Teaching Structured Literacy and Maths to Students Who Can't Regulate
- 1 day ago
- 4 min read
by Rebecca Thomas
"Can we teach our kids self-regulation before anything else?" A teacher asked this in passing, but the weight of her question landed with a thud in the silence that followed. It’s a question we must hold in our hands gently and seriously.
After six years away from the classroom, I returned to a different world. Not because the curriculum had changed—but because the children had. Where once we supported the occasional child with trauma-related behaviour, we now find ourselves trying to teach structured literacy and structured maths to classes where six, eight, sometimes more students are living in fight-or-flight mode.
Imagine trying to teach a carefully sequenced literacy or maths lesson in a room of children already frayed before 9 a.m.
One child is reeling from a classmate poking out their tongue.
Another has erupted because a student passed by the window and reminded them of a grievance from morning tea.
The autistic child, whose world depends on predictability, sits bewildered because their teacher aide is away.
In the back row, a defiant student smirks and refuses to engage, holding the room hostage. Beside them, a child lashes out with their hands—not out of malice, but because it’s the only language their frustration knows.
These are not naughty children. These are children in crisis.
And yet we are asked to deliver a tightly structured programme. To reach their cortex when their brainstem is on fire. As Dr. Bruce Perry outlines in the Neurosequential Model, this is biologically impossible. But still, the pressure persists.
Teachers are left performing triage.
The 20-minute lesson unravels into 50. You’re walking on eggshells, praying for a moment of calm. Meanwhile, the rest of the class drifts, learning that disruption trumps diligence, and that their needs come second to chaos.
We are left trying to implement Ministry of Education-mandated structured approaches in rooms that are structurally unsupported.
Let those making decisions come and see. Not for a scripted visit or a photo op, but really see. Come into our classrooms. Stay a week. Deliver the PLD you’re rolling out, not from behind a PowerPoint, but with 28 children in front of you—eight of whom are dysregulated before morning Karakia. Teach literacy and maths with your feet on our lino, not in the safety of an air-conditioned office. Come with your plans, and watch them unravel under the weight of lived experience. Then—only then—let's talk about what’s working.
And to our principals—we see you too. Stuck between ERO visits and looming threats of school improvement officers, you carry a burden few understand. When the data doesn't meet the benchmark, the consequences are more than a bad review—they can be career-defining. Communities turn, stories shift, and suddenly the school carries a new narrative. One that scars not just the principal, but the children, whānau, and town that rely on that kura to hold steady. The deep, responsive, trauma-informed work being done doesn’t feature in a narrow report that measures only what fits neatly into a spreadsheet.
And what of the principals—those who dared to lead differently? Who championed school cultures rooted in whanaungatanga, in trauma-informed values, in kaupapa that placed children before compliance?
Too often, these principals find their vision sidelined. When an ERO report doesn't align with dominant expectations, a school improvement officer is assigned. And with that, the narrative of the school shifts. Whispers ripple through the community. Confidence erodes. A new label is applied—not to the data, but to the people.
Instead of recognising the depth of cultural leadership or the courageous focus on healing, these schools are measured against colonised criteria. The boxes that matter most—connection, cultural safety, trust—remain unticked. And what follows is not support, but surveillance. A whitewashed witch hunt begins. Inspectors who do not know what a pōwhiri is, who assume that brown skin means a classroom must echo with fluent te reo Māori, arrive with checklists not care.
So in answer to that teacher’s question: Can we teach self-regulation before anything else?
The honest answer is—we should. We must. But we aren’t allowed.
Not by a system that prioritises data over wellbeing.
Not by an accountability framework that was never designed to hold space for trauma, for intergenerational healing, for relational pedagogy. This is why the trauma cycle perpetuates. This is why the achievement gap doesn’t close—it widens.
First, we must ask the real question: not "What do I need to teach today?" but "Is this child ready to learn?"
And then we must ask—who among us is equipped to do this? Who among us was trained in neurodevelopmental regulation strategies? Maybe some of our RTLit colleagues, whose roles are being quietly defunded. But what of the 340 new structured literacy roles—will they be trained to see distress under defiance? Will they know how to reach the lower brain before diving into decodable texts or numeracy strategies?
What are we doing?
What have we done to our education system, our tamariki’s potential, and our teachers’ longevity?
And we cannot ignore the wider truth: for many Māori tamariki, this isn’t just trauma—it’s historical trauma. It’s about what happens when generations have survived colonisation, land loss, and systemic racism. It’s about walking into a school system where your ancestors were punished for speaking their language, and your whānau still carry that ache.
Mātauranga Māori shows us that wellbeing is not individual—it is collective. It is wairua, hinengaro, tinana, whānau. When we honour mātauranga Māori, we begin to understand healing as relational. We start to ask, not just what does this child know, but who holds them? Who believes in them?
The equity gap in our schools is a gaping wound. It does not close with phonics or number facts alone. It begins to close when we stop seeing dysregulation as defiance and start seeing it as distress. When we create classrooms that feel like a pā—a place of safety, belonging, and restoration.
The greatest hope we can offer right now is love that listens, curriculum that heals, and learning that starts with the whole child.
Because before the structure, comes the child.