October 27, 2025 • 22 mins
Ever found yourself sitting at your desk mid-lesson, staring at the wall while chaos erupts around you… thinking “I cannot teach like this”?
Same.
In this episode, I’m giving you a front seat to one of the most eye-opening classroom experiences I had as a baby teacher—and how it accidentally dropped me straight into something called the pedagogy of poverty.
You’ll hear the story of a student called “Nathan,” how I unintentionally leaned into compliance-based teaching just to survive, and the big, uncomfortable lightbulb moment that changed everything about how I teach now.
This episode isn’t here to guilt you, because I’ve been there. It’s here to show you what’s actually going on when students appear settled but disengaged... and how to shift out of survival-mode strategies without throwing your whole self under the bus.
What you’ll learn:
- The sneaky signs you’ve slipped into the pedagogy of poverty (and why it feels like it’s “working”)
- Why busy work, copying off the board, and chalk-and-talk can be so seductive in tricky classrooms
- How trauma, stress responses, and feelings of failure are shaping your students' behaviour
- What true differentiation actually looks like (no colour-coded ability groups required)
- Simple scaffolding tools you can start using this week that support learning AND behaviour
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_00 (00:01):
Oh, hi there, teachers.
Welcome to the UnteachablesPodcast.
I'm your host, Claire English,and I am just a fellow teacher,
a toddler mama, and a big oldbehaviour nerd on a mission to
demystify and simplify thatlittle thing called classroom
management.
The way we've all been taught tomanage behaviour and classroom
manage has left us playing crowdcontrol, which is not something
(00:23):
I subscribe to because we're notbouncers, we're teachers.
So listen in as I walk youthrough the game-changing
strategies, and I mean thethings that we can actually do
and action in our classroomsthat will 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.
Hi, how are we going?
Hello, welcome to theUnteachables Podcast.
If you can't tell, I am tryingto mix up my introductions
because I feel like every singleone is exactly the same and I'm
becoming my own kind of meme.
(01:05):
So last week I had the absoluteprivilege of doing a webinar for
Everyday Magazine.
I did an article for themactually about, oh gosh, like
three years ago, four years ago,and it was about something
called the pedagogy of poverty.
And I um have spoken about it onthe podcast before.
(01:27):
It is something that has been solike like understanding the
pedagogy of poverty has beensuch a light bulb for my own
career, and it has really helpedme to like teach my classes in a
way that is quality andunderstand why students respond
to certain things in a certainway.
It's just been brilliant, and Ihad the opportunity to talk,
(01:49):
like so.
I did the article and I had theopportunity to present on this
topic and expand these ideas onthe webinar live with some
incredible teachers last week.
So I wanted to talk through thesame kind of stuff that I did on
that webinar today with you allbecause I know it's going to be
like really insightful andreally helpful, and the teachers
(02:11):
on the webinar like reallyresponded well to it.
So I thought that I would bringit to all of you lovely folks
here on the Unteachables podcastbecause why the heck not?
I already planned for thesession, so I might as well just
re-say it to you to you all.
Uh so I I've probably told youbefore, but if you're not like
familiar with my background andwhere I'm from and you know what
(02:34):
my teaching experience is, Istarted my career in Western
Sydney in a low socioeconomicarea of Mount Druid.
If you are from Western Sydney,if you teach in Western Sydney,
hello, please let me know.
Like come and send me an emailor pop into my Instagram.
But I um I grew up in WesternSydney as well.
(02:55):
I'm a St.
Mary's girl and I, you know,born, raised, like went to
university in Penrith.
I like I am a Penrith girlthrough and through, and I uh
worked, my first school was umin Matt Druid.
And in Matt Druid, there are alot of social issues, there's a
lot of cyclical poverty, there'sa lot of generational welfare
(03:17):
dependence, the kinds of thingsthat we see manifesting in the
classroom in big behaviors for awhole variety of reasons.
By the way, if you are currentlya Mat Druid and things have
changed, I'm not saying that itis still quite as bad, but uh at
the time that I did teach there,it definitely had a lot of
issues in Madruit.
(03:38):
Anyway, uh, so a lot of theclasses I taught were very
challenging, and one of thoseclasses was my year seven class.
It was a class full of studentswith incredibly complex needs
from learning disabilities todisorganized attachments to
serious amounts of trauma, andit was just chaotic.
It was so chaotic.
And there was one student, let'scall him Nathan, and he was
(04:00):
plonked in the middle of it,mid-year.
So this year seven class,already chaotic.
Here's Nathan coming in from abehavior setting.
So he was originally at theschool, he left the school, went
to a behavior setting, and thenwas plonked back into this
class.
We had a very quick morningmuster to just let everybody
know like, hey, this is the newstudent, Nathan.
(04:22):
Here's the laundry list of needsthat he has.
