#164: Why your students won't do the work (even when it's really doable) | The Differentiation Series: Part 1

When a student pushes a piece of work off their desk, puts their head down, pulls out their phone, or starts cracking jokes, it can feel personal. Like, really personal. Especially when you've poured your heart into that lesson.

But here's the thing: none of that behaviour is random. And it's definitely not about you.

In this episode, I'm giving you a front seat to something I wish I'd known back in my second year of teaching, when I planned what I thought was an epic observation lesson, complete with immersion stations, bells, whistles, the lot… and watched it completely fall apart in real time (yes, a kid literally jumped out the window).

This episode kicks off a three-part series on differentiation, and before you click away because that word makes you want to lie down on the floor,  stick with me. Because this is not the differentiation that has you creating 180 individual lesson plans. This is the real, doable kind.

But first, we need to talk about what's actually going on in your students' brains when they see a piece of work and decide nope. Because once you understand the link between the learning you're designing and the behaviour you're seeing, everything starts to shift.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why "work refusal" behaviours (avoidance, disruption, withdrawal, escalation) are almost always a stress response — not defiance
• What actually happened in my chaotic observation lesson and why it was always going to go that way
• The four ways students' stress responses show up when they feel set up to fail
• Why you cannot separate classroom management from teaching and learning, and why that's actually good news
• Why differentiation has such bad PR (and why that's making things harder for all of us)
• What's coming up in parts 2 and 3 of this series (spoiler: it's practical, it's doable, and it's going to save you time)

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RESOURCES AND MORE SUPPORT:

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• 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'

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