They behave for me
When someone is drowning in behaviour, throw them a lifebelt, not an autograph
Tom Bennett
Is there a more truculent, pious, virtue-signalling phrase in education than ‘well, they behave for me’? In a world where competence is hard won, and where faux-inspirational aphorisms pass as professional development, it’s a high bar to beat- but over it skips. Teachers, on the whole, are benevolent souls; they weren’t drawn to a life of inky hands and admin because of the glamour and the glory. Most teachers lean towards altruism; most of them would rather see staff and students prosper than pratfall. Which is why the ubiquity of this phrase is initially hard to understand. If someone expresses difficulty with a class, why turn that into an opportunity to showboat?
Picture this: you’re in the staff room (you may remember them. The Ancients used to have a communal waterhole filled with dirty mugs and unmarked books dissolving into compost. Now we flit from class to class on Segways and communicate through TikTok). You’ve Fosbury-flopped onto the chez lounge after your weekly hazing from 9F. At this point you are leaking rather than venting emotions. Your language may or may not be salty. Names are mentioned and Mums may be blamed. Your woes are recounted in technicolour, in UPPER CASE, and you are the blameless victim of circumstance and capricious Gods. You are the heroic victim of your self-penned melodrama.
‘Well, they behave for me,’ says a helpful peer. They think they’re adding context to your story, innocently. In fact they’re trolling you like a Russian bot farm. What are they really saying?
1. They behave for me
2. They don’t behave for you
3. The reason they behave for me is because I am a good teacher.
4. And you are not, obviously.
5. More tea?
If the people saying this inane tummy-rubbing thought beyond their navels they’d realise that it only compounds the sense of hopelessness of the aggrieved teacher, it reinforces their sense of inferiority, and it calcifies their position on the professional hierarchy. ‘Me Tarzan,’ it says. ‘You tiny monkey.’ It sounds like sympathy, but it lands like a toe punt in the saddle. Its creosote rubbed into a finger cut. What possible use could it be to a harassed teacher to hear that you enjoy an idyll of compliant banter with the class who have just blasted you with behavioural buckshot? Why not go the whole hog and stand outside a hospital telling people how great you feel?
In fairness, they probably had it said to them, in the infancy of their careers, by equally careless confederates, who handed on their misery, deepening like Larkin’s coastal shelf. Saying it could be an act of closure for them; see where I am now; see how far I have come. But there’s no need; quite
the converse, there’s a need not to. When colleagues are under siege; when they’re in a well so deep they can’t even see where they fell in; when they’re deafened by workload, and classroom cannons, there is really only one thing they want to hear apart from sympathy, and it’s terribly simple.
‘How can I help?’
And if they ask you to, then you can suggest what they might do. Because after all, they behave for you.