May 19, 2025 • 11 mins
You’ve followed the advice. You’ve implemented the strategies. You’ve worked your heart out – and still, that one student just isn’t responding. It feels hopeless. Like nothing’s shifting. Like all your effort is for nothing. If you’ve ever found yourself saying, “I’ve tried everything, and it’s not working,” this episode is for you.
IN THIS EPISODE, I DISCUSS:
- Why your strategies are working, even when it doesn’t feel like it
- The importance of patience when working with our most vulnerable students
- Why “keep going” is sometimes the most powerful advice
- What we can control – and what we have to let go of
So if you’re in that place right now – doing all the right things and still feeling stuck – I hope this episode gives you a bit of clarity and reassurance. You are making an impact, even if you can’t see it yet. Keep showing up, keep connecting, and be kind to yourself along the way.
Have a question, comment, or just want to say hello? Drop us a text!
RESOURCES AND MORE SUPPORT:
- Shop all resources
- Join The Behaviour Club
- My book! It’s Never Just About the Behaviour: A holistic approach to classroom behaviour management
- The Low-Level Behaviour Bootcamp
- Free guide: 'Chats that Create Change'
Connect with me:
- Follow on Instagram @the.unteachables
- Check out my website
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Oh, hi there teachers , welcome to the Unteachables
podcast.
I'm your host, claire English,and I am just a fellow teacher,
a toddler mama and a big oldbehavior nerd on a mission to
demystify and simplify thatlittle thing called classroom
management.
The way we've all been taughtto manage behavior and classroom
manage has left us playingcrowd control, which is not
(00:22):
something I subscribe to,because we're not dancers, we're
teachers.
So listen in as I walk youthrough the game, changing
strategies and I mean the thingsthat we can actually do and
action in our classrooms thatwill allow you to lean into your
beautiful values as acompassionate educator and feel
empowered to run your room witha little more calm and, dare I
(00:43):
say it, a lot less chaos.
I will see you in the episode.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Hello, fabulous teacher, welcome back to the
Unteachables podcast.
I'm Claire English and I can'twait to spend a bit of time with
you today talking about someclassroom management stuff,
because it's so desperatelyneeded.
So it's always exciting whensomebody joins me for an episode
of the pod.
So today is all about what todo when you've tried it all and
(01:13):
I hear it a lot and I've said itto myself, I've tried
everything.
I've tried that it's notworking, things aren't changing,
behaviour's not changing.
It's hard and it can feelhopeless and it can feel so
bloody frustrating.
And this episode I really justwanted to reframe that a little
bit and this episode is actuallyinspired by one of my fabulous
(01:34):
behavior clubbers who really isdoing it all Like she really is.
She's so incredible she's.
You know the way her practicehas developed is incredible the
behavior she's mitigated and howshe's gotten back on top of low
level disruptions and theimpact she's making in her
classroom.
But she's stuck on this onestudent and when I say she's
(01:54):
trying all of the things, she'strying all of the things and
obviously it's working with mostIncredible progress.
You know like she's doingincredible work in her classroom
.
But there's this one student,despite all of the work on
routines, despite what she'sdoing in terms of teaching and
learning support, despite theexpectation setting, despite
like living those expectationsin the day to day and setting
(02:16):
boundaries and investing in theemotional piggy bank and her own
teaching presence and thefollow up and literally every
single other little thing she'sdoing is incredible.
I'm so impressed Every time shecomes to speak to me.
I'm like you are like the modelof somebody who is like taking
accountability for what you cancontrol and doing those things
(02:37):
and like it's incredible.
But this student is still notcoming on board.
This one student.
He won't engage in behaviorchats, he won't engage with her
at all.
He just runs away, absolutelyruns away.
Just see you later, legs it.
And here was my advice to myincredible behavior clubber Keep
doing more of the same stuff.
(02:58):
Just keep doing what you'redoing.
Sometimes it really isn't aboutthe fact that you're doing
something wrong, like you justneed to do the same stuff a lot
of the time.
Actually, it's the fact thatyou haven't given it enough time
.
