Katie Dill, a special education teacher from Winnebago School District in Northern Illinois, knows the gap well: teachers are expected to manage challenging behaviour, but rarely shown how. Here she explains how a step-by-step conflict management approach transformed her classroom — reducing restraint and building a safer, calmer learning environment for SEND students.
The Gap: Told What to Do, Never Shown How
“I chose Vistelar as a teacher in the educational field because this is ‘how we do things’. In the professional field we know that we often get told we just have to respond. We have to do these things. We have to provide good classroom management, a good society within our schools, but we never get told the how, the step by step. And this really breaks it down so that we can really provide that classroom management to our students, and to the community that we serve.”
We never get told the how, the step by step.
What Changed: From Battling Behaviour to Modelling It
Some of the outcomes that I’ve seen since implementing VDI into the classroom is really the classroom management part. And by that I mean that you’re able to provide a safe learning environment for the students that you’re with. You’re able to provide them with steps in order to understand how your classroom is run.
You also start to get where they start managing that behaviour themselves, so that they then use your modelling behaviour for VDI into their regular lives.
💡 The modelling effect: When staff model consistent, respectful conflict management, students internalise it. They begin to self-manage their own behaviour — not just in the classroom, but in their wider lives.
The Ripple Effect: Less Stress, More Teaching
This training is important for teachers in the profession because this is not only going to help you professionally in a classroom to have less stress — you’re going to be able to teach more in your classroom. As we know, a lot of our outcomes are based on the assessments of professionals and the information that we give to the teachers.
With having a classroom that’s a safe environment where the kids are ready to learn, they understand their expectations, they have social contracts to be able to follow — they can learn more, so you’re getting more of that educational piece into the student.
But also, for your regular day-to-day life, there’s not as much stress on you because you’re not going from constantly battling to achieve classroom management, constantly battling within your other coworkers or your administration. Because you have a respectful language, the community is safer to work in, and you just feel better as an overall person.”
You’re not going from constantly battling to achieve classroom management. The community is safer to work in, and you just feel better as an overall person.
Training for Your School or Setting
Conflict Management Training for your team →
Dynamis Positive Handling Strategies for High-Risk Behaviour →
Conflict Management Train-the-Trainer Courses →
This guide on conflict management and classroom behaviour is part of our ongoing work with schools, academies, and SEND settings.