Pretty much like, good luck,we're putting him in this class
that's already unimaginablydifficult.
Good luck.
Now remember, I was a first-yearteacher, I had no freaking clue,
zero clue on how to handle anyof the behaviors already that
were happening in thisclassroom, uh, let alone a
student with these complexneeds.
(04:45):
Um, so I spoke to Nathan.
Nathan arrived, first lesson, Ihad a chat with him, and he
said, What are we doing today?
And I explained to him thatwe're going to be reading a poem
and then we're going to betalking about what the main
message was and the similes, andhe said, Ugh, I just want to
copy off the board.
Like that's what we did back atmy other school.
And I'm like, Oh, okay.
(05:07):
Of course, I kept my lessonplan.
I was a first-year teacher, Iwas trying to hone my skills, I
wanted to do a really great job.
But then Nathan showed me justwhat he thought of my great job
of teaching with behaviors thatbrought that class to a whole
new level.
I couldn't teach over the noise.
I felt so out of control.
I felt so disempowered in a way,by the way, that I just feel
(05:31):
like only teachers wouldunderstand.
Only teachers who are strugglingto teach a class with so much
disruption.
Like, I just don't think anyother profession can quite
understand how disempowering andout of control you can feel as a
human being in a classroom of 30students who are, you know, all
(05:55):
behaving.
Their behaviors are behaving.
But I was totally at loss as towhat to do.
And in the middle of a lesson, Iremember going to that place of
total disassociation, totalshutdown.
I sat at my desk and I gave upfor the lesson.
I'm like, I can't do this.
I disassociated.
I swear, I was like sitting atmy teacher desk looking at the
wall.
(06:15):
There were students who wererunning around, they were
screaming, they were fighting,they were doing everything but
learning.
And I just had no freaking ideawhat to try next.
Uh so if you've ever had thosefeelings of helplessness, of
disempowerment, of shutdown inthe middle of a lesson in the
face of very overwhelmingclassroom behaviors, which is
(06:37):
putting it lightly, please knowthat you are definitely not
alone and there's nothing wrongwith you, and there's nothing
wrong with your capacity as ateacher.
It's just really freaking hard.
So I thought on my feet becauseI could not stand one more
moment of trying to teach overthe noise.
I did not know what to do, but Ijust went, you know what?
Like, let's try somethingdifferent.
(06:58):
And I said, Okay, you seven, I'mgonna, you know, scrap that,
copy this poem into your book.
And I thought, well, Nathan wasasking to do this at the start
of the lesson.
Maybe I can just give it a goodold crack and see what happens.
And suddenly, like somebody hadflipped a switch, like I had
found this like magic potion, itwas calm, it was quiet, it was
(07:22):
settled, and that calm magicpotion was something I used
again and again and again andagain and again and again and
again because I got complianceand I felt like I was in control
in a way that I hadn't feltsince becoming a teacher.
But what I tapped into wassomething far more damaging than
(07:44):
I ever could have imagined atthe time.
And there was a reason thatNathan's Behavior Unit used this
strategy and why he was askingto do this.
I had stumbled away frompedagogy where I was trying my
darndest to get studentsthinking and learning and
discussing and contributing tono avail, right?
Like I wasn't uh an experiencedteacher, I didn't have the
(08:07):
skills and the strategies that Ihave now, but I was really
trying so hard to get them doinghigher level learning.
And what I did was I fellforward into something that I
now know is called the pedagogyof poverty.
So, what is the pedagogy ofpoverty?
It is a term coined by MartinHaberman.
(08:28):
He is a professor of curriculumand instruction, and he went to
a bunch of schools all over theUS and noticed some really stark
and concerning trends.
He visited a lot of schools inquite disadvantaged areas with
lots of issues like lowattainment levels and high
dropout rates and youthincarceration and behavior
problems.
The kind of schools where onpaper you think, my gosh, these
(08:50):
kids need so much support.
Like these schools need a lot offunding.
They need something more.
Like if the needs are thiscomplex, like these social
issues are kind of coming intothe classroom, we need, we need
more.
But what Martin Haberman noticedwas they had huge similarities
(09:11):
in the way that students werebeing taught.
Because instead of being taughtin a way that helped them think
critically and stay engaged intheir learning, these students
were across the board beinggiven busy work to keep them
quiet, compliant, and undercontrol.
Just like me, getting Nathan andthe rest of the class to copy
the poem off the board insteadof reading and interacting with
(09:33):
the poem itself and getting themto pull out the similes and talk
about the main messages andthink about how, you know, like,
you know, what was the poettrying to say?
Like all of those things.
Instead of actually interactingwith something, I was just
getting them to write off theboard.
