Managing Behaviour
One of the more challenging aspects of tutoring can be managing student behaviour. In your role as a Yipiyap, you are working at school to offer your expertise and passion for your subject, not to be a ‘disciplinarian’. However, it’s important to remember that you are, of course, working with young people, some of whom might find working in an educational environment to be extremely challenging. Therefore, misbehaviour is almost always inevitable.
Whilst you are not expected to deal with misbehaviour as such, there are things that you can do to prevent it from arising in the first place. In this article, we’ll be looking at strategies to support you with this, but then we’ll also dig deeper into what approaches you can take if you’re ever faced with some tricky behaviour.
Firstly, what can you do to prevent behavioural issues?
Step 1: Build The Foundations
Building positive relationships with your students and creating a positive working environment can significantly influence their behaviour. When students feel respected and valued, they are more likely to behave well and engage in the learning process.
When you have your first introductory session with a student or group, feel free to explain why you are working at school in the first place. Without being too informal, you can discuss that you are on a gap year, have only just left school recently yourself and have decided to work at school because you’d like to make a difference. Whilst this may seem obvious, when students realise that you are simply only there to help, and were only in their shoes a little while ago, this will make you a role model in their eyes and may make them more likely to engage with you.
Other tips to help build this solid relationship are:
Get to Know Your Student(s)!
Take an interest in their lives, hobbies, and challenges. Ask them questions about what inspires them. This helps you connect on a personal level. Feel free to make notes if this helps you remember!
Be Approachable
Try to create an atmosphere where students feel comfortable sharing their thoughts and concerns, and find a healthy balance between friendly discussion and work discussion.
Positive Reinforcement
Acknowledge and praise good behaviour and effort. Your students will appreciate it! It’s about celebrating individual wins, for some students a win might be completing a task, for others it might be them actually showing up!
Step 2: Set Clear Expectations From The Get-Go
One of the most effective ways to manage behaviour is to establish clear expectations right from the beginning. So, when you have that first introductory session, discuss expectations with your students. Make sure these are reasonable and easy to understand. For example:
Punctuality: Emphasise the importance of arriving on time.
Respect: Encourage respectful communication and behaviour towards everyone in the group.
Participation: Explain that active participation is expected but in a manner that doesn’t disrupt others.
By involving students in setting these rules, you give them a sense of ownership and responsibility.
Remember, you are a role model for your students, so you should always model the behaviour that you expect from them. If you want your students to be punctual, make sure you show up on time. If you want them to be respectful, respect them too!
The Approaches
Now, we’ll look at some specific strategies & approaches for managing behaviour. Remember, every student will respond to methods differently, so depending on the individual and/or the group and its dynamic, managing misbehaviour is by no means a one-size-fits-all set up!
The Personal Approach
If you have one specific student acting up, you might try a more personal approach.
Use the room: Try pulling up a chair or crouching next to them to initiate a more private conversation. Physically lowering yourself to their level can help make the offer of support more personable and less overbearing, so try to avoid simply standing over them – you want this initial attempt to be more of a conversation than a telling off!
Identify the cause: You can then provide them with the space to voice any concerns they might have or challenges that they’re facing. Maybe they’re finding the work too difficult and would benefit from a few minutes of extra one-to-one support. Maybe they’re finding the work too easy and are getting distracted, so you might consider setting them up with a slightly more difficult task.
Maybe it’s something going on more personally that is causing them to misbehave. Check in about how everything is at school and at home – provide them with the space to open up to you.
Depending on their response, you can then cater your support to suit their specific needs which will hopefully enable them to more effectively stay on track during the session!
2. The Redirection Approach
Sometimes, it can be easy for conversations to go a little off topic. You’ve asked the student(s) what they got up to over the weekend, and they’re now very animated and not quite getting on with the task at hand. It does happen, and it’s not the end of the world (we do, after all, want sessions with you as tutors to be spaces where students feel like they can express their enthusiasm for things!), but what you want to avoid is feeling like you have no control over the session, if the conversations become a little bit too free flowing!
