Success stories
Every child in these pages was once written off by the system. Each one changed the ending.
These aren't case studies dressed up for a brochure. They're children Nina taught, believed in, and never forgot, told exactly as they happened.
Story One
I'll never forget meeting Student J. He'd already been permanently excluded from three mainstream schools. By the time we met, he had completely disengaged from education.
On my first day working with him, I found him sitting under a desk with a towel over his head. He'd given up.
To most people, he looked like another “challenging” child. I saw a frightened young man who had stopped believing he belonged anywhere.
For six weeks, every Thursday became “Nina day.” Working alongside an incredible teaching assistant, we built a relationship first. Not through rewards. Not through sanctions. Through trust.
The school realised he wanted to work with me, so Thursday became the carrot. Complete the rest of the week's learning, engage with staff, show us what you're capable of, and Thursday belonged to us.
Week by week, everything changed. His attendance improved. His behaviour improved. His confidence grew. His achievement exceeded every expectation.
But the biggest change wasn't in his school reports. It was in how he saw himself. He started believing that maybe he wasn't the problem. Maybe nobody had simply understood him before.
I followed his journey as a school governor. Today, he's a qualified plumber. He runs his own successful business.
People often ask me what strategy I used. The truth? I believed in him before he believed in himself.
He built his future because someone believed he could, so he did.
Not “what's wrong with you?”
but “what happened to you?”
That single shift in the question is why Regulate to Educate exists.
Story Two
One of the most powerful moments of my career didn't happen in a classroom. It happened in a pupil referral unit.
I'd been working with a small group of young people who, for lots of different reasons, had become disconnected from mainstream education. They'd known failure and exclusion, and many had stopped believing there was much of a future waiting for them.
During a Dragon's Den style enterprise day, the headteacher accidentally let slip that I wasn't “just a teacher”, that I owned a successful education recruitment business. I hadn't meant the pupils to know. It wasn't why I was there.
Afterwards, one of the girls looked me straight in the eyes and asked a question I'll never forget. “What is someone like you doing here with us?”
She wasn't being rude. She was genuinely confused. In her mind, successful people didn't choose to spend time with young people like her.
That question broke my heart. Because the truth was, working in that PRU was the best day of my week. I told her exactly that.
Then I told her what I'd seen in her. Her natural leadership. Her resilience. Her humour. Her ability to influence the others. I told her she had qualities that would make people want to follow her one day. Nobody had ever said those things to her before.
Over the following weeks, something changed. She stepped forward instead of shrinking back. She became a leader within the group. She encouraged the others. She started believing she had something to offer.
It wasn't a clever technique. It was because, perhaps for the first time, someone from outside her world reflected back a version of herself she'd never considered possible.
An outsider arrives without history. Without assumptions. Without labels. Sometimes that's enough to interrupt the story a child has been telling themselves for years.
I don't think we change children. I think we help them discover a version of themselves that was always there.
Story Three
A few years ago I booked an appointment with a new hairdresser. Young to own her own salon. Driven. Meticulous. The sort of person you instantly know is going to build something incredible.
As she worked, chatting confidently about her business, I suddenly recognised her. Years earlier I'd taught her, not as her regular teacher, but as a supply teacher.
I'd arrived that morning to the random collection of subjects every supply teacher knows too well. One was a group of girls studying hair and beauty. Their brilliant teacher was off sick, and they were disappointed, they loved her.
The lesson plan said: copy this page from the textbook, then design a hairstyle with colouring pencils. Within minutes the girls groaned. “Miss, we've done this about five times already.”
Hairdressing isn't my thing, I can barely plait my own hair. But the room was full of mannequin heads. Some beautifully kept. Others knotted, matted, neglected.
So I stopped the lesson. “Imagine these aren't mannequin heads,” I said. “Imagine they're seven people who've been living rough. Nobody has cared for them for a long time. Today, your job is to help them feel human again.” And one more thing: “Don't fight over the easy ones. The worst head gives you the biggest chance to show your talent.”
Something magical happened. Instead of avoiding the tangled heads, they rushed towards them. The room came alive.
One girl stood out. She didn't complain. She grabbed the conditioner and worked methodically through the knots, and within minutes found a quicker, better way. The others gathered round. She showed them. Before long she was leading the class.
By the end, every mannequin looked incredible. The room was spotless. The girls were proud. One smiled: “Miss, I hope we get you again. You're even better than our normal teacher.” I laughed, it wasn't true. Their teacher was fantastic. Just exhausted, juggling an impossible workload, like so many.
As everyone left, one girl stayed to help me wash the brushes. I told her, “There's something really special about you.” She looked surprised. “Really? I don't think so.” “Oh yes there is. One day you'll own something. You'll be successful. People will follow you. Don't ever let anyone convince you otherwise.”
Years passed. Then one afternoon I sat down in a salon chair. The young owner cutting my hair smiled. “I've just realised where I know you from. It was you. You were the teacher who told me I was special.” I laughed. “I was right then, wasn't I?” She smiled. “Yes.”
Children don't always need another worksheet. Sometimes they need someone to say: “I can see something in you that you can't see yet.” The right words, at the right time, can stay with a child for years.
There are more stories where these came from, a career's worth. Some day, they may be a book.
Let's talk about the child on your mind, and how the R.E.G.U.L.A.T.E. Method™ could help you change their ending too.
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