Of Special Children, Parents and Teachers

My son started out slow and uninterested in school. As a baby, he often had what was medically termed as febrile convulsions whenever he had high fever. I can no longer recall the reason that triggered my son's pediatrician to recommend that he be checked by a neurologist some years later. But he had to undergo 2 full days of psychological tests to determine his mental capability.

I remember feeling so tortured for days when his neurologist wrongly interpreted the psychologist's medical findings and told me that my son was diagnosed with mental retardation. He was given the medical report ahead of us. I cried the whole time while talking to the neurologist. He told us what to expect...that my son may never finish college but that children like him usually excel in other fields like music and arts. He said to encourage and enrol my son in such activities.

And because of his condition, we had to find him a special school. It took us weeks to check out several schools. In one of them, I saw a teenage girl come in with her mother. For no reason, she shouted while walking towards the school entrance. What so shocked me was that the mother suddenly slapped her daughter hard on the face and swore at her for shouting. The girl stopped just as fast as she shouted and continued walking towards the school entrance. Her face was serious...no tears, no reaction. I was filling out the school's Information Sheet that time and found myself so shocked at what I had seen that I almost cried. We left the place and I remember my husband saying then that it was better if our son stayed in his present school than move him out from there. He would only get worse and not better. I certainly didn't argue with that.

My son had regular sessions with his psychologist for several weeks. At times he was made to play games or do activities that improved his motor skills. His attention span was short and he easily got distracted. It was in the first parent-doctor session with his psychologist that the doctor clarified that my son did not have mental retardation but a condition called learning difficulty. That meant he was just a slow learner in subjects like Math, English and Science.
Before the psychologist clarified my son's condition, we had actually gone to some schools that weren't for kids with his condition but those exclusively for the mentally retarded.

We finally found one that was ideal for his needs and the most reasonably priced. He attended two schools since he was evaluated as qualified for Mainstreaming classes. I have mentioned these schools earlier in a previous entry...the Radiance School where he has his regular classes and the Abiertas House of Friendship where he held his one-on-one lessons for Math, English and Science.

He has improved so much that his teachers and the school Directress decided after 2 years to let him try regular classes with tutoring to help him adjust. What his teachers found admirable in him was that he showed effort in trying to do things on his own. During exams, students in Mainstreaming classes are usually pulled out from regular class and given one-on-one exams. He refused to do this after his first exams though we were told that he sometimes requested to have one-one-on exams (usually in the finals - practial kid, lol).

He is doing much better now though they still give him some consideration and are lenient with his grades because they are aware of his learning difficulty. Nevertheless, he has improved a lot and is more self-confident. From the last talk with his teacher, his classmates' impression of him was that he was conceited, lol. I think that means he shows too much self-confidence. But knowing him, it is also his way of showing that he knows what he's doing and that he is capable of making decisions and doing things himself, though I know he often tends to be unsure and needs to confirm things.

He still has a tendency to easily get frightened and panic. He still has a short attention span and easily gets distracted. But omg, he wants to be a soldier. Just the mere thought scares me. It even seemed ages before we could accept that he has grown up and allowed him go to school and come home alone using public transportation. Despite this, the fear that he may get hurt when crossing the street on his own will always be there. We still tell him to take the long route home so he doesn't have to cross a wide busy road with fast-moving cars. I will always fear for his future but I know I have to prepare him to be independent and to survive on his own... because I may not always be around to be there for him.

Of Special Children, Parents and Teachers...

This will not be a deep nor technical talk about Special Children. Like most of my entries, this too will come from my personal thoughts and feelings, based on the few encounters I have had with Special Children. This will probably be a long one, in two or three parts, some of it may even be a bit emotional. So here it goes...

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There is a school here that offers Mainstreaming classes for children who are not mentally disabled but are slower than others in coping with their lessons. These children attend regular classes in this school like any normal student. The difference is that they are pulled out from regular class in the afternoon and are given one-on-one lessons in subjects they were diagnosed to be slow in. This is where their "Special Education" comes in, where they attend this part of their education in the Special School just meters away from where they hold their Mainstreaming classes...where the really Special Children who are mentally retarded, with down syndrome, or the specially gifted hold school.