The kinds of pedagogies that hesaw being used to increase
compliance and the things that Ialso fell back onto using in my
(09:57):
early career were things likethis teacher-centered chalk and
talk, where students would justsit there and there would be
it'd be very teacher-centeredclassroom with just chalk and
talk, you know, copying downthings.
Um, rote learning and memorize,memorize.
I always fumble over the wordmemorization, uh, death by
worksheets, just handing outworksheets, worksheet,
(10:21):
worksheet, worksheet, do it, doit, do it.
No stretch.
By the way, when you likeworksheets that are done
strategically, fine, no problemat all.
What I'm talking about is justprinting a whole bunch of stuff,
not actually wanting, becausewhat happens when you're trying
to actually teach a lesson andthey're talking over you?
It is really hard.
So when you give them aworksheet and say work through
(10:42):
it at your own pace, some willlook at the walls, some will
scribble some things down, butthere's no kind of expectation
there in the same way that ifyou're trying to actually teach
them something.
Um, no stretch or challenge,there's very little student
output.
So I'm I remember some of thekids in my classes, they like
I'm being very, very open andhonest with you here.
(11:03):
If I were to look at some of thepay, like some of the books for
some of my students, they wouldbe almost empty.
And I was doing nothing about itbecause I was so entrenched in
this pedagogy of poverty.
All of the things that they wereseen to be doing were more
low-order thinking skills.
Uh, he noticed that there wasvery low or no expectation for
(11:23):
progress.
So all of these things were veryum like consistent across the
board in these schools that hada lot of challenges with
behavior.
When we use these pedagogies,what we're doing is increasing
compliance.
We are reducing behavioralissues.
The kids who struggle the mostat school have likely
(11:45):
experienced feelings of chronicfailure across the board with so
much of what they do.
So just say a student looks at atask and they feel like they
can't do it, their brainregisters that as a threat.
That's when you'll see thestress response spike and an
increase in the behaviors thatare the stress response in
action.
So avoidance and disruption andwithdrawal and refusal and
(12:06):
students walking in and out ofthe lesson and becoming loud and
provocative and doodling andjoking and you know, putting
their heads on the desk.
If you take away that challenge,if you give them something that
is safe, that is easy, thereduction in those behaviors is
huge.
It is huge.
The students are rewarding youfor the ease of their tasks.
(12:31):
And if you increase thechallenge, if you try to then
change the game in these classesinstead of getting them to copy
off the board, just like Nathanwas not used to, he was used to
copying off the board.
And I tried to give himsomething that was, you know,
higher order thinking.
He pushed back and he pushedback hard and he asked for what
(12:52):
he wanted.
So this is why the pedagogy isused in classrooms where there
are higher proportions ofstudents who have social,
emotional, and mental healthneeds.
These needs that manifest inchallenging behaviors because it
works, it keeps them quiet, itkeeps them settled.
But that's not me saying to doit, obviously.
Of course, my bag here isclassroom management.
(13:15):
And of course, my goal for youwould be to have a classroom
that is calmer and quieter, andyou know, one that you feel like
you can be in.
But compliance is not the goalbecause what the pedagogy of
poverty is is insidious andproblematic because it takes
away the most vulnerablestudents' opportunities for
(13:37):
success and it perpetuates andfeeds cyclical poverty, welfare
dependence, failure ineducation, um, you know, the way
that students see education asuseless, as superfluous, it
feeds into all of that.
The fact of the matter is whenwe have low expectations for our
students, our students willperform poorly and they know
(13:58):
that we have low expectations ofthem.
Just like the Pygmalion effectstudy, where teachers were told
that there was a select group ofstudents who were high achievers
based on a test that actuallywasn't done.
But the high achievers that werewere identified and told to the
teachers that they were highachievers, they actually did
achieve far more than the restof their cohort.
(14:22):
And the only thing that wasdifferent was the belief that
their teacher had in them.
So if we believe that studentsare capable of so much more,
they are going to achieve more.
But if students are behaving incertain ways and we have poor
expectations of a student'sachievement because of that, we,
whether consciously or not, weactually behave in ways that
(14:43):
communicate those poorexpectations and feed into those
poor expectations.
And then the student behaves ina way that reinforces those
beliefs about their behavior andachievement.
So there is a clear link betweenlearning and behavior.
Hence the name of my book isnever just about the behavior.
And one thing that is absolutelycrucial to be able to break the
(15:04):
pedagogy of poverty is yes,having those high expectations
of them, but doing so in a waythat provides them with the
right supports because you willexperience pushback.
If you are trying to get them tothink, get them to do the work
and they feel like they're afailure and they can't do it,
and they look at any, no matterhow accessible you've made it,
(15:26):
if you get if they look atsomething and they already have
that preconceived idea theycan't do it, it's going to cause
that spike in the uh stressresponse and it's going to
escalate their behaviours.
So, how do we do it?