When we talk about the mostvulnerable students, the
students who are most impactedby trauma, the students who have
had really challengingexperiences at school, there is
(03:19):
no magic bullet.
The strategies we're using, theconnected strategies, the
strategies that de-escalate,that co-regulate, that develop
rapport, that hold highexpectations all of the things,
these are the strategies that.
All of the things, these arethe strategies that rewire the
brain.
But the brain of our studentdid not develop in that way that
they are presenting right nowovernight.
So we cannot expect thestrategies that we're using to
(03:41):
be impactful immediately Now.
That can feel really hard forus because we want to fix it, we
want to support them, we wantto get through to them, we want
to make our classroom a safespace for them and we believe in
them.
We do.
We believe in them so fiercelyand that they can have a better
future, a better life.
If only things were different.
And we try so hard to changethat narrative for them and it's
(04:04):
frustrating and it's drainingand it can make us feel like
crap because we're doing all thethings and investing and
pouring ourselves into thatstudent.
So I always say that we need tofocus on what we can control
and we just need to keep doingmore of that, without judgment,
without expectation, because wecan't control their response.
(04:24):
I had the wonderful Robin Gobleon my podcast a while back now,
but she is just incredible.
So she has a book calledRaising Kids with Big Baffling
Behaviors and she is justincredible at explaining, like,
what's happening in the brainand how we can create felt
safety for these children.
(04:45):
And one of the things that shesaid on this podcast that I've I
think I've quoted dozens oftimes since then is that we can
always offer safety.
We can present safety tostudents, we can offer rapport,
we can do all of the things, butwe cannot control whether or
not they accept that.
They actually don't have toaccept that, like they, like
(05:06):
their brains, we can't expectthem, after all of the things
they've gone through in theirlives, to immediately respond to
our offerings of safety and tosuggest that they just
immediately kind of let go ofall of those mechanisms in their
brain that has kept them safefor so long.
(05:28):
I think it's a bit of aprivileged thing to expect.
So we need to focus on what wecan control.
We need to offer safety, weneed to offer all of the things
we're offering to them, but wecan't force them to accept that.
We really can't.
We can control using power withand not power over strategies,
(05:50):
but we can't control whether ornot they accept that, whether
they trust us.
We can't control theirbehaviors.
So the actual advice that I gavethis beautiful teacher, this
teacher who is doing everythingthat she can, is to just keep on
doing what she's already doing,because sometimes the answer
isn't trying new things, it'sjust doing more of the same
(06:11):
thing.
You know these strategiesthey're not going to work
overnight.
You know she's already tryingto do it all.
So I really wanted to make surethat message was loud and clear
, that if one student inparticular is not coming on
board with your approach, oryou've got a handful of students
who are still really struggling, the approaches that we use
don't necessarily happenovernight, but they're always
(06:33):
going to be a better option thanthe alternative.
The alternative is to usedisconnecting strategies, power
over strategies, strategies thatget no buy-in and that are
taking 10 steps back withstudents rather than one micro
step forward, because I will, atany day of the week, on any on
any day of the week, choose totake a micro step forward or
(06:55):
even stand still in the sameplace with a student.
If they're not ready yet, thentake 20 steps back, because I've
used a strategy that isreinforcing their beliefs about
themselves, their beliefs aboutthe education system, their
mistrust of authority figures,their you know the failures that
people have had in the pastwith them when it comes to, like
(07:17):
you know, caregivers andparental figures and education
system and all those things.
We need to stay steady in whatwe're already doing and I know
that's really hard for us to do,because we want to make change.
And, to be very honest with you, I think and I said this to her
as well sometimes the studentswho are in our care they
(07:38):
probably would benefit from amore therapeutic placement
rather than a mainstream settingbecause of the needs that they
have just far outweigh what wecan provide for them, because
they do need intensive supportand sometimes we can't provide
that.
But I always would say that,student, there you're doing
(07:59):
everything you know.
Just keep on keeping on andkeep being open to working with
them.
Keep being open to you know,reaching out and touching base
and asking if they want to havea chat or, you know, try to
change it up a little bit and gofor a walk and talk or like
whatever it might be, but wejust have to keep on keeping on
sometimes.
