Protocol Education will once again be offering Team Teach training in positive behaviour management to selected educators. Team Teach is a widely-used set of strategies that teachers and support staff ought to be able to employ. It provides a holistic approach to managing behaviour for individuals and organisations who work with children and adults.
Team Teach is particularly useful for educators working in settings where children’s behaviour might foreseeably challenge or pose a risk to themselves or others. This has led to the misconception that it is primarily a manual for restraining pupils. In actual fact, Team Teach training equips educators with evidence-based de-escalation techniques that can apply to a wide range of scenarios and behaviours.
To help you decide whether this training would be relevant to your work, we’ve pulled together all the key facts about Team Teach, how it works and where it comes in particularly useful.
1. What is Team Teach
Founded by a qualified teacher in the late 1990s, Team Teach is a prominent provider of training in positive behaviour management. Their stated mission is ‘to equip everyone with the tools they need to understand behaviour and manage challenging situations, at work or in daily life, in a positive and respectful manner’.
Team Teach is certified by the BILD ACT Association of Certified Training and complies with the Restraint Reduction Network Training Standards, a requirement for NHS-commissioned services.
2. What is positive behaviour management?
Handling challenging behaviour is a common and major source of stress among those who regularly work with children and young people. The wrong response to such behaviour can cause unintentional harm to the child, compound the disruption for other learners and cause distress or hurt to the educator themselves.
Positive behaviour management strategies help teachers change, rather than simply contain this behaviour. By reformulating behaviour as an act of communication that the adult in the room should interpret and respond to, these strategies help staff understand the children in their care. From there, they can work with pupils to manage and change their responses.
3. What does Team Teach training with Protocol Education involve?
Team Teach training has both a theoretical and a practical side. Trainees will learn about the emotional basis of many challenging behaviours and the best techniques to manage them in the field.
Protocol Education provides access to two types of Team Teach course:
Standard course: 12-hours of face-to-face training split over two days for up to 24 candidates
Blended learning: 3 hours of online learning and 9 hours of face-to-face learning.
Both options cover the same content across the following modules:
Background to Team Teach
The Legal Framework
Understanding Aggression
How Feelings Drive Behaviors
De-escalation and De-fusion
Personal Safety
Positive Handling and kneeling positions safely*
Repair, Reflection and Review
4. What kind of schools is Team Teach used in?
Team Teach is applicable in many educational settings, but will be particularly useful when working in special schools, pupil referral units, alternative provision settings, and when working with children with special educational needs in mainstream schools.
We would recommend this training to registered staff working in medium-to-high risk environments.
Some schools will require staff to be Team Teach trained before they can work there. As long as you are registered with Protocol Education, you can do the course with us.
5. Is there a physical element to Team Teach training?
Team Teach is a toolkit for behaviour management. Its content is primarily focused on understanding children’s behaviours, de-escalating challenging scenarios and creating classroom cultures that instill positive behaviours.
Positive handling techniques are also taught as a last resort in especially difficult situations. Yet only around 5% of Team Teach training is concerned with this kind of physical intervention.
6. How much does Team Teach certification cost and how long is it valid for?
Protocol Education offers Team Teach training for a discounted price of just £40 for all our registered candidates. This is valid for two years, after which we provide a free refresher course.
7. What do educators say about the benefits of Team Teach training?
Protocol Education has helped many educators receive Team Teach training in the past. Those teachers and teaching assistants come away from the course with a more empathetic understanding of the motivations and drivers behind challenging behaviour and greater confidence in safely de-escalating situations.
But don’t just take our word for it. Michelle, a teaching assistant with Protocol Education, had this to say:
'The training has been so valuable to me as a teaching assistant. I am now more aware of my body language when intervening in matters with children. I set my dial to diffusing rather than confronting in challenging situations. I also find it very effective in guiding children into the right spaces and moving them from place to place when they need physical support like when they are unwell, injured or navigating a tricky area. I am definitely more aware of my physical and verbal approaches to my students, and I feel a lot more capable and professional.'
8. How to sign up for Team Teach training
To start your Team Teach training course, simply register your interest using the form here.
