Nathan Wallis
We all know the impact of building positive foundations in the Early Years. More significantly, the first 1000 days plays a critical role in defining later outcomes for our children and for their future. In this talk, Nathan will guide you through the stages of brain development from the first 1000 days and into adulthood.
The more love and positive interaction you experience in your first 1000 days of life, the more developed your brain will be. This will ultimately impact a child’s life-long outcomes.
In contrast to what your parents believed, your outcomes are not predetermined just by your genes and it’s not about learning alphabets, numbers or colours. It’s about being in a safe, loving and interactive environment that is necessary for the learner to most successfully develop the dispositions or social-emotional skills and attributes that underpin not only the learning of literacy and numeracy, but in fact the quality of how they will learn everything (and the subsequent level of achievement and success they will experience) for the rest of their lives. In short, it is not WHAT they are learning before age 8 that provides researchers with any evidence base at all to be able to predict the child’s lifetime levels of success and achievement, as 100% of the evidence base that so accurately predicts the child’s outcomes is about HOW they are learning before age 8.
Leaders that understand this and facilitate curriculum and pedagogy that prioritise these dispositions over the short-term measurable outcomes, will not only produce more intelligent children, but also more resilient and happy children. That’s a future to aspire to!