How to Defuse Defensive Teachers

Now picture this conversation, okay? You've got a teacher sat across the desk from you, maybe something like their planning slipped or you've just watched a strategy in their lesson and it just wasn't working.

And you've thought carefully about how to do this and you've been really kind in the conversation.

Maybe you've done one of those feedback sandwiches, you've led with something nice and positive, you've done a lot.

And yet it doesn't matter because sometimes the second it's clear that this is about them, something changes they go still their eye contacts they stop looking at you right they start defending themselves before you've even got to the point and now you end up managing that reaction rather than having a good conversation about their teaching practice i wonder if that sounds familiar to you because i've actually been on both sides of that desk i've been giving feedback and i've watched it go sideways many times But I also remember distinctly sitting there as a teacher, feeling as soon as someone was giving me feedback, my defenses go right up before my line manager or the person who observed me had even said anything.

Now, what I've come to think of at the time is that a lot of the time when I'm listening into these conversations working with people I coach, the words can often be actually quite fine, but it's where people are sitting.

That face-to-face, eye-to-eye, everything you say going straight from you to them, That can be quite confronting.

There's nowhere else for it to land.

So it can land very much like a verdict.

And there's a little move that I want to just teach you today that changes all of that.

And it's called the third point or three point communication.

You may have seen this.

Now, the idea is really simple.

So instead of the conversation bouncing between two people, you just stick a third thing in the room, something on the table maybe between you that you both look at, and you point the conversation towards that thing.

So if I'm working with a teacher on a strategy, for example, We would usually have one of my favorite tools, a teaching walkthroughs book, right? Which is a book full of teaching strategies.

We'd have that page open between us.

We'd both be leaning over it.

We'd both be pointing at the diagrams.

And when I say, I wonder what would be happening if we tried this here, I'm pointing at the page, not at them.

And the page is taking the feedback.

We're looking at their teaching through what's in front of us, not to their face.

And honestly, actually, even when I've not got a resource to hand, I do this a lot, is I like to just grab a bit of paper and start scribbling out a problem as we talk.

I learned this from a leader, Stacey Wallace.

She always had a piece of paper in front of you and you'd be talking sometimes about really challenging things, but she'd be sketching it out.

So your eyes both were on this paper.

It doesn't have to be neat, like mine definitely never is.