Welcome to the Room
I decided I missed writing too much, so I came back.
Welcome to The Room
I’m grateful you could spare the time to drop by.
The reason I wanted to write this is because I love to write- which of course doesn’t make you good at it- and I love to write about education, schools, and behaviour. Education saved me twice: first, invisibly when I learned to love learning at school, and second when I stumbled into teaching as a purposeless adult in search of glorious purpose.
I learned early on that if students weren't behaving, then nothing else was possible, for them or me. And I also learned early on that I had no idea how to do anything about that. So I started to think hard about behaviour, and watch people better than me. And read. And write.
The sleep of reason
Education is fascinating. Everyone has had one of some kind, so everyone has a stake, a story, and an opinion. Which is why everyone loves to talk about it. It’s something we all have in common, and something on which none of us fully agree. Which is why education is something of a bear-pit, sometimes. It’s not something easy to talk about in a detached way. It matters to us. It reflects our fundamental outlook on life, morality, and the meaning and purpose of life, society and humanity. The stakes could not be higher.
You’ve got a strong streak of good in you. But no one’s perfect.
So that’s what I’ll be writing about here every week. Mostly behaviour. But also schools, and what happens in them. What teachers and leaders do that makes a difference, and the evidence behind that.
But I’ll also be analysing how education plays out on the pages and portals of the press, where the lens through which we are invited to see education is often smudged by the pressure to pursue sell to the dwindling real estate of our attention. And I’ll be writing about policy, and how that intertwines with the world of the classroom. And I’ll be writing about what other countries do in all of these fields, because ideas good and bad fly around the world like geese.
And above all, I’ll be writing about behaviour: why kids behave the way they do, what teachers can do about it, and why that all matters. And I’ll be writing about the terrible, terrible ideas that some people have about managing classes, because that’s just as important to do as platform the good. I’ll write tips that you can use the next day, suggest ways you can interrogate your own practice, describe the techniques that masters and mistresses of the classroom use, what works, what doesn’t, best bets, highly likelies, most probables, and everything in between. As Dylan William said, ‘Nothing works everywhere, and everything works somewhere.’ The tricky bit is discerning what, and when.
When the chimes end- just try it.
Speaking of work: I’ll post every week, and more if I can. Usually something for the weekend, when everyone is regenerating, and you could use some education writing with your cornflakes. But this isn’t work to me. As Mary Poppins once said, ‘Once you find the fun in the work [snaps fingers] the work’s a game!’ Although Mary Poppins could tidy things up with magic, so I’m not sure how credible her ethic is here, really.
I look forward to seeing you from time to time.
Your servant
Tom Bennett
Who are you, even?
I’m Tom Bennett, School behaviour advisor to the UK Department for Education. I’m also a Professor of School behaviour at Academica University of Applied Sciences, Amsterdam. I was a teacher in challenging schools in the East End of London for about 14 years, and since I’ve been a school advisor I’ve visited about 900 schools in 15 different countries, almost entirely focused on watching and learning from their behaviour systems. I’ve been privileged to watch thousands of teachers, and now I just pinch all the good things they do and pass them off as my ideas.
I’ve written five books on behaviour management (including the best-selling Running. the Room), and I’m the series editor of the researchED Guides. In 2013 I started researchED, an international series of conferences and communities that seeks to make education a more evidence informed practice.
I coach and train teachers and leaders all around the world, and advise ministries, MATs and policy makers in several countries. In 2022 I received an OBE from the Queen for services to education, and in 2015 I was shortlisted for the GEMS Global Teacher Prize. I also cook.