How do we break the cycle of thepedagogy of poverty?
We do it throughdifferentiation.
And I know that when I said thatword, I probably like had a
(15:50):
collective shudder fromeverybody who's listening, but I
don't mean it in the way thatyou've probably been taught
about differentiation.
When students are able to do thework when it's pitched properly,
when they have the rightsupports in place, it keeps
students inside of their windowof tolerance and it reduces the
chances of those behaviorsflaring up in the first place.
(16:13):
But in the real world of aclassroom, differentiation does
feel like a pipe dream,especially the way that
differentiation has been kind ofpackaged up for us by people who
aren't really in the classroomor don't really understand
differentiation, or you know,like it's just not taught to us
in a way that is realisticbecause it's not about giving
(16:35):
students different work or, youknow, creating the lesson in
different levels.
You have a full curriculum todeliver, you've got 30 unique
learners in front of you, andnever any to do list.
So individualizing the learningfor all of the needs of your
students feels impossiblebecause it is, but you don't
have to do it all.
You just need a few simplestrategic tools that you can use
(16:57):
consistently that help everystudent access the learning and
stay regulated and feelsuccessful.
And this will help shift us outof the pedagogy of poverty.
Because when we're alsodifferentiating in the way that
I'm going to explain, what'shappening is we are sending
nonverbal messages to ourstudents that I expect you to be
(17:19):
doing this.
I know you can do this, I havehigher expectations of you than
you might have been held to ahigh expectation of in the past.
I have more belief in you thanyou have in yourself, and that
will start to shift thingslittle by little.
It is like a long road, and Ihave been down that road many
times in many classes, but it isso doable, not only for like,
(17:42):
you know, shifting students outof the pedagogy of poverty, but
and when I say shifting studentsout of, you know what I mean.
I mean like they are so used tothe pedagogies that are
perpetuating that.
But the like truedifferentiation is actually so
easy for you as a teacher, andit just takes the pressure off.
(18:04):
It helps you just have a fewconsistent tools that you can
use on repeat, like and they'rejust so easy to embed into your
everyday planning and routines.
They just take the guesswork outof it, and more importantly,
they just meet students wherethey're at so they can actually
access the learning.
This is what truedifferentiation looks like.
So the kind of things in thedifferentiation toolbox that I
(18:27):
teach are things likescaffolding, which includes
things like physical scaffolds,like writing scaffolds.
It includes things like jointconstructions and modeling, all
of those things that kind offall under that scaffolding
bracket.
Um, success criteria, learningmaps, things like starter
activities, concept-basedteaching, task cards, timers,
(18:49):
all of these things aredifferentiation tools that work
for every single student in theroom at the same time.
You're not needing to give themthree different things because
you have got the scaffoldsworking, the success criteria
working, the visible task cardsworking.
Everything is working togetherin order for us to have high
(19:11):
expectations of work completion,work quality, um, and just being
able to actually access thelearning for all of our
students.
And that's how we start to breakfree of the pedagogy of poverty
if we're caught in that cycle,but do so in a way that is not
going to lead us on a path whereyou're feeling exactly the same
(19:33):
as I was feeling in that lessonwhen I decided to use the
pedagogy of poverty, which isdisempowered, sitting there,
disassociating, thinking I can'tteach anymore, I'm not a good
teacher, I can't do thisanymore.
Maybe I should just quit in myfirst year of teaching.
I can't teach these kids,they're too tough.
Uh, I'm just gonna write somestuff on the board for them to
(19:54):
copy down.
When we use truedifferentiation, we are shifting
out of that mode, and we're notdoing so in a way that's going
to increase the behaviorsbecause everything by nature is
going to increase felt safety,and my gosh, it will completely
transform your classroomculture, but also the way that
(20:18):
you plan and teach.
Because oh my gosh, when Istarted to use this toolbox, it
was like night and day with howeasy my planning came to me
because these tools are rinse,repeat, let's go.
It made it so much easier.
Um, of course, I can't gothrough all of those tools.
It's like a whole module in myclassroom management lab
(20:40):
training course, but I will dropin some little bits and pieces
throughout the next few weeksfor you, just so uh you've got a
couple of takeaways.
I'll talk about some starteractivities, success criteria,
and actually I've got some I'vegot some episodes around task
cards because they're just likebread and butter.
Like I love dorking out overtask cards because they're one
(21:02):
such like they're such a simpletool, but they are just
classroom management magic,which is all of these things.
So I will drop the link to theepisode about task cards for you
so you can go back and listen tothat.
That way you can start to putthis into practice yourself.
Uh, but I hope this was aninsightful session.
It was just a small snippet fromthe everyday session that I did
(21:25):
run where I did go into a few ofthose differentiation tools.
If you were there, it was solovely to see you there.
And that is all for thisepisode.
