal setting. I tend to just write aspirational statements that sound good, but that I also poorly prioritise. My psychology is to attend to my goals … later on. As a result, my goals have regularly failed to change my daily conduct. And so, a few years back now, I became one…

Emu Parades

I’ll bet that you know a non-school leader seeking an edge or inspiration in their work who has found it in the New Zealand All Blacks rugby team. Their mantra of “sweeping the sheds” has become a lightning rod for any leader looking to foster selflessness, humility and the priority of the collective within the…

Group projects

I think the wisest words I heard a teacher say in 2022 came from a secondary teacher I met in Term 2. We were discussing “recovering” from whatever the last couple of pandemic years have been.  We discussed, as a whole staff, what the strategies and the attitudes were that we’d need to cease surviving…