There are actually two schools here managed by the same group. The first one is called Radiance School for regular students where children with learning difficulty also have mainstreaming classes. I found this a good approach since the cnildren with learning difficulty are exposed to regular schooling and learn to blend with regular students. The school offers Nursery to High School education with a population of only 300 to 500 students. The High Shcool though is located in another building nearby, just meters away from the Elementary School. Each class averages 15 to 20 students which I also find ideal because it is a very manageable number and the teacher can focus more on the children.

The other school is called Abiertas, House of Friendship. The High School and Special Children who are given special education (SPED)are in this compound. This is the same group that supports abused or pregnant women who prefer to remain anonymous until they give birth and ready to give up their children for adoption. From posters I have seen, Abiertas is either affiliated with or supported by UNICEF.I do know that they also get funding from several donors and sponsors. I don't know details of this so I will not discuss it here.

The SPED school by far has one of the most reasonable fees considering the specialized education given to these Special Children. But what I found especially nice and heartwarming about these two schools was that the emotional component was strongly considered by the schools' management. Children with learning difficulty usually feel inferior over others because they tend to perceive themselves as less capable and less intelligent than their schoolmates who attend full regular classes. So the management of Radiance School got the regular students involved in "looking after" these children and in the process, instilling in the students a sense of awareness and responsibility that children with learning difficulty should not be made fun of, ostracized or jeered at.

The school came out with a buddy system where regular students, usually older, are "partnered" with a child with learning difficulty and given the responsibility to "watch over" that child while in school. The responsibility is actually simple. They act like the older brothers or sisters who look after the younger ones during recess (but not literally keeping them company)to see that no one bullies the little ones like taking away their sandwich or food money, or that other students don't make fun of the little ones and call them names like stupid or moron, etc. These things are reported to Management and corrective actions are taken to make sure this doesn't happen again. In class, these older students sometimes go to the younger ones' classroom before classes start to say hello and see if everything is ok...just these simple little acts of kindness.

The students' class projects tend to be focused on activities that can help not only children with learning difficulty but also the other Special Children from Abiertas. The students get their own parents involved in the projects so even the projects of the Parents and Teachers' Association are often focused on the Special Children.

Even as the children with learning difficulty grow older, they are taught to be like older brothers or sisters to the younger ones. I remember one time when I passed by the Abiertas School to drop something off, the teachers and SPED children were busy rehearsing for a special fund-raising program. They needed to go to the Social Hall blocks away for dress rehearsal and needed transportation. One of the teachers approached me and requested if I can bring some of the kids there. Of course I said it was ok. I had a Sport Runner utility vehicle so I could take in a jampacked 12-14 kids and parents, the little ones sitting on the laps of the older ones.

While I was talking to the teacher, a fat little 5 or 8-year old girl with down syndrome excitedly opened the side of my car and wanted to get in. I remember her giving a long "wooooow...black car," as she hurriedly scampered up the passenger's seat. That really made me grin as I watched her find some support to climb inside. An older student in high school who was also from the SPED school tried to distract her from getting inside, but she was insistent. She finally got her way but at the back seat along with several others. She sat on the lap of one of the older ones.

We were already halfway towards our destination when the little girl realized she wasn't with her mother who was in another vehicle. She started asking for her mother and was already crying. The older children tried to calm her by pointing to the vehicle behind us saying her mother was there. I never really knew whether her mother was in the vehicle behind us but it calmed the little girl down. It always made me smile whenever I remember how the older kids tried to calm the little girl to keep her from crying. They were all special kids, but they acted like the older brother or sister by calming the little girl down, their own way of showing responsibility.

Well, this is just a simple story of my encounter with Special Children. But it always warms my heart when I remember it. Next time I will talk about my encounter with some of their teachers who dedicate so much of their time patiently teaching and caring for these Special Children, and of a parent's story about her Special Child, the travails she experienced and going through life with a special child.