Tuesday (30 April 2013)
We arrived at Candyfloss Creche to discover that they didn't actually want us there as they were having a farewell for one of their staff members. Feeling rather rejected, we made our way to Rainbow for an impromptu session with the grade Rs. Even though it was impromptu, I have to admit that we managed to pull a magic act with the kids, working on shapes, colours, locative relations, emergent literacy, phoneme awareness and sound-letter recognition. We split them into smaller groups and did individual obstical with each of them to prevent them from getting bored - as we noticed was happening when we had a larger group to go through. This seemed to work much better and I was able to focus on the little girl who was struggling with understanding the concept of locative relations. One of the little girls I had in my group was performing much better than the rest and so I added a few temporal relations in the mix for her (eg. go under the table before sitting in the circle). I was meant to have a little boy with global delays in my group, however he refused to listen to me and insisted on terrorizing the boys in the group next to us. I feel as if he would benefit more from one on one attention, however after speaking to the OT who does therapy with him, it seems as if even individual therapy isn't working so well. Usually he interacts and completes the activities when the large group are doing the activity together, but for some reason the smaller grouping didn't help. Maybe he needs the larger group structure to remain focused, instead of many different things happening all over the room.The OT who came to work with the little boy I mentioned, told us about a girl at the Primary school who he believed needed some help as she was in the special needs class - a class I just recently learned existed. Elisha and I went to speak to her teacher (one of the few that are in the school and aren't participating in the strikes) to find out what we could about the student. All I can say us that I'm surprised they let the teacher work with the kids who need help! From the moment we entered the classroom she was screaming and shouting at the kid who we had gone to see. It was clear that the poor girl's confidence is utterly crushed and her self esteem is basically non existent. The whole situation made me remember the run-in I had with a teacher in the previous block (SDCD) and brought back the question of why teachers trained for main-streamed kids are allowed to teach special needs kids without any extra training or knowledge. The teacher proceeded to tell us some of the things she picked up about the girl and her work - in front of the girl. Little wonder why the girl's self esteem and confidence were so low! The girl read to us a few words and it was blatantly clear that she has an LLD. Feeling frustrated and a bit horrified, we left the classroom and moved on to the stroke group.
As we had moved stroke-group from the Wednesday due to Wednesday being a public holiday, it was little wonder that only one member pitched up at the meeting It was a little frustrating because I had planned the session this week and had aimed a lot of my activities at the two members who weren't there. And so, instead of doing the reading and perceptual activities I had planned in addition, we just played uno. This targetted attention and memory, which the client found difficult. She seemed to enjoy the game, although it was clear that the game challenged her in terms of remaining focused.
Wednesday (1st May 2013)
PUBLIC HOLIDAY (aka the student's day to do work from home).
Thursday (2nd May 2013)
After an interesting morning involving conflict between the Audios, forgotten equipment and a tension-filled bus ride to Khetiwe, the select few broke free from the bus to watch Glynis and the OT ride off into the sunrise to do home visits. We soon discovered that only one kid had been booked in for the day, mainly because she had feeding difficulties. We managed to observe her grandmother feed her - first trying to get the child to sit on a small chair and eat, but after some instruction she placed the child on her lap in a manner which had been taught to her before. We watched as the child tried to push her head back and rely on gravity to force her food down her throat as well as using her tongue to curl around the spoon so that she could suck the food from the spoon in an infantile manner. While she had brilliant receptive language, she had no verbal expressive language. Instead, she used vocalizations, eye-gaze and gestures - a good communicator even without speech. She also seemed to be a good candidate for an AAC.Trying to work with the OTs at Khetiwe is always another thing altogether. Throughout the week they make it clear that they are in control whenever they are working with us, and that we are merely supplementing their program with speechie activities or aims. While we have managed to make it work for the sake of the multidisciplinary team, it gets irritating. Personally, I'm looking forward to seeing how the new OTs will treat us when they join us as we will have more knowledge of the community than them. I digress, back to Khetiwe. There was no communication between the OTs and us, and even when I told them what we were looking for in the child it appeared as if we were not being listened to as they dominated. I guess I gave up trying to work with them and I guess that they're so used to us planning our activities or aims around them that they didn't even register what was happening. It also didn't help that we had no clue what to prepare for beforehand so we couldn't establish any plan of action.
As there was only one client, we finished at Khetiwe early and so we went back into the community to hopefully talk to the teacher of the special needs class once again. And yet again, I came away from her class feeling sad for the poor children who are in her class. Perhaps I just need to get thicker skin, but the way I've seen the kids with special needs being treated (both in Marian Ridge and in the SDCD block) just makes my blood boil.
All in all, a rather strenuous week and it's looking to be an equally strenuous weekend, but I'm determined to survive it.