If you're enjoying theUnteachables Podcast, by the
way, it would be absolutelymagnificent if you were to head
over and leave me a review, afive-star review, preferably,
um, with uh just a little tinybit of written feedback around
(21:48):
what your what like kind oftakeaways you've gotten or why
you love the podcast, becauseteachers need more support, you
need greater access to this kindof information.
So the more of you that are ableto um leave me a review, that is
all I ask of you, and it willhelp me to reach more teachers,
(22:09):
and that would be just somagnificent, as I said before.
Um, okay, that is everything fortoday, and have a lovely week.
I will see you next time.
Bye bye.
Oh, hi there, teachers.
Welcome to the UnteachablesPodcast.
I'm your host, Claire English,and I am just a fellow teacher,
a toddler mama, and a big oldbehaviour nerd on a mission to
demystify and simplify thatlittle thing called classroom
management.
The way we've all been taught tomanage behaviour and classroom
manage has left us playing crowdcontrol, which is not something
(00:23):
I subscribe to because we're notbouncers, we're teachers.
So listen in as I walk youthrough the game-changing
strategies, and I mean thethings that we can actually do
and action in our classroomsthat will 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.
Hi, how are we going?
Hello, welcome to theUnteachables Podcast.
If you can't tell, I am tryingto mix up my introductions
because I feel like every singleone is exactly the same and I'm
becoming my own kind of meme.
(01:05):
So last week I had the absoluteprivilege of doing a webinar for
Everyday Magazine.
I did an article for themactually about, oh gosh, like
three years ago, four years ago,and it was about something
called the pedagogy of poverty.
And I um have spoken about it onthe podcast before.
(01:27):
It is something that has been solike like understanding the
pedagogy of poverty has beensuch a light bulb for my own
career, and it has really helpedme to like teach my classes in a
way that is quality andunderstand why students respond
to certain things in a certainway.
It's just been brilliant, and Ihad the opportunity to talk,
(01:49):
like so.
I did the article and I had theopportunity to present on this
topic and expand these ideas onthe webinar live with some
incredible teachers last week.
So I wanted to talk through thesame kind of stuff that I did on
that webinar today with you allbecause I know it's going to be
like really insightful andreally helpful, and the teachers
(02:11):
on the webinar like reallyresponded well to it.
So I thought that I would bringit to all of you lovely folks
here on the Unteachables podcastbecause why the heck not?
I already planned for thesession, so I might as well just
re-say it to you to you all.
Uh so I I've probably told youbefore, but if you're not like
familiar with my background andwhere I'm from and you know what
(02:34):
my teaching experience is, Istarted my career in Western
Sydney in a low socioeconomicarea of Mount Druid.
If you are from Western Sydney,if you teach in Western Sydney,
hello, please let me know.
Like come and send me an emailor pop into my Instagram.
But I um I grew up in WesternSydney as well.
(02:55):
I'm a St.
Mary's girl and I, you know,born, raised, like went to
university in Penrith.
I like I am a Penrith girlthrough and through, and I uh
worked, my first school was umin Matt Druid.
And in Matt Druid, there are alot of social issues, there's a
lot of cyclical poverty, there'sa lot of generational welfare
(03:17):
dependence, the kinds of thingsthat we see manifesting in the
classroom in big behaviors for awhole variety of reasons.
By the way, if you are currentlya Mat Druid and things have
changed, I'm not saying that itis still quite as bad, but uh at
the time that I did teach there,it definitely had a lot of
issues in Madruit.
(03:38):
Anyway, uh, so a lot of theclasses I taught were very
challenging, and one of thoseclasses was my year seven class.
It was a class full of studentswith incredibly complex needs
from learning disabilities todisorganized attachments to
serious amounts of trauma, andit was just chaotic.
It was so chaotic.
And there was one student, let'scall him Nathan, and he was
(04:00):
plonked in the middle of it,mid-year.
So this year seven class,already chaotic.
Here's Nathan coming in from abehavior setting.
So he was originally at theschool, he left the school, went
to a behavior setting, and thenwas plonked back into this
class.
We had a very quick morningmuster to just let everybody
know like, hey, this is the newstudent, Nathan.
(04:22):
Here's the laundry list of needsthat he has.
Pretty much like, good luck,we're putting him in this class
that's already unimaginablydifficult.
Good luck.
Now remember, I was a first-yearteacher, I had no freaking clue,
zero clue on how to handle anyof the behaviors already that
were happening in thisclassroom, uh, let alone a
student with these complexneeds.
(04:45):
Um, so I spoke to Nathan.
Nathan arrived, first lesson, Ihad a chat with him, and he
said, What are we doing today?
And I explained to him thatwe're going to be reading a poem
and then we're going to betalking about what the main
message was and the similes, andhe said, Ugh, I just want to
copy off the board.