Rather than sternly shutting down the chatter, you can try to redirect or effectively steer the conversation back to the relevant topic.
How do I do this? You can attempt this by integrating what it is that’s being spoken about into the lesson if it can be made relevant. For example, if a group of students are talking about the football match they watched last night, can the sport or a specific footballer be included in an example task? Are you able to combine the topic of interest amongst the students with the topic that they need to be focusing on? Not only does this help with productivity, but it can also make difficult topics seem more accessible and fun.
What if the topic can’t be made relevant? You can calmly but assertively guide the students back to the topic at hand with phrases like “I’m glad we’re so passionate about this topic, but let's get back to the work we need to complete” or “That sounds really interesting! But why don't we do a bit more work now and then we can carry on talking about it after all of the work is finished.”
You don’t need to shut down the conversation unpleasantly or cause potential conflict by acting uninterested, but this method gives you a bit more autonomy as to when the students can continue to discuss what it is that’s distracting them from their work.
3. The Collaborative Approach
Integrating collaborative tasks into group sessions can be a useful tool to manage behaviour.
How do I do this? There are lots of different group activities you could introduce to your students, Head to the small group sessions article to find some specific examples of the activities you could try!
Why does this work? Collaborative tasks encourage productivity and positive relationships amongst students as they work together to complete work whilst sharing and listening to each other’s ideas.
They can also increase engagement. For some students, sitting quietly to complete work for upwards of 45 minutes can be really challenging, so if you can break up that time by introducing more collaborative and interactive activities, it can make sessions much more manageable. It’s also fun to see how many great ideas are produced when students work together!
4. The Bitesized Approach
Another way of managing behaviour is integrating short breaks into sessions. This method can be particularly useful for students who, again, struggle to stay focused for long periods of time.
How do I do this? You might consider having students complete 15 minutes of work and then giving them a 5 minute break, and completing this process until the session is complete.
Why does it work? This just gives the students a bit of a breather, and if they know that they’re going to be having a break, it might encourage them to work that little bit harder and concentrate that little bit more during the allocated working time!
What if none of these approaches work?
If you’ve tried all of these approaches and your student(s) just won’t settle, here’s what you can do:
Give gentle warnings
If you need to, you can give gentle verbal warnings to your student(s). These shouldn’t be overly strict and can be a simple reminder of expectations or a warning that if misbehaviour continues, you might need to get another member of staff involved.
Take the learner outside
If the rest of the group is working well, you can take the learner outside for a chat about their behaviour. Sometimes being one-to-one is more beneficial as they may open up to you about why they are behaving this way,
Report to a member of staff
As a last resort, you can take the learner back to their classroom. Sometimes you have to think about the other pupils in the session and how their learning may be affected. Just make sure to report the reasonings behind this to the classroom teacher.
Next Steps
Student Reflection
If you’ve had quite a tricky session or a student has misbehaved, encourage them to reflect on their behaviour. This can help them understand the impact of their actions and take responsibility.
After an incident, ask the student to think about:
What happened and why?
How has their behaviour affected others?
What could they do differently in the future?
This approach helps students develop self-awareness and makes them more likely to make better choices next time.
Self Reflection
Finally, if it helps, take time to reflect on your behaviour management strategies after each session. Consider what worked well and what could be improved.
If you encounter recurring issues, think about why they might be happening and how you can address them differently.
Behaviour management is a skill that develops over time, so don’t be discouraged by setbacks. Use them as learning opportunities to improve your approach!
As a tutor, utilising methods of managing misbehaviour is certainly an expectation, but resisting poor behaviour, particularly if it is extremely disruptive and consistent, is not, and surpasses your responsibilities as a tutor. You are there to support the students academically, so, if you find yourself struggling to manage misbehaviour, please know that support is available both onsite at school, and here at Yipiyap. The overall goal is for you to keep students engaged and on track, and whilst this might mean being a little bit more creative in your approach to sessions, it shouldn’t mean that you find yourself worried about managing a particularly difficult session without support.