School - Reflection P2

Today I had another cool day at school and I feel like I have made all the difference Im going to make, even if I stayed for another month. I have taught the staff a couple of tricks and ideas and they have really taken them onboard, particularly in the pre school where there are a number of kids with generally poor strength and for this they couldn't control a pencil well and resorted to other grips. In 2 weeks I have seen a change with these kids just from a few minutes a day. Its amazing what a small difference in daily routine can make, and I only had to explain what I thought once!

Im still working closely with one boy daily who is non verbal but uses makaton sign language without ever having been taught it... He has a motor control and planning difficulty but copes with it really well. He is 8 years old in the 5 and under class. I think he is a smart boy considering his disability but no one has ever had the time to sit down with him or know how to communicate with him. Hopefully I have helped with that a little. He appears to understand everything going on in class, completes all activities and just goes through the motions of completing the same tasks and practies daily, I would love to see him challenged. I have provided him (well the class) with a book with everyday requests in it, pictorial, not that I think he needs it because his signs are really clear, people just need to look at him for a second. But there are other kids that could use it too. Although I think he can use colours, days of the week, months and numbers to participate in class once he learns these on paper. I hope demonstrating that he can be understood has helped the other staff to understand him.

I have also corrected some seating and been continuing the daily buddy walking with one girl, she really enjoys being able to go outside with the other kids at recess instead of staying inside.

And I have demonstrated to a mother a safer technique for feeding her child, who for the first week and a bit I could hear aspirating several times at every meal, but needed to build rapor before I came barging in with my ideas.

I think if I was going to stay longer I would run a little social skills group for the 2 non verbal students who are quite intelligent but misunderstood and help them to communicate to others, but that would be hard to do with my spanish.

Loving the experience and hope others get the opportunity to try something so amazingly different.
Yes, I am leaving Manta at the end of the week to go to a more rural area and help in a school there for 2 weeks and learn about organic farming, more on that afterwards... Just another experience to write about.