Like that's what we did back atmy other school.
And I'm like, Oh, okay.
(05:07):
Of course, I kept my lessonplan.
I was a first-year teacher, Iwas trying to hone my skills, I
wanted to do a really great job.
But then Nathan showed me justwhat he thought of my great job
of teaching with behaviors thatbrought that class to a whole
new level.
I couldn't teach over the noise.
I felt so out of control.
I felt so disempowered in a way,by the way, that I just feel
(05:31):
like only teachers wouldunderstand.
Only teachers who are strugglingto teach a class with so much
disruption.
Like, I just don't think anyother profession can quite
understand how disempowering andout of control you can feel as a
human being in a classroom of 30students who are, you know, all
(05:55):
behaving.
Their behaviors are behaving.
But I was totally at loss as towhat to do.
And in the middle of a lesson, Iremember going to that place of
total disassociation, totalshutdown.
I sat at my desk and I gave upfor the lesson.
I'm like, I can't do this.
I disassociated.
I swear, I was like sitting atmy teacher desk looking at the
wall.
(06:15):
There were students who wererunning around, they were
screaming, they were fighting,they were doing everything but
learning.
And I just had no freaking ideawhat to try next.
Uh so if you've ever had thosefeelings of helplessness, of
disempowerment, of shutdown inthe middle of a lesson in the
face of very overwhelmingclassroom behaviors, which is
(06:37):
putting it lightly, please knowthat you are definitely not
alone and there's nothing wrongwith you, and there's nothing
wrong with your capacity as ateacher.
It's just really freaking hard.
So I thought on my feet becauseI could not stand one more
moment of trying to teach overthe noise.
I did not know what to do, but Ijust went, you know what?
Like, let's try somethingdifferent.
(06:58):
And I said, Okay, you seven, I'mgonna, you know, scrap that,
copy this poem into your book.
And I thought, well, Nathan wasasking to do this at the start
of the lesson.
Maybe I can just give it a goodold crack and see what happens.
And suddenly, like somebody hadflipped a switch, like I had
found this like magic potion, itwas calm, it was quiet, it was
(07:22):
settled, and that calm magicpotion was something I used
again and again and again andagain and again and again and
again because I got complianceand I felt like I was in control
in a way that I hadn't feltsince becoming a teacher.
But what I tapped into wassomething far more damaging than
(07:44):
I ever could have imagined atthe time.
And there was a reason thatNathan's Behavior Unit used this
strategy and why he was askingto do this.
I had stumbled away frompedagogy where I was trying my
darndest to get studentsthinking and learning and
discussing and contributing tono avail, right?
Like I wasn't uh an experiencedteacher, I didn't have the
(08:07):
skills and the strategies that Ihave now, but I was really
trying so hard to get them doinghigher level learning.
And what I did was I fellforward into something that I
now know is called the pedagogyof poverty.
So, what is the pedagogy ofpoverty?
It is a term coined by MartinHaberman.
(08:28):
He is a professor of curriculumand instruction, and he went to
a bunch of schools all over theUS and noticed some really stark
and concerning trends.
He visited a lot of schools inquite disadvantaged areas with
lots of issues like lowattainment levels and high
dropout rates and youthincarceration and behavior
problems.
The kind of schools where onpaper you think, my gosh, these
(08:50):
kids need so much support.
Like these schools need a lot offunding.
They need something more.
Like if the needs are thiscomplex, like these social
issues are kind of coming intothe classroom, we need, we need
more.
But what Martin Haberman noticedwas they had huge similarities
(09:11):
in the way that students werebeing taught.
Because instead of being taughtin a way that helped them think
critically and stay engaged intheir learning, these students
were across the board beinggiven busy work to keep them
quiet, compliant, and undercontrol.
Just like me, getting Nathan andthe rest of the class to copy
the poem off the board insteadof reading and interacting with
(09:33):
the poem itself and getting themto pull out the similes and talk
about the main messages andthink about how, you know, like,
you know, what was the poettrying to say?
Like all of those things.
Instead of actually interactingwith something, I was just
getting them to write off theboard.
The kinds of pedagogies that hesaw being used to increase
compliance and the things that Ialso fell back onto using in my
(09:57):
early career were things likethis teacher-centered chalk and
talk, where students would justsit there and there would be
it'd be very teacher-centeredclassroom with just chalk and
talk, you know, copying downthings.
Um, rote learning and memorize,memorize.
I always fumble over the wordmemorization, uh, death by
worksheets, just handing outworksheets, worksheet,
(10:21):
worksheet, worksheet, do it, doit, do it.
No stretch.
By the way, when you likeworksheets that are done
strategically, fine, no problemat all.
What I'm talking about is justprinting a whole bunch of stuff,
not actually wanting, becausewhat happens when you're trying
to actually teach a lesson andthey're talking over you?