(08:19):
So my beautiful, compassionate,empathetic, brilliant teachers
out there listening, who aredoing everything in their power
to support all of their youngpeople and not seeing the fruits
of their labors for some oftheir students.
I need you to please rememberthat you are making an impact,
an incredible impact.
You are changing things.
(08:40):
You are literally rewiringtheir brains just by showing up,
just by choosing to connectrather than disconnect, and no
matter how that student isresponding to that, it does not
change just how transformativethe work you're doing is.
And this is not me trying tolike be, oh, teachers of martyrs
and all that kind of stuff.
This is just me saying that thework you do matters and you are
(09:04):
making an impact.
And it can feel really hardsometimes, feeling like you're
not making an impact with thesestudents.
And I also just want to remindyou that you need to take care
of yourself, because this stuffcan be really hard on us and you
know, especially if we're thoseempathetic type teachers and we
kind of take it on and take ithome and we need to get really
good at leaving it at the doorand saying you know what like
(09:26):
this is a really important job,but it's still just my job and I
need to come here and I need toshow up in a certain way, but I
can't take that on, I can'tcontrol that, I need to leave it
at the door and I need to goand take care of myself.
Nothing reinforced that morethan when I had my daughter.
(09:46):
My gosh, I had my daughter andeverything changed for me and
I'm like I can't show up for her.
I can't come home If I'm atschool dealing with these big,
volatile, violent behaviors andshowing up for her in a way that
I have an emotional capacityfor, because you know, raising a
baby and having a toddler andall of the things is it's a
massive test on our own capacityand self-regulation and skills
in co-regulation.
(10:12):
I feel like that's the, that'sthe work of a parent, isn't it?
And you know, if I was going toschool every day and bringing
that heaviness home with me andnot having the capacity for that
, like I was just so afraid ofthe parent that I'd be able to
be for her and show up for her,so Like I was just so afraid of
the parent that I'd be able tobe for her and show up for her.
So it really reminded me of theimportance of us taking care of
ourselves and taking care ofourselves sometimes is by saying
(10:35):
, okay, well, that student doesneed support and I am willing to
do this in school and I'mputting the time and the effort
in.
But I need to go home and, youknow, have some boundaries
around my own emotional capacitywhen it comes to this work,
which is really hard for usempathetic teachers to do
sometimes.
So enough of that waffling.
This whole episode has been abig old waffle, but I hope it
has helped even one of you outthere that feels responsible
(10:58):
constantly for making thesemassive changes when sometimes
all you need to do is more ofthe same stuff and stop being so
damn hard on yourself.
So I am sending love for theweek ahead.
Please take care of yourself,please, please, please and until
next week.
Bye for now, lovely teachers.
Oh, hi there teachers , welcome to the Unteachables
podcast.
I'm your host, claire English,and I am just a fellow teacher,
a toddler mama and a big oldbehavior nerd on a mission to
demystify and simplify thatlittle thing called classroom
management.
The way we've all been taughtto manage behavior and classroom
manage has left us playingcrowd control, which is not
(00:22):
something I subscribe to,because we're not dancers, we're
teachers.
So listen in as I walk youthrough the game, changing
strategies and I mean the thingsthat we can actually do and
action in our classrooms thatwill allow you to lean into your
beautiful values as acompassionate educator and feel
empowered to run your room witha little more calm and, dare I
(00:43):
say it, a lot less chaos.
I will see you in the episode.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Hello, fabulous teacher, welcome back to the
Unteachables podcast.
I'm Claire English and I can'twait to spend a bit of time with
you today talking about someclassroom management stuff,
because it's so desperatelyneeded.
So it's always exciting whensomebody joins me for an episode
of the pod.
So today is all about what todo when you've tried it all and
(01:13):
I hear it a lot and I've said itto myself, I've tried
everything.
I've tried that it's notworking, things aren't changing,
behaviour's not changing.
It's hard and it can feelhopeless and it can feel so
bloody frustrating.
And this episode I really justwanted to reframe that a little
bit and this episode is actuallyinspired by one of my fabulous
(01:34):
behavior clubbers who really isdoing it all Like she really is.
