27: Steve Beckles-Ebusua: Teaching the un-teachables

“Failure is a future attempt at learning.” 

In ten years of teaching I can specifically recall on one hand the names of pupils who had me down and out on the classroom ring floor in terms of their excessive challenging behaviour.  Each teaching moment with these pupils created a daunting sensation in the pit of my stomach and overwhelming emotions of incompetency, where I believed myself to be ill equipped to manage their behaviour.  Those un-teachable moments can shatter your confidence and make you question your ability to teach effectively.  Experience has taught me that the repertoire of behaviour strategies is often not creative enough to tackle and address the challenging behaviour of some students.  Sometimes a re-thinking of the problem is what is required and often it can be as simple as meeting the child where they are, on a cultural, social, morale and peer hierarchical level.

Steve Beckles-Ebusua is an expert in helping teenagers and young adults to overcome self-defeating beliefs and habits holding them back from reaching their full potential.

Together Steve and I discuss why soft skills are anything but soft!  We share simple teaching techniques that can help radically transform a pupil’s behaviour and their ability to re-frame their thought-process. 

Episode take-aways:

·         Overcoming pupils' self-defeating beliefs

·         How to adapt your teaching to address challenging behaviour

·         Allowing pupils to physically experience the learning

What behavioural strategies work for you?  Share your thoughts with us via our Facebook page.