Being a nice teacher means sometimes being the bad guy.

One of the best pieces of advice I was given when I started my PGCE was this: “You are not their friend.” Unfortunately, like many student teachers, I briefly fell into the “favourite teacher” trap. I like to think that I have climbed out of it. However, an article I read in the TES appears to be trying to direct teachers straight into the pit. (https://www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-views/being-a-nice-teacher-works-my-pupils-me-and-i-them-all-them)

I have three main issues with this article:

I am not a miracle worker.

This blog seems to perpetuate the damaging notion that if you are good enough at managing behaviour in your classroom, the children will behave. Apparently, if your seating plan is good enough, you can achieve silence and an entire classroom of pupils who are on task. If you don’t have silence, that’s the fault of your poor seating plan, isn’t it?

I like to think that I have quite a formidable reputation at my school; I have reached the point where my obsessions about uniform and pupils not being down my wing during breaks mean that my mere presence causes children to roll down their sleeves and move along. However, this has very little to do with my booming voice or impressive 4 ft 11” stature. My school has a clear and firm behaviour policy. I apply that behaviour policy calmly and consistently and the pupils are aware of that.

I tried to cultivate the same reputation at my previous school. However, the complete lack of behaviour policy and emphasis on “managing behaviour within the classroom” led to me feeling hoarse, ineffectual and eventually resorting to bargaining with pupils to try and get some learning done. The result? Lots of ‘computer time’, very little learning but (sometimes) a nice, quiet classroom.

Having a strong personality and good relationships with my classes certainly grease the wheels, but they are not the core of good behaviour. The ‘classroom by classroom’ approach puts undue pressure and work on teachers, limits the effectiveness of consequences and makes it unlikely that teachers will ask for support, for fear of being judged.

Believing in consequences does not make me a “robotic punisher”.

The author of this piece actually says that the “this ‘walk the talk’ approach is nonsense”. After all, they don’t want to be a “robotic punisher”. It appears that the second damaging notion in this article, very simply, is the idea that giving out sanctions is bad and should be avoided wherever possible.

I completely disagree. I do not enjoy giving warnings or isolating pupils. I make a huge show of how disappointed I am if I have to isolate someone or set a detention. That does not mean that these consequences should not exist or that I should remove them once I have handed them out. In my eyes, the “nicest” thing I can do for pupils is to be completely fair and make sure they are aware of my expectations. Part of that is being clear with consequences. Once I have given a warning, that is it; I do not shout, I do not “bark” and I do not “humiliate”. I simply give the sanction, explain why I have done so and continue teaching. Consequences are not about fear; they are about creating responsible adults.

As soon as teachers start retracting sanctions or “threatening pupils with a detention” only to let them “skip off into the distance” at the end of a lesson, they are sending one very clear message: you may not have to take responsibility for your actions; it depends on how well you can charm me at the end of the lesson. In this situation, classroom expectations are ultimately uncertain and pupils are much more likely to take advantage of this ambiguity.

Believing in consequences does not mean that I don’t care about my pupils.

I work in a school with a “no excuses” behaviour policy. According to this blog, my school should be uncaring “boot camp” and I should be a drill sergeant who never listens to my pupils and continually barks orders. There is the heavy implication in this article that my high expectations of behaviour mean that I do not care about my children as human beings.

This could not be further from the truth. I have exceptionally high expectations of my pupils and I enforce these standards because I care about them. I want to show my pupils that I know they are capable of working hard for 75 minutes. I want to show my pupils that they can do the hard work required to be successful. I want my pupils to grow up to be responsible and hard-working adults. Unfortunately, this often means I have to be the bad guy.

Last year, I grabbed a handful of year 11s on their way out of the door on a Friday afternoon for an after school session before their final history exam. Needless to say, they were not happy. I saw behaviour which was completely out of character for many of those pupils, ranging from fiddling to raising their voices at me. I had taught most of those pupils since year 7 and I cared about them deeply. As a result, I reinforced my expectations and I used the school’s policy. Having to do so tore me up and I spent a long time after that lesson sat at my desk feeling like an ogre. However, the hugs I got from those pupils when they got their results told me that 2 years of hard graft and high expectations had been worth it, even if it felt awful at the time.

The issue with the word “nice” is that it is exceptionally difficult to define. This is probably the reason behind the giant “NICE IS BANNED” synonym display which I remember from my year 4 classroom and which probably adorns the walls of thousands of teachers across the country. Therefore I agree with the title of this blog: being a nice teacher works. However, to me “being nice” doesn’t mean being a pupil’s friend or “learning partner”; it means wanting to create responsible adults who get good results, even if that sometimes means looking like the bad guy.