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Teacher-student boundaries are about building relationships, not controlling behaviour

Boundaries aren't about telling pupils what they can't do, they are about providing a framework for positive relationships, so children feel safe, argues Peter Nelmes…

Peter Nelmes
by Peter Nelmes
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Daniel was my biggest challenge in my first term as an NQT.

I was in a school for children with emotional and behavioural difficulties, and in my classroom there were quite a few insults, items of stationery and furniture flying around my classroom, but no one made me doubt myself like Daniel did.

I could see he was a lovely lad when he was other teachers, but with me he was different.

He arrived late, talked whenever and about whatever he wanted, and ignored both the instructions and the work I gave him.

It was as if I did not exist. My personal and professional confidence ebbed with each lesson.

Last stand

I was desperate to put boundaries in, and my concerned colleagues gave me advice, but it did not help.

They told me to shout, but I did not want to do that. They said be consistent, but I was doing that and things were consistently horrible between Daniel and me.

They told me don’t smile before Christmas, but I was not sure if I was ever going to smile again. As for fight your own battles, well, that was happening every lesson. I was failing.

Luckily, my exasperation eventually outweighed my fear of him and my need to be liked. So one day I told him that if he did not finish his work in the time I had given him, he would need to stay in at the end of the lesson.

Daniel’s reaction was one of indifference. When the bell went, he walked off, so I picked up the work and followed him out onto the playground, onto the field and all the way to the back of the pavilion, where the smokers hung out and staff never went.

I realised that my fear of the boys there was not as great as his embarrassment at being followed by a teacher, and so he walked off again, all the while telling me what I could do with my work.

It took all break, but eventually he ended up in my classroom, and he wrote a single sentence of the work, which I had the nous to be satisfied with. He stormed off, tipping chairs over as he went.

I spent the night worrying about what form of revenge Daniel was going to select for me, but the next morning he came into the classroom with a smile, sat in the desk closest to me, and asked me if I had seen the football on telly last night. From then on we were fine.

A safe space

I was gobsmacked. What I hadn’t realised, and I wished my colleagues had explained, was that boundaries are not really about telling pupils what they cannot do.

They are about providing a framework for positive relationships, so that children have adults they know they are going to be safe with.

When Daniel was refusing to engage with me, he was as frustrated with me as I was with him.

He needed me to be someone he could trust, who could stand up for themselves, who could be true to their beliefs, who could be friendly even if he was nervous and wanted to shout, to take the shortcut to fear as a form of respect.

Now I know that boundaries, if they are appropriate, are as supportive as they are restrictive.

We all need to know where we are with other people and that we will be safe physically, emotionally, morally and legally.

Those who argue that children need boundaries because otherwise they misbehave are missing the point.

Children want boundaries because without them, the world is too scary a place, and they have to stay vigilant and defensive, which means that fun and learning have to be put on the back burner, and their behaviour becomes a way of communicating their anxieties.

That is the advice I really needed to hear in my first term.


Peter Nelmes is a senior manager in a special school and is the author of Troubled Hearts, Troubled minds: making sense of the emotional dimension of learning (Crown House).

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