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| 'Team work' |
A group of friends aged 6-14
Semester break
With
half-term (Carnival) holiday coming up next week our school children have received
their half-yearly reports and we are all so pleased with them.
The
whole group was especially pleased to hear that our two grammar-school (Gymnasium)
children did really well in their first half-year, achieving a couple of As,
lots of Bs and one or two Cs.
It is
lovely to observe how all the children enjoy discussing their marks and how
they all find it so easy to enjoy each other’s successes. Between them, these children
attend primary schools, a grammar school, the school for the partially sighted,
a special school, the Steiner and Montessori schools, but it makes no
difference where they go, they all get excited and pleased about the
achievements of their friends, whatever their ability. My observations of these
children helps me describe my own meaning of the word ‘integration’, the word
that we hear so much these days in Germany when talking about children with
special educational needs, and adults too who need assistance at work and in
everyday life.
Some of
the children in our conductive afternoon group will live independently but
perhaps have difficulty to find a job, others will need assistance to live
independently but will able to work on the open market, others with go on to
university needing differing degrees of physical and psychological help to
achieve this.
Learn, learn, learn
These
children spend years attending conductive groups learning about living as
independently as they can, learning how to socialise in all sorts of situations,
learning about what society tolerates and what it does not tolerate, learning
about the motivation that they need in life, and the need to have a will to
achieve something. These children learn about what it to be accepted in
communities and to be able to participate in different walks of life, they learn
how they can give, to share with other people those abilities that they have
but perhaps other people have not.
Tears
often well up in my eyes when I observe a fourteen-year-old girl, who attends
the school for partially sighted children, help a ten-year-old girl with
cerebral palsy, who attends grammar school, put food on her fork or put her
coat on – then vice versa as the
fourteen-year-old gets help with spelling from the ten-year-old while writing
a report about all the children in the
group that one of our many visitors last year said she would be delighted to
receive.
On
Friday afternoons we often have six children in our conductive group. They all
get up between 6.00 am and 6.30 am the whole week long and when school finishes
at 1.00 pm they either have music lessons, physiotherapy, speech therapy,
football training, appointments to meet a friend, they have a haircut, go to
the dentist or spend a few hours with brothers and sisters, or they come to us
for three hours. They all also have homework to do!
Fun on Fridays
So, as
well as hard work, we also try to make our Friday afternoons especially
relaxing and fun.
We
always prepare lots of activities that take place lying down, sitting, standing
and when walking. There are games playing with bats and balls, bean-bags,
basket-ball nets ping-pong balls, feathers, finger footballs, etc. etc. When
preparing the activities we think about what each child finds difficult at
school (we make visits to school and the school assistants visit us to share
this information) and in other parts of their lives (parents meetings and home
visits provide this information). We consider together what the children find
difficult, what they wish to learn and which activities we think could help
them.
There
are of course always lots of arty-crafty activities to choose from to improve among
other things fine-motor movements, eye-hand coordination, concentration and
sitting posture, and to make presents for all occasions at home! This week the
children had so much fun playing the prepared games, spent so much time
discussing school and making up stories about the pictures collected while
walking around and through obstacles, that they decided to spend the rest of
their afternoon on playing bat and ball games instead of painting T-shirts or
sewing pictures. Their tiredness was forgotten, it was hard to get them out of
the room at the end of the session!
Awakenings
On
Fridays, when the children first roll in between 13.30 pm and 13.45 pm they
look exhausted. They arrive ready for their lunch, a sit down and a chat. It is
amazing to watch how they slowly come back to life, how their faces slowly
light up. This is especially noticeable when they get to sit next to just the
right person at lunchtime. When the chemistry fits they just chat away about
their week at school as if no one else is around. This is what happened this
Friday – an eleven-year-old grammar-school boy spent thirty minutes discussing
the difficulties of second-year primary school with a seven-year-old! He gave
advice on maths and also on football.
These
two are both very independent so I left them alone at the table with their
manly chat and turned my attention to our shoe-man who had arrived to plaster
Little Princess’s feet and lower legs, for the umpteenth time in her life. They
are the best of friends, they organise these appointments with each other on
their smart phones on WhatsApp!
Ever
since she was two years old Little Princess’s face has lit up each time that he
comes into the room, in anticipation of their lovely chats. This week, once I
had helped Little Princess undress and get decent with a towel wrapped around
her, ready to sit still for forty-five minutes, I left the two of them to their
private conversation.
Our shoe-man
is wonderful. He is a dab-hand at splint, shoe, rolators and wheelchair
preparation, but more importantly he is so good at engaging our children in
such interesting conversation. They tell him everything that is happening in
their lives, then they sit perfectly still in anticipation of the next story
from him as he pulls net stockings on their feet and puts a gooey mess on their
legs before eventually cutting off the finished plaster casts, ready to prepare
for the next stage and a new fitting.
I watch with joy to see this child with severe athetoid cerebral palsy remain so calm, her eyes fixed on the face of the man who tells her stories about his daughter, his son, or of his family in the Andes. She never moves a muscle in her body as she listens, then waiting for his all clear signal, when the knife has been put away, before she begins to speak – as this she cannot do without moving.
Children
who rarely speak a word chatter away to their favourite shoe-man as he works
away at their feet.
We give
the shoe-man and the children the help that they need in this process but I try
to leave them on their own to their private time as much as I can. I sometimes
stay as near as I can but still at a distance so that I do not disturb them – I
do so love to watch this social experience. It is all part of growing up,
learning to communicate with people, and we try to give our children as many
experiences to learn this as we can. This week on Friday the social interaction
with one of her favourite people gave Little Princess the motivation she needed
to later take part in activities with the other children.
Integrated afternoons
Visitors
to such afternoon groups, and we get many, always tell us how much they enjoy
seeing conductive living and upbringing in action. They rarely see the
conventional conductive programme that groups can organise when children attend
the all-day sessions that take place in holiday times for three weeks.
In our
afternoon groups we have a short amount of time and a very mixed group of
children in ability and age. The children come to us after a long morning at
school, often hungry and tired but usually motivated to take part in a fun
afternoon.
The
children learn to set the table if they arrive early enough or they clear up
afterwards and learn how to fill the dishwasher, they comb their hair and make
themselves tidy before coming to the table, they make sure that their
belongings are tidily placed in the cloakroom with room for the other children
to move around when they arrive, and they help their friends and chat to them
as they arrive. Over lunch we all talk together or listen to a story that
someone has brought along. Lunch is followed by activities that are planned to
suit the children who are present on particular days, depending on what they
are learning at school and what is needed for them to continue progressing in
all part of their lives.
Often
we are motivated by the children. They know what kind of things help them to
learn and they know that we are flexible, so they share with us their own ideas
about what they or the others might like to do or need to do. Such
participation in planning is so important for keeping the children interested
and motivated in their journey through conductive living. As they get older,
more capable and more motivated their lives get busier and school life gets
longer and harder. We, the conductors, have to keep on the ball, offering the
children activities that motivate them to join as for one or two days a week,
or for a week or two in their precious holidays.
I have
been involved in this evolving work with this group since Jolly Prof and Little
Princess left our integrated conductive/Montessori Kindergarten and they have
now been at school for nearly five years.
We now have eleven children that join us on different days of the week,
attending from one to five days, depending on their needs and circumstances. We
have two conductors and sometimes a student in the group. We give the children
a secure, motivating, learning environment, but we remain as flexible as we can
in our small team to accommodate their ever-changing needs.
