I can just about stretch my memory back to my NQT and NQT+1 years. The younger version of me that I see there has so much yet to learn - it’s rather embarrassing. Indeed, there’s probably a lot that I could pick to write about when it comes to lessons I have learned in the art and craft of teaching and behaviour management in the two decades that have passed since I began my career.

I could write about how my drama lessons would begin with children literally climbing the curtains of the school hall. I could write about how I dealt with the discovery that some students had poured yoghurt over my car. I could write about my response to the rumours that a fellow newbie and I were having an affair.

But there is, perhaps, one incident above all else that stands out as a critical moment in my development as a teacher; one incident that made me quickly realise the power of language; one incident that formed a rule for my career: don’t call children idiots.

It was a drama lesson in my second year in post. By now, drama lessons had moved out of the school hall and into a mobile classroom officially called “The Studio”, but that we affectionately referred to as “The Shed”. It was Friday afternoon. It was Year 8. One boy was being silly and disruptive. A boy diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. I was ill-equipped in the moment to retain my capacity for calm intervention. In front of the whole class, I yelled at him and told him that he was an idiot.

Rightly, the boy took exception to this and challenged me. In the moment, I knew I had made a terrible and stupid mistake. In the moment, I saw one way out. In the moment, I lied.

It was a clever lie, designed to circumvent the impossible position into which I had so foolishly manoeuvred myself. I told the boy that I had not, in fact, called him an idiot. I told him that I had advised him to stop behaving in an idiotic way. I may even have apologised, employing a subtle “if” clause - “I’m sorry if you thought I had called you an idiot” - and reassured him that I really didn’t think this of him.

In the moment, it seemed to work. But I learned an important lesson that day: that language matters. The way that we speak to children - and about them - can have a lasting effect upon them, and, indeed, us.

I’m still appalled to hear the way that some teachers speak about children - and parents - in staffroom conversations. Worse, I have been in meetings where comments have been prefaced with “don’t minute this but…”.

The language we use about a topic affects the way we think about that topic. If we speak about children or their families, or the estate on which they live, or the background from which they come, in derogatory terms, then we will inevitably think less of them. If we talk about the “bottom sets” using the language of deficiency, we will have lower expectations of them.

And if we call children idiots or clowns or delinquents or fools or brats or buggers, then we have only ourselves to blame when they prove us right.

Stephen Lane is a head of year and author of Beyond Wiping Noses: building an informed approach to pastoral leadership in schools

This article originally appeared in the 25 September 2020 issue under the headline “Mind your language”