Every school I've worked at has wanted teachers to log behaviour. Incidents, commendations, patterns, get it all recorded so we can track what's happening and spot issues early. The reasoning is solid. The execution is where it falls apart.

Because here's the reality: almost nobody does it consistently. And it's not because teachers don't care.

The Problem Isn't Motivation

I sat through PD on this at my school. The message was clear: log incidents and commendations into the LMS. Keep records. Build a picture of each student over time. Use the data to spot patterns and intervene early.

I nodded along. It made sense. I genuinely wanted to do it.

Then I got back to my classroom, and a student called out during maths for the third time that lesson. Did I log it? No. Because logging it meant walking to my laptop, opening the LMS, navigating through menus to find the right form, filling in fields, and submitting. By the time I'd done all that, I'd lost two minutes, the moment had passed, and I had 24 other students who needed my attention.

So I didn't log it. And I didn't log the next one either. And eventually I stopped thinking about logging at all, except when someone asked about a student and I wished I had records to refer to.

I don't think I'm unusual here. I think this is what happens in most classrooms.

The System Is the Problem

Teachers aren't failing to log behaviour because we're lazy or disorganised. We're failing because the systems we're given aren't designed for how classrooms actually work.

Classrooms are fast. Things happen constantly. You've got maybe a five-second window to acknowledge a behaviour before you need to move on. Any system that takes longer than that to use is a system that won't get used.

Most LMS behaviour logging is built for administrators, not teachers in the middle of a lesson. It's thorough, lots of fields, lots of options, lots of documentation. That's great for formal records. It's useless for capturing the small stuff in real time.

And it's the small stuff that matters. One call-out isn't a problem. Twenty call-outs over three weeks is a pattern. But you'll never see that pattern if you only log the big incidents because those are the only ones worth the time it takes to record them.

What Logging Should Look Like

I kept thinking about what behaviour logging would need to look like for me to actually use it. The answer was simple: it needed to take seconds, not minutes.

No navigating menus. No filling in forms. No switching devices or opening apps that dump me on a homepage. Just: open, tap, done.

That's what I built with Behaviour Check.

Behaviour Check quick logging interface

It's designed for phone use, you don't need to go to your laptop. When you open it, you're straight into the logger. No menus, no navigation, just the interface you need. You tap the student, tap the category (incident or commendation, plus whatever subcategories you've set up), add an optional note if you want, and you're done.

The whole thing takes a few seconds. Which means you actually do it.

Why Quick Logging Changes Everything

When logging takes seconds instead of minutes, you stop filtering. You don't just log the big stuff, you log the small stuff too. The call-outs, the quiet wins, the moments that seem minor but add up over time.

That's when the data becomes useful. You start seeing patterns you never would have noticed. Maybe a student always struggles after lunch. Maybe another student has had a great week and you hadn't even registered it consciously. Maybe there's a time of day when behaviour issues spike across the class.

None of that is visible if you're only logging major incidents. It only emerges when you're capturing consistently, and you only capture consistently when it's easy enough to actually do.

Where It's At

I'll be honest: Behaviour Check is still in development. I'm testing it with my own class this year, and it's not ready for other schools yet. The phone-friendly logger works, but there's no proper app yet, and the integrations I want, syncing with major LMS systems so data flows automatically, aren't built.

But the core idea is proven. I've been using it, and I'm actually logging things I never would have bothered recording before. That alone tells me I'm on the right track.

When it's ready, I'll share more. For now, I just wanted to name the problem, because I don't think it's talked about enough. Schools tell teachers to log behaviour, then give them systems that make it nearly impossible to do consistently. The intention is good. The tools aren't.

That's what I'm trying to fix.