It is really hard.
So when you give them aworksheet and say work through
(10:42):
it at your own pace, some willlook at the walls, some will
scribble some things down, butthere's no kind of expectation
there in the same way that ifyou're trying to actually teach
them something.
Um, no stretch or challenge,there's very little student
output.
So I'm I remember some of thekids in my classes, they like
I'm being very, very open andhonest with you here.
(11:03):
If I were to look at some of thepay, like some of the books for
some of my students, they wouldbe almost empty.
And I was doing nothing about itbecause I was so entrenched in
this pedagogy of poverty.
All of the things that they wereseen to be doing were more
low-order thinking skills.
Uh, he noticed that there wasvery low or no expectation for
(11:23):
progress.
So all of these things were veryum like consistent across the
board in these schools that hada lot of challenges with
behavior.
When we use these pedagogies,what we're doing is increasing
compliance.
We are reducing behavioralissues.
The kids who struggle the mostat school have likely
(11:45):
experienced feelings of chronicfailure across the board with so
much of what they do.
So just say a student looks at atask and they feel like they
can't do it, their brainregisters that as a threat.
That's when you'll see thestress response spike and an
increase in the behaviors thatare the stress response in
action.
So avoidance and disruption andwithdrawal and refusal and
(12:06):
students walking in and out ofthe lesson and becoming loud and
provocative and doodling andjoking and you know, putting
their heads on the desk.
If you take away that challenge,if you give them something that
is safe, that is easy, thereduction in those behaviors is
huge.
It is huge.
The students are rewarding youfor the ease of their tasks.
(12:31):
And if you increase thechallenge, if you try to then
change the game in these classesinstead of getting them to copy
off the board, just like Nathanwas not used to, he was used to
copying off the board.
And I tried to give himsomething that was, you know,
higher order thinking.
He pushed back and he pushedback hard and he asked for what
(12:52):
he wanted.
So this is why the pedagogy isused in classrooms where there
are higher proportions ofstudents who have social,
emotional, and mental healthneeds.
These needs that manifest inchallenging behaviors because it
works, it keeps them quiet, itkeeps them settled.
But that's not me saying to doit, obviously.
Of course, my bag here isclassroom management.
(13:15):
And of course, my goal for youwould be to have a classroom
that is calmer and quieter, andyou know, one that you feel like
you can be in.
But compliance is not the goalbecause what the pedagogy of
poverty is is insidious andproblematic because it takes
away the most vulnerablestudents' opportunities for
(13:37):
success and it perpetuates andfeeds cyclical poverty, welfare
dependence, failure ineducation, um, you know, the way
that students see education asuseless, as superfluous, it
feeds into all of that.
The fact of the matter is whenwe have low expectations for our
students, our students willperform poorly and they know
(13:58):
that we have low expectations ofthem.
Just like the Pygmalion effectstudy, where teachers were told
that there was a select group ofstudents who were high achievers
based on a test that actuallywasn't done.
But the high achievers that werewere identified and told to the
teachers that they were highachievers, they actually did
achieve far more than the restof their cohort.
(14:22):
And the only thing that wasdifferent was the belief that
their teacher had in them.
So if we believe that studentsare capable of so much more,
they are going to achieve more.
But if students are behaving incertain ways and we have poor
expectations of a student'sachievement because of that, we,
whether consciously or not, weactually behave in ways that
(14:43):
communicate those poorexpectations and feed into those
poor expectations.
And then the student behaves ina way that reinforces those
beliefs about their behavior andachievement.
So there is a clear link betweenlearning and behavior.
Hence the name of my book isnever just about the behavior.
And one thing that is absolutelycrucial to be able to break the
(15:04):
pedagogy of poverty is yes,having those high expectations
of them, but doing so in a waythat provides them with the
right supports because you willexperience pushback.
If you are trying to get them tothink, get them to do the work
and they feel like they're afailure and they can't do it,
and they look at any, no matterhow accessible you've made it,
(15:26):
if you get if they look atsomething and they already have
that preconceived idea theycan't do it, it's going to cause
that spike in the uh stressresponse and it's going to
escalate their behaviours.
So, how do we do it?
How do we break the cycle of thepedagogy of poverty?
We do it throughdifferentiation.
And I know that when I said thatword, I probably like had a
(15:50):
collective shudder fromeverybody who's listening, but I
don't mean it in the way thatyou've probably been taught
about differentiation.
When students are able to do thework when it's pitched properly,
when they have the rightsupports in place, it keeps
students inside of their windowof tolerance and it reduces the
chances of those behaviorsflaring up in the first place.
