Recently, I was talking with a teacher about behaviour challenges in their classroom.
They said something I’ve heard before:
“Yelling is the only way these kids listen.”
I understood where it came from. Teaching can be exhausting. When students are disengaged, oppositional or dysregulated, it can feel like raising your voice is the only thing that gets a response.
And sometimes it works.
The room goes quiet. The student complies.
But sometimes it doesn’t.
The student walks out.
The conversation becomes a confrontation.
The teacher gets louder. The student digs in.
Nobody is listening anymore.
At that point, the issue is no longer the behaviour. It’s the conflict itself.
Either way, restorative practice invites us to ask a question:
At what cost?
At what cost to the relationship?
At what cost to the student’s sense of belonging?
At what cost to the students who witnessed it?
And perhaps just as importantly, at what cost to ourselves?
We didn’t become teachers to spend our days yelling at young people to behave.
Yet when shouting becomes our go-to strategy, many teachers finish the day feeling drained, frustrated and disconnected from the reason they entered the profession in the first place.
When a student is dysregulated, matching their intensity rarely helps. Two dysregulated people don’t create a regulated outcome.
What students need in those moments is a predictable adult.
Someone who can hold the boundary without escalating the conflict.
Someone who can stay calm without becoming passive.
Someone who can address the behaviour while protecting the relationship.
It might sound as simple as:
“I can’t let you speak to me like that. I’m here to help. We can talk what help looks like when you’re ready.”
The boundary hasn’t disappeared with the calm voice.
The expectation is still clear.
AND the relationship hasn’t become collateral damage.
Our kids can’t be what they don’t see.
I know this one personally.
My mum was a yeller.
And somewhere along the way, without really noticing it, I found myself starting to do the same thing with my own kids.
It was an uncomfortable moment of recognition, because language is both an input and an output. What we hear becomes part of what we learn to use. And what we repeatedly use becomes part of what others learn from us.
I had heard that language growing up, particularly when Mum had reached her point.
Then, under pressure, I found myself reproducing it.
That realisation made me think differently about how I wanted to respond in conflict moments with my own kids, and about the language we use with young people in general.
We aren’t just using language to manage behaviour.
Our language is an input into how young people learn to communicate, respond and make sense of conflict.
The same is true in our classrooms.
If we want young people to regulate emotions, navigate conflict and take responsibility for their actions, they need adults who model those same skills.
This is the difference between authority over and authority through practice.
One relies on power.
The other relies on consistency, self-control and relationships.
Every conflict teaches something.
What are we teaching through the way we respond?
Are we teaching that authority comes from power over others and the bigger voice?
Or are we teaching that authority can be held firmly through consistency, self-control and connection?
And perhaps that’s the question worth asking ourselves — not just when a student is struggling, but when we are.
What are they learning from me in this moment?
Because that lesson will stay with them long after the conflict itself is forgotten.
