Monday ( 07- 04 - 2008 )

HELLO,

Today was the first day after two weeks of vacation. I really enjoyed my vacation. I took my time to relaxe and now i am ready to start again with the program!

Visit to the 'Sint Gerardusschool':

Today we were expected in a special needs school ‘St. Gerardus’ in Diepenbeek.
The principal of the school gave us some information and a tour in the school. It was very interesting to see what was going on in this school.
It is a school for children with a fysical handicap. Most of the times this fysical handicap is combined with another handicap.
The goal of this school is that the children learn to live with their handicap by making the most of their possibilities.
To achieve this, there are other staffmembers such as speech therapists, a pedagogue, a psychologist, nurses, ergotherapists, kinetherapists, ...

There were a lot of different rooms and adjustments in this school to acheeve a lot with the children with a fysical and a mental handicap:
- A special gym- room
- A heated swimming pool
- special toilets with elevators
- places where the therapists have their necessities
- classes with windows untill the floor so that all the children are in contact with the outside. (Some children crawl and wouldn’t see the outside if they didn’t do the construction this way.)
- classes with kitchens, flat- irons......



After the explanation and the tour, we went to a classroom to observe the children.
The meaning of this observation was to get more knowledge of the children where my group of students is going to do activities with on Thursday and Friday. My job is to guide them when they prepare the activities and help them during the acitivities.
My group of students: Xanthi, Eva, Marian and Monica.

The first thing we did when we were in the classroom, was presenting ourselfs. The children were very interested in all these students of different countries and asked them a lot of questions. After this we observed the children during a lesson of Dutch.

During the lunch break we discussed with the principal, the teachers and the students which activities they could do. (suggestions: poems, songs, dancing, art, coocking, ...)
I hope that this helped the students to get more ideas about what they can do and that they have more confidence about these things.

In the afternoon my group went to another classroom because my group is going to do activities with two different classes. Therefor we had to observe both classes.
We presented ourself for a seccond time and observed the children during musical lessons.

Here are some pictures of the children:




I was suprised to see so many differences between the children. There where children who could and couldn’t speak, write, walk... I also was suprised by the possibilities of the children. There was for example a boy in my class who could speek through a computer and work on it by using only his big toe. It is amazing what all these children can do!

I am very glad that we get the opportunity to be in this school. When i choosed a school for my previous teaching practice in a special needs school i was doubting between this school and another school with children of type 1, 2 and 8. Because i didn’t choose this kind of school, i am now very happy that i also get the chance to see how everything is working in this school.

Untill now i am very enthousiastic about this school! The teachers are really nice and there is an nice athmosphere. I also like all the children that i met today. They are real sweethearts!
They are happy and pleased with all the little things you do. They give a lot of satisfaction to the teachers.
After today and beeing surrounded by these children, i started to think again about if i want to do something in this direction later.

I am very enthousiastic about the rest of the week to do activities with these children and get to know more about the school and working with these children.
I hope that the other students also will enjoy there time and experience with these children.

See you tomorrow!