The Facebook Fallout

An online summer feud has split your otherwise perfect new Y4 class into warring factions. But how can you control bad behaviour that starts at home, asks Paul Dix...

All the adults agree: Year 4 are an utter pleasure to teach. Over the last few years they have been moulded into a disciplined and determined group of learners. In the final weeks of term, the annual ‘who gets what’ announcement had you weeping with joy. Whilst fending off death stares and disingenuous congratulations from jealous colleagues, you began to imagine a year of utopian teaching in which children drive their intensive progress while you float around the classroom sprinkling encouragement like a modern day Mary Poppins. You plan for a great summer holiday free from the usual intensive planning to mitigate against perpetual low-level disruption, unruly children and troublesome parents.

The arrival of the children back from their summer break wakes you violently from your happy place. The traditional tales of long summers have been replaced with visceral anger borne from a summer of online nastiness. Collaboration has been replaced with separation and the children have already fused into warring camps. There are notes from parents deposited on your desk detailing the horrors of social media comment crimes, and numerous forceful requests that “MILLY/ SAM/ AUSTIN IS NOT TO SIT WITH, PLAY WITH OR SPEAK TO CHARDONNAY/ OSCAR/ LAURIE EVER AGAIN”. Your joyously crafted seating plan, playfully created on a sun lounger, suddenly appears woefully inadequate. As you call out the register there are nasty sniggers and worrying whispers. You need to remould this class into a collaborative community before they take ‘independent learning’ to its extreme.

How do you respond?

A. Sort out the parents

Write to all parents immediately. You are not going to have the promise of your most disciplined class ruined by bad parenting.

B. Tweak your teaching

Teach collaboration and unravel the issues between children through the curriculum, not as a separate ‘behaviour issue’.

C. Stamp your authority

Enforce the seating plan. Knock the children back into shape with a good old-fashioned dictatorial approach. “YOU WILL SIT WHERE I PUT YOU!”

A. Sort out the parents

Perhaps writing the letter at breaktime and then deciding to email it to all parents immediately was not your best decision. The tone of the letter was harsh, mentioning ‘parenting skills’ was a bit strong and your insistence that it is illegal for children to have a Facebook/ Snapchat/ Twitter account was definitely a foolish leap into no-man’s-land.

As you announce to the children (a little angrily) that you have written to every parent, a numbness blunts the excitement of the first day back. That evening, just as you are thinking that you should have checked with the head before hitting ‘send’, a tidal wave of response comes in from furious parents – many copied into the head, chair of governors, and Sir Wilshaw himself! You poked the hornets’ nest and predictably got stung. Some parents are incredulous that you appear to have given up and started blaming them before coffee on the first day. Others resent the accusation that their children are causing trouble online when they have been away all summer/ don’t have a computer/ don’t even know what SnapChat is.

Talking behaviour

* How can you get the parents to supervise their child’s online activities?

* At what age is it legal for children to have their own social media accounts?

* Is it ever right to communicate behaviour issues to all parents, regardless of their child’s involvement?

B. Tweak your teaching

Instead of spending the first day/ week/ half term going round and round in ‘behaviour circles’, you try to patch relationships and teach collaboration through some intensive peer-assessment training.

You lead the children through some sentence stems and structures that will be used to feed back to others. You turn them away from their squabbles using intensive training on how to give feedback that is focused, accurate and never nasty. Children practise this looking at anonymous pieces of work and they find themselves complimenting those who they previously had nothing good to say about.

You develop the lesson into group presentations and the children are asked to give personal, verbal feedback that demands a ratio of three positive observations to one criticism. Your skilled manipulation of groupings means that children launch into positive conversations with sworn enemies without question. Using paper wristbands, each child records the best feedback they have been given. They soon forget their irritations and happily discuss feedback with each other, comparing paper wristbands and targets. At breaktime, you use detailed examples of outstanding feedback that you have heard to prove to the children that they can leave the ugliness of summer rumours behind them. You remind them how great they are at working together. As they walk out to break, they are talking again.

Talking behaviour

* Is it ever appropriate to suspend learning to deal with behaviour issues with the whole class?

* How do you model effective feedback when you are touring the room?

* Do you have sentence stems for peer conversations posted around the room?

C. Stamp your authority

Even though your seating plan was created through the haze of Retsina, sunscreen and over-friendly waiters, you resolve to stick to it. As the plan is revealed to the children, a chorus of complaint erupts. It takes you four lunchtime detentions, two phone calls to parents and three children sent out to force them into submission. As the lessons begins, it is clear that genuine collaboration has been lost to collective sneering and deafening silences. As the children become more dysfunctional as learners, you find yourself having to service the needs of every individual. The queue by your desk snakes beyond the sinks and small disagreements periodically erupt like indoor fireworks. As the list of sanctions rises, positions become entrenched on all sides. In desperation and a fit of post- holiday madness, you release everyone from the seating plan after lunch and let them sit where they want. One groups of girls immediately barricade themselves into the reading corner, and as tensions rise you notice boys throwing gang signs. The classroom is soon divided into post codes and trainers hang threateningly from the strip lighting. You have forced tight collaboration, they have accepted, but with strictly defined limits. The dream of interdependent learning is lost until you can get everyone to lay down their weapons/ pencil sharpeners/ really annoying pokey thing and talk.

Talking behaviour

* What are the essential elements of your preparation for a new class?

* How much notice should you take of the reputation of a class?

* How are you now going to make the peace between the children?

Your behaviour style

A. Blameless

You cannot control what happens at home, even though you may disagree with it. If you need to speak to certain parents then do so privately. Emailing everyone always starts tongues wagging and makes the problems of a few families everyone’s business.

Relentless

B. You know that stopping the world while we deal with ‘behaviour issues’ is more often than not a waste of time. By tweaking what you are teaching, you can model how you need the children to work with each other and give them clear boundaries. Structuring the children’s talk so it’s about learning allows them to exchange assessment ideas fearlessly.

Enforcer

C. If you feel that enforcing your seating plan is central to the management of the children’s behaviour then it can be done without recourse to heavy sanctions. Painting yourself into a corner is never going to end cleanly.

About the author

Paul Dix is lead trainer at Pivotal Education. For free behaviour tips, resources and training see the website (PivotalEducation.com). Paul’s weekly podcast is free (PivotalPodcast.com).