She's so incredible she's.
You know the way her practicehas developed is incredible the
behavior she's mitigated and howshe's gotten back on top of low
level disruptions and theimpact she's making in her
classroom.
But she's stuck on this onestudent and when I say she's
(01:54):
trying all of the things, she'strying all of the things and
obviously it's working with mostIncredible progress.
You know like she's doingincredible work in her classroom
.
But there's this one student,despite all of the work on
routines, despite what she'sdoing in terms of teaching and
learning support, despite theexpectation setting, despite
like living those expectationsin the day to day and setting
(02:16):
boundaries and investing in theemotional piggy bank and her own
teaching presence and thefollow up and literally every
single other little thing she'sdoing is incredible.
I'm so impressed Every time shecomes to speak to me.
I'm like you are like the modelof somebody who is like taking
accountability for what you cancontrol and doing those things
(02:37):
and like it's incredible.
But this student is still notcoming on board.
This one student.
He won't engage in behaviorchats, he won't engage with her
at all.
He just runs away, absolutelyruns away.
Just see you later, legs it.
And here was my advice to myincredible behavior clubber Keep
doing more of the same stuff.
(02:58):
Just keep doing what you'redoing.
Sometimes it really isn't aboutthe fact that you're doing
something wrong, like you justneed to do the same stuff a lot
of the time.
Actually, it's the fact thatyou haven't given it enough time
.
When we talk about the mostvulnerable students, the
students who are most impactedby trauma, the students who have
had really challengingexperiences at school, there is
(03:19):
no magic bullet.
The strategies we're using, theconnected strategies, the
strategies that de-escalate,that co-regulate, that develop
rapport, that hold highexpectations all of the things,
these are the strategies that.
All of the things, these arethe strategies that rewire the
brain.
But the brain of our studentdid not develop in that way that
they are presenting right nowovernight.
So we cannot expect thestrategies that we're using to
(03:41):
be impactful immediately Now.
That can feel really hard forus because we want to fix it, we
want to support them, we wantto get through to them, we want
to make our classroom a safespace for them and we believe in
them.
We do.
We believe in them so fiercelyand that they can have a better
future, a better life.
If only things were different.
And we try so hard to changethat narrative for them and it's
(04:04):
frustrating and it's drainingand it can make us feel like
crap because we're doing all thethings and investing and
pouring ourselves into thatstudent.
So I always say that we need tofocus on what we can control
and we just need to keep doingmore of that, without judgment,
without expectation, because wecan't control their response.
(04:24):
I had the wonderful Robin Gobleon my podcast a while back now,
but she is just incredible.
So she has a book calledRaising Kids with Big Baffling
Behaviors and she is justincredible at explaining, like,
what's happening in the brainand how we can create felt
safety for these children.
(04:45):
And one of the things that shesaid on this podcast that I've I
think I've quoted dozens oftimes since then is that we can
always offer safety.
We can present safety tostudents, we can offer rapport,
we can do all of the things, butwe cannot control whether or
not they accept that.
They actually don't have toaccept that, like they, like
(05:06):
their brains, we can't expectthem, after all of the things
they've gone through in theirlives, to immediately respond to
our offerings of safety and tosuggest that they just
immediately kind of let go ofall of those mechanisms in their
brain that has kept them safefor so long.
(05:28):
I think it's a bit of aprivileged thing to expect.
So we need to focus on what wecan control.
We need to offer safety, weneed to offer all of the things
we're offering to them, but wecan't force them to accept that.
We really can't.
We can control using power withand not power over strategies,
(05:50):
but we can't control whether ornot they accept that, whether
they trust us.
We can't control theirbehaviors.
So the actual advice that I gavethis beautiful teacher, this
teacher who is doing everythingthat she can, is to just keep on
doing what she's already doing,because sometimes the answer
isn't trying new things, it'sjust doing more of the same
(06:11):
thing.
You know these strategiesthey're not going to work
overnight.
You know she's already tryingto do it all.
So I really wanted to make surethat message was loud and clear
, that if one student inparticular is not coming on
board with your approach, oryou've got a handful of students
who are still really struggling, the approaches that we use
don't necessarily happenovernight, but they're always
(06:33):
going to be a better option thanthe alternative.