(16:13):
But in the real world of aclassroom, differentiation does
feel like a pipe dream,especially the way that
differentiation has been kind ofpackaged up for us by people who
aren't really in the classroomor don't really understand
differentiation, or you know,like it's just not taught to us
in a way that is realisticbecause it's not about giving
(16:35):
students different work or, youknow, creating the lesson in
different levels.
You have a full curriculum todeliver, you've got 30 unique
learners in front of you, andnever any to do list.
So individualizing the learningfor all of the needs of your
students feels impossiblebecause it is, but you don't
have to do it all.
You just need a few simplestrategic tools that you can use
(16:57):
consistently that help everystudent access the learning and
stay regulated and feelsuccessful.
And this will help shift us outof the pedagogy of poverty.
Because when we're alsodifferentiating in the way that
I'm going to explain, what'shappening is we are sending
nonverbal messages to ourstudents that I expect you to be
(17:19):
doing this.
I know you can do this, I havehigher expectations of you than
you might have been held to ahigh expectation of in the past.
I have more belief in you thanyou have in yourself, and that
will start to shift thingslittle by little.
It is like a long road, and Ihave been down that road many
times in many classes, but it isso doable, not only for like,
(17:42):
you know, shifting students outof the pedagogy of poverty, but
and when I say shifting studentsout of, you know what I mean.
I mean like they are so used tothe pedagogies that are
perpetuating that.
But the like truedifferentiation is actually so
easy for you as a teacher, andit just takes the pressure off.
(18:04):
It helps you just have a fewconsistent tools that you can
use on repeat, like and they'rejust so easy to embed into your
everyday planning and routines.
They just take the guesswork outof it, and more importantly,
they just meet students wherethey're at so they can actually
access the learning.
This is what truedifferentiation looks like.
So the kind of things in thedifferentiation toolbox that I
(18:27):
teach are things likescaffolding, which includes
things like physical scaffolds,like writing scaffolds.
It includes things like jointconstructions and modeling, all
of those things that kind offall under that scaffolding
bracket.
Um, success criteria, learningmaps, things like starter
activities, concept-basedteaching, task cards, timers,
(18:49):
all of these things aredifferentiation tools that work
for every single student in theroom at the same time.
You're not needing to give themthree different things because
you have got the scaffoldsworking, the success criteria
working, the visible task cardsworking.
Everything is working togetherin order for us to have high
(19:11):
expectations of work completion,work quality, um, and just being
able to actually access thelearning for all of our
students.
And that's how we start to breakfree of the pedagogy of poverty
if we're caught in that cycle,but do so in a way that is not
going to lead us on a path whereyou're feeling exactly the same
(19:33):
as I was feeling in that lessonwhen I decided to use the
pedagogy of poverty, which isdisempowered, sitting there,
disassociating, thinking I can'tteach anymore, I'm not a good
teacher, I can't do thisanymore.
Maybe I should just quit in myfirst year of teaching.
I can't teach these kids,they're too tough.
Uh, I'm just gonna write somestuff on the board for them to
(19:54):
copy down.
When we use truedifferentiation, we are shifting
out of that mode, and we're notdoing so in a way that's going
to increase the behaviorsbecause everything by nature is
going to increase felt safety,and my gosh, it will completely
transform your classroomculture, but also the way that
(20:18):
you plan and teach.
Because oh my gosh, when Istarted to use this toolbox, it
was like night and day with howeasy my planning came to me
because these tools are rinse,repeat, let's go.
It made it so much easier.
Um, of course, I can't gothrough all of those tools.
It's like a whole module in myclassroom management lab
(20:40):
training course, but I will dropin some little bits and pieces
throughout the next few weeksfor you, just so uh you've got a
couple of takeaways.
I'll talk about some starteractivities, success criteria,
and actually I've got some I'vegot some episodes around task
cards because they're just likebread and butter.
Like I love dorking out overtask cards because they're one
(21:02):
such like they're such a simpletool, but they are just
classroom management magic,which is all of these things.
So I will drop the link to theepisode about task cards for you
so you can go back and listen tothat.
That way you can start to putthis into practice yourself.
Uh, but I hope this was aninsightful session.
It was just a small snippet fromthe everyday session that I did
(21:25):
run where I did go into a few ofthose differentiation tools.
If you were there, it was solovely to see you there.
And that is all for thisepisode.
If you're enjoying theUnteachables Podcast, by the
way, it would be absolutelymagnificent if you were to head
over and leave me a review, afive-star review, preferably,
um, with uh just a little tinybit of written feedback around
(21:48):
what your what like kind oftakeaways you've gotten or why
you love the podcast, becauseteachers need more support, you
need greater access to this kindof information.
So the more of you that are ableto um leave me a review, that is
all I ask of you, and it willhelp me to reach more teachers,
(22:09):
and that would be just somagnificent, as I said before.
Um, okay, that is everything fortoday, and have a lovely week.
I will see you next time.
Bye bye.
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