Understanding Student Behaviour. What Teachers and Parents Need to Know About Learning Challenges.

Student Behaviour as Communication- What’s Really Going On.

Every teacher has faced it-  the student who constantly distracts others, avoids work, or becomes the “class clown.”

Parents see it too-  the after-school meltdowns, the sudden tantrums over homework, or the quiet withdrawal from things a child once loved.

It’s easy to label this as “bad behaviour.” But what I have often seen is that behaviour is a clue. An indicator that something deeper is happening for our student or children.

A quote I came across recently captures it perfectly:

“When you have a learning difficulty, it is often less shameful to be seen as the ‘bad kid’ than the ‘dumb kid.’”

Let that sink in.

And that could just be a learning challenge as well - not something that is a diagnosed difficulty, or just something that slightly makes the student feel or appear different to the "average" (I hate that term!) child in the classroom.

The bad kid, or the class clown don't have the repercussions from their peers. 

BUT they often need just as much help then the student that demonstrates an outward difficulty. 

And our kids? They are peddling as fast as they can to ensure that their struggles they are facing are only seen by themselves - meaning they are internalising all of the struggles they have. 

Why Behaviour Is a Clue, Not “Bad Behaviour”

  Our children and students rarely act out "just because they felt like it". And when we look underneath the surface our outward behaviour, even as adults, is linked to emotions that we have simmering under the surface. The emotions we may struggle to process and understand. Things that are often linked to fear, shame, or frustration. 

And for a student who is struggling with reading, writing, comprehension, mathematics? One that is struggling to keep up, understand all of the steps involved without prompting, struggling with placing the core skill with the complex steps that need to undertake .... it may feel a whole lot easier to be disruptive than to risk being seen as incapable. 

I've seen it often. Both within the classroom and within my tutoring centre.

Think of the child who:

• Never has their book ready.
• Stalls endlessly before starting a task.
• Distracts peers with jokes or antics.
• Flatly refuses to complete the work.
• Challenges you every step of the way to get started on something.
• Asks questions that are not even remotely connected to what you are talking about.

Behind each of these behaviours could be a simple truth: “I don’t understand.”

The Hidden Struggle- When Learning Feels Unsafe

 How many times have you written in a report- "X would improve greatly if they just asked for help!" Or how many times have you read it in the report of your own child?

We often tell students to “just ask for help.”  Like it's the easiest thing in the world. And the amount of times parents have come to me and said "they need to ask for help" -- but asking for help in front of 20 + classmates? That's terrifying. Especially as a child who is trying to make friends, keep friends, learn all of this content and navigate an ever changing complex and ever changing dynamic of the playground and classroom.

To raise your hand is to admit publicly "I don't get it!" And sure, as adults, that concept can seem like the most obvious thing in the world. But did you ask for help at school? Did you stand tall and say to everyone- I have no idea?

For some students, even being asked privately by a teacher feels like the spotlight is on them.

When help feels unsafe, avoidance becomes the coping strategy.

And that, I know you have seen in your classrooms, and in the home environment too! 

What Teachers and Parents Can Do

• Look for the clues. The behaviours are messages: pay attention to the stallers, the jokers, the distractors.
• Create safe spaces. Let students know that needing help is normal and celebrated, not shameful. And this one, is a lot of breaking the culture that is previously existing in your classroom and even in your own home! 
• Scaffold tasks. Break learning into smaller steps so students experience success. Do this as the first thing you provide your students, daily, on the board. Make it so entrenched in everything you provide your students in the classroom, that it just there. The students who need it will thank you, the students who don't need it - it won't affect them by having it there. 
• Partner together. Teachers, parents, and tutors all bring pieces of the puzzle. Working together reduces stigma and builds confidence. And THIS is one thing that we need to continue to work toward, because TOGETHER we can make the biggest difference. 

 The Power of Support in Tutoring and Classrooms

 Every afternoon in my tutoring business, I get to experience the magic of what happens when a child feels safe with myself or one of my tutors to say. "I don't understand" . Or "I need help", "can we go over X again", "we did this in class and I'm still lost and struggling". By providing that safe space to accept that they need help, confidence to ask for the help and then the confidence that flows from that one seed that is planted in a tutoring session to other areas of their schooling is just pure magic.

With just a little more time, encouragement, and a difference explanation, our confidence soars and this confidence then flows directly back into the classroom. 

And we need to feed that back from the classroom as the core, to external assistance outside of school as well, because it then bleeds from an academic concept, into sports, dance, music - everything our kiddos do outside of school as well.

And this, this is the same for adults too. Many of us carry old wounds from school that make asking for help feel hard, feel unsafe. But whether you're 9 or 39, learning is never something that we should be ashamed of. 

And in the classroom? As I mentioned above, that is our first step. I see students who are so overwhelmed by the way they are being taught, multiple steps, trauma from past learning experiences that seep out and create a huge struggle to show vulnerability in front of their peers and then actually ask for the help they need. 

 Final Thought- Transforming Learning by Seeing Beneath the Behaviour

 We can make such a difference to these students and the behaviour they are struggling with, externally- and how they are talking to themselves internally - they stuff they are going to carry with them throughout their lives.

The next time a child acts out in class, or your child struggles with something at home- pause and ask  " What might they be hiding? What's actually going on for them beneath the behaviour?" 

Because when we create safe, encouraging spaces for students to seek help, we don’t just reduce misbehaviour- we transform learning itself.