The alternative is to usedisconnecting strategies, power
over strategies, strategies thatget no buy-in and that are
taking 10 steps back withstudents rather than one micro
step forward, because I will, atany day of the week, on any on
any day of the week, choose totake a micro step forward or
(06:55):
even stand still in the sameplace with a student.
If they're not ready yet, thentake 20 steps back, because I've
used a strategy that isreinforcing their beliefs about
themselves, their beliefs aboutthe education system, their
mistrust of authority figures,their you know the failures that
people have had in the pastwith them when it comes to, like
(07:17):
you know, caregivers andparental figures and education
system and all those things.
We need to stay steady in whatwe're already doing and I know
that's really hard for us to do,because we want to make change.
And, to be very honest with you, I think and I said this to her
as well sometimes the studentswho are in our care they
(07:38):
probably would benefit from amore therapeutic placement
rather than a mainstream settingbecause of the needs that they
have just far outweigh what wecan provide for them, because
they do need intensive supportand sometimes we can't provide
that.
But I always would say that,student, there you're doing
(07:59):
everything you know.
Just keep on keeping on andkeep being open to working with
them.
Keep being open to you know,reaching out and touching base
and asking if they want to havea chat or, you know, try to
change it up a little bit and gofor a walk and talk or like
whatever it might be, but wejust have to keep on keeping on
sometimes.
(08:19):
So my beautiful, compassionate,empathetic, brilliant teachers
out there listening, who aredoing everything in their power
to support all of their youngpeople and not seeing the fruits
of their labors for some oftheir students.
I need you to please rememberthat you are making an impact,
an incredible impact.
You are changing things.
(08:40):
You are literally rewiringtheir brains just by showing up,
just by choosing to connectrather than disconnect, and no
matter how that student isresponding to that, it does not
change just how transformativethe work you're doing is.
And this is not me trying tolike be, oh, teachers of martyrs
and all that kind of stuff.
This is just me saying that thework you do matters and you are
(09:04):
making an impact.
And it can feel really hardsometimes, feeling like you're
not making an impact with thesestudents.
And I also just want to remindyou that you need to take care
of yourself, because this stuffcan be really hard on us and you
know, especially if we're thoseempathetic type teachers and we
kind of take it on and take ithome and we need to get really
good at leaving it at the doorand saying you know what like
(09:26):
this is a really important job,but it's still just my job and I
need to come here and I need toshow up in a certain way, but I
can't take that on, I can'tcontrol that, I need to leave it
at the door and I need to goand take care of myself.
Nothing reinforced that morethan when I had my daughter.
(09:46):
My gosh, I had my daughter andeverything changed for me and
I'm like I can't show up for her.
I can't come home If I'm atschool dealing with these big,
volatile, violent behaviors andshowing up for her in a way that
I have an emotional capacityfor, because you know, raising a
baby and having a toddler andall of the things is it's a
massive test on our own capacityand self-regulation and skills
in co-regulation.
(10:12):
I feel like that's the, that'sthe work of a parent, isn't it?
And you know, if I was going toschool every day and bringing
that heaviness home with me andnot having the capacity for that
, like I was just so afraid ofthe parent that I'd be able to
be for her and show up for her,so Like I was just so afraid of
the parent that I'd be able tobe for her and show up for her.
So it really reminded me of theimportance of us taking care of
ourselves and taking care ofourselves sometimes is by saying
(10:35):
, okay, well, that student doesneed support and I am willing to
do this in school and I'mputting the time and the effort
in.
But I need to go home and, youknow, have some boundaries
around my own emotional capacitywhen it comes to this work,
which is really hard for usempathetic teachers to do
sometimes.
So enough of that waffling.
This whole episode has been abig old waffle, but I hope it
has helped even one of you outthere that feels responsible
(10:58):
constantly for making thesemassive changes when sometimes
all you need to do is more ofthe same stuff and stop being so
damn hard on yourself.
So I am sending love for theweek ahead.
Please take care of yourself,please, please, please and until
next week.
Bye for now, lovely teachers.
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