I am six-foot-six-inches tall, 23-stone, bearded with a shaven head (actually bald... who am I kidding?) and I am an aspiring strongman.

As such, when I entered teaching 10 years ago, I never expected I’d have many issues with behaviour. I thought, as did everyone who knew me, that my stature alone would mean students would fall in line through sheer fear.

In fact, I was looking forward to becoming a teacher that students feared to see approaching. Shirts would be tucked in with a look and students would part and bow their heads as they saw me approaching.

Unsurprisingly, this did not turn out to be the case. 

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I had a particularly challenging media studies group in my NQT year. It was the type of group where my desk was often turned multi-coloured owing to the copious reports the pupils were on.

They became my nightmare…literally. I would often dream about them on the final night of school breaks. I would be stood trying to shout over them but no sound would come out.

Behaviour awakening

Because I had thought behaviour would be perfect, I had tried to be the “fun” teacher. I had used my youth to try and engage the students, which just had not cultivated the right kinds of relationships.

I had no strategies to deal with poor behaviour, so all I could do was march the group in and out of the classroom and hope they got bored of it before I did. My size, I hoped, would intimidate them into obedience*.

*Spoiler alert: this did not happen.

Bad practice

I battled with the group for two years and their GCSE results reflected our chaotic time together.

I left that school partway through my third year of teaching to become a second in an English department in a school closer to home. Owing to my new role, I started to be used as an authority figure, but, again, this was more focused on being “scary”. And again, it did not work.

Role models in leadership from both of my schools had favoured shouting. These were people I looked up to; surely I just needed to shout more and louder to be like them, right?  

Wrong. At times, my confrontational manner led to an escalation in situations that I was unable to rectify. If the students shouted back, then what?

New learning

I learned that as soon as you start shouting, there is nowhere else to go. And in my short time as a teacher, I had realised that, for many students, school needed to be an escape from anger.

So in the past five years, I have become a much calmer teacher. I genuinely cannot remember the last time I shouted at students in a lesson. My expectations around their conduct are clear and consistent. I don’t have many issues with behaviour now as a result. Gone is the scary me using my stature, now it’s all about quiet, routines and understanding and showing emotion.

But I wonder about all those years I have spent in the behaviour wilderness. They could have been avoided.

Best models

There is an entrenched view in many schools that teachers need to see others that are like them to prove that they can manage behaviour.

Small female teachers are sent to watch other small female teachers and young male teachers to other relatively young male teachers. Big teachers like me were sent to other big teachers, or the assumption was simply made that I would not have any issues.

By matching teachers like this, we are merely exacerbating the problem. It is the teacher’s expectations and how they are communicated to students that is paramount. If a list for successful behaviour management were to be created, it would not include questions that looked at the age, size, weight or gender of the teacher being observed.

By thinking that these impact on behaviour, we are actually telling ourselves, and the students, that people should be treated differently and this is extremely dangerous. Schools should be a celebration of diversity and equality.

I will never actually know how much my size does affect behaviour, but I have seen teachers of all shapes and sizes captivate students and cultivate an environment where everyone thrives, and there has only ever been one consistent factor: high expectations.

David Alderson is head of English at All Saints’ Catholic Voluntary Academy in Mansfield