Workshop 5 - Teaching Tough Kids

This one day very practical workshop is presented to enrich the ways we think and work with the kids Mark affectionately calls the Tough Kids. The presentation is taken directly from his latest book, Teaching Tough Kids, released internationally by the Routledge, Taylor and Francis Publishing Group in London, in July 2009.

Who are the Tough Kids?

They comprise at least 12% of student population. These are complex kids who find life tougher than most and in the process make life tougher for those who care for them and educate them. Indeed, managing the emotion and behaviour of these students presents educators with a spectacular challenge in schools today, and numbers are on the rise.

These kids include a group who are fundamentally challenged by poor executive functioning. Executive functioning has been likened to the conductor of the orchestra because it supervises and controls various complex mental processes. As educators, we are acutely aware how students struggle when they lack the faculty to listen and filter out distractions, process new information, get started, persist, adapt to changes in routine, keep track of time and multi-task. With a scarcity of this valuable personal resource it is difficult to delay gratification, strategically plan, self-regulate emotion and behaviour and retrieve information stored within memory that would be helpful at the moment it’s required. Poor executive function is associated with a number of developmental problems, psychological disorders, difficulties and disabilities, namely Asperger syndrome, learning difficulties, Oppositional, Defiant Disorder, and ADHD. Indeed, understanding these conditions presents educators with a spectacular challenge because student numbers are certainly on the rise.

This workshop takes educators into what the core processing differences of students with Asperger syndrome, learning difficulties, Defiant Disorder, and ADHD really look like and represent. To understand these conditions at a truly intrinsic level is the natural starting point in dealing with the inevitable problems.

In recent times another group of children with executive functioning difficulties have begun to emerge. These are the kids who have endured the disadvantages of neglect, too much stress and uncertainty. As a result they display the classically related symptoms of hyperactivity, hyper vigilance and impulsive behaviours.

A range of realistic strategies to optimise the emotion and behaviour of the Tough Kids, students battling poor executive functioning, will be explored. Regrettably, there is not a universal remedy! Some school-based interventions and ideas will prove to be more effective than others. Some will demand less of educators and others will demand higher levels of time, collaboration and monitoring.

This one day workshop is dedicated to the real heroes in schools; teachers who dig deep everyday to regenerate the spirit within kids to help them stay connected to school and learning. It reminds us that our best work takes place inside relationships with kids. And, as we get our thinking and practice right to work more successfully with the Tough Kids we will reach many, many more kids, and schools will become better places for everyone.

We are the first generation of educators to truly appreciate the complexities of deficit, delay, disorder and syndrome, often aggravated by unfortunate life forces. In the end each of us will be judged on a single question.

How strong was my desire to make a difference?

Finding a way forward with any child or adolescent is reliant on our will to participate with them in the good and not so good times.

Please click the link below for the workshop notes.
Workshop notes - Teaching Tough Kids.pdf