Nigel Latter-Education Legend

After hearing Nigel Latter speak in Hamilton I had a lot to think about. His views and ideas were simple yet made so much sense. Everything he said made me think of different children I have taught over the last 3 and a half years and different things that related in some way.

Some key ideas I took from this were:
Most 'problem students' can fit into one of these 3 categories

• Avoidant-neglected, depressed, flat battery, angry then depressed, feels like no one cares.
• Resistant-feel they want a relationship with you but annoy or ruin it the whole time, trying to get any type of relationship or attention.
• Disorganised-been through neglect and abuse, train wreck life.

After Nigel spoke about these 3 types of children I instantly started to think about different types of behaviours we have a school and their backgrounds and this all started to make sense. Nigel also spoke about how we 'bin kids' that maybe don't fit the 'normal' category when perhaps we should be teaching children how to work with all types of people.

Something we have be working on in the Marama team this year was encouraging our students to have a growth mindset not a fixed mindset.And he also spoke about this. 

The ideal teacher/student relationship must have these things:

• empathy
• warmth
• encouragement
• fairness

Then something he got us to think bout where we sit with the naughty kids and these things. That really made me think about what things were missing or was I doing etc. I think this would be a really interesting thing to do. Sit down and actually look at these kids pin point was is missing and try to encourage whats missing. I think this was one of the biggest things that resinated with me and is something I will definitely will do. 

• Children have got to learn to be bored because it is going to happen!
• Self control-we have go to teach this-not all people are born with self control--TEACH IT!

Also a must read book he suggested: