Tuesday (7th May 2013)
As the two OTs we were working with had assessed the girl we were going to do our case presentation on Kay the week before, Elisha and I had planned to go and finish our assessment on her at her school. This week was the first week that the schools have been fully operational since the start of the strike. Once again we were horrified at how behind she was for her age (10 yrs 3 months) and it just hilighted just how desperate the community is for some form of intervention.Already feeling a bit drained, we tackled Rainbow Creche for a short session of language stimulation before we went back to campus to escape the rain and to work on the posters and pamphlets we had planned on preparing.
Wednesday (8th May 2013)
As always, working with the grade Rs at Marrian Ridge Primary was comical, especially when it came to working on the prepositions were were targeting. While we could see that some of them had no difficulty with these prepositions, others struggled immensely. Those who had no difficulty would get frustrated with those who had difficulty and started calling the others names. It just showed us how cruel kids can be without even realizing the consequences at the end of the day. Comparing those little grade Rs with Kay opened my eyes to how the attacks on one's confidence starts at an early age.From there, Elisha and I finished up our assessment on Kay and began some therapy. It was really frustrating seeing how she could not even manage to detect or produce rhymes. We actually weren't too sure on where to start with her as we haven't yet gone through the LLD block, but I'm almost certain that what impromptu therapy we could provide was better than nothing. At least she grasped the concept of rhyming to some extent.
The clinic was busy as always but there were only a few people in the toy-making group which the OTs hold with some Speechie input with regard to how to stimulate a child's language using whatever they are making. Two school teachers from Candyfloss seem to be the only regulars to this group and it is always great to see them use whatever they have learned from the group with their students. Realising that we were running late for the stroke group, we half-speedwalked-half-ran back to the Ridge cafe to find the group members waiting for us. The session was based off of a farewell party for the OTs with some therapy aims being incorporated with it. Even though the OTs had prepared the members for their departure, the members were still upset and somewhat hurt that the OTs were leaving them. I suppose that's just one more barrier we'll have to work through.
Thursday (9th May 2013)
Arriving at Marrian Ridge on time, the Speechies, OTs and audios separated themselves and I ended up trudging down to Rainbow creche with an OT and audio to work on some language and early literacy with the grade Rs. I was surprised at how familiar they were with all the letters, even though they apparently watch LetterLand every day on TV. I used to have a rather dull look on LetterLand, thinking that the characters were rather abstract and not really representative of the actual sounds (Fix-it Max for "x"? Really? That was the best they could come up with?) but it turns out that the kids actually managed to learn most of the letters correctly so that was a pleasant surprise. Obviously there were some kids who were better than others in early literacy, but overall I was surprised by how much they knew. From there we went back to campus to do our case presentations, stomachs in knots.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday (14th May 2013)
We spent the morning between both Rainbow Creche and Candyfloss Creche where we did language stimulation and early literacy skills. I must admit, I was expecting Candyfloss to be better than Rainbow with regard to the early literacy skills. Unfortunately I was sadly wrong. It turned out that only one little boy knew the alphabet to some extent and even then it was sketchy at best. Knowing these kids are heading into grade one next year made my skin crawl. Surely early literacy should be incorporated into their daily schedule? Apparently not.We spent lunch with the new set of OTs and were all completely shocked to see their attitudes toward the projects the previous OTs put so much effort into. It actually made me angry to hear them say that the previous OTs had wasted their time painting the play-area outside of the Ridge Cafe because apparently no kids would even bother going to play on something that was merely painted. It gave me great pleasure to watch their faces as the students were let out of school and began flocking to the play-area to play hop-scotch and the other games that they had been provided with. I guess no matter how difficult it was to work with the previous OTs, they actually had a passion for the community that I could respect and it was actually a pleasure to work with them when they let us into their plans where I can already see this set of OTs being the complete opposite.
Escaping them, we began setting up the library for the Library Literacy group. Being the first time we had ever held this group, we were unsure of what to expect but soon it was apparent that we were going to be flooded with students every Tuesday which we didn't mind as it's an opportunity to encourage them to read more and develop their literacy skills. One thing that was for certain though was that we needed to structure the group a lot more in the future.
Wednesday (15th May 2013)
We tackled the grade Rs with gusto, splitting them up into smaller groups and using the area outside to do all of our therapy as it was a bright an sunny day. In retrospect, this wasn't the best idea as the more distractable of the students wanted to play on the jungle gym instead of listening to the clinicians and following the instructions as they were meant to. As usual, I landed up with the group who preferred to climb on the jungle gym. While I know about the whole principle of following the child's lead, that would have had disastrous consequences knowing that the other children would have wanted to join in too. So, after a few minutes of bribery, corruption and aid from the teacher, we managed to bring them back to solid ground to work on phonological awareness in terms of word initial phonemes. From there we rushed off to screen more grade 1s, targeting the isiZulu speakers in particular. Personally, I'm not too sure how reliable our results were as half of the time we were unsure of if the test was appropriate for the isiZulu speaker.
Introducing the new OTs to the Stroke group was interesting at best. A few of the members expressed that they felt that we were using them as we're there for a few weeks and then suddenly we go off, never to return to the community again. I can see where she is coming from, and it's heartbreaking that they would think of us like that. After a few moments of consoling, the members settled down and got stuck into the activities which they seemed to enjoy. I, on the other hand, spent most of the session thinking about the points they had raised. Surely there is a way we can go about doing CBR without leaving the community members feeling slightly hostile towards us.
Thursday (16th May 2013)
As both Elisha and Zakiya were sick, Stella and I ended up swapping with them and headed off to Khetiwe. After seeing most of the children there before, we were able to see if the changes we had implemented in the previous session had been enforced and which had been ignored. After checking up with the families and speaking to the new ones, we sat in the song ring and helped facilitate the language stimulation part of the session.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday (21st May 2013)
We started off our last week in Marrian Ridge back at Candyfloss creche where we split the grade Rs into their two class groups and did therapy with them. We soon discovered that we had t make sure that we situated ourselves strategically within the group to make sure that everyone received the attention they needed. Because we had learned that Candyfloss were so behind with their early literacy, we focused on that. We read them a book, asking them questions throughout the story and then moved on to phonological awareness tasks. From there, we went up to the clinic to teach some language stimulation as they had a clinic on for all the toddlers. Most of the parents didn't really want to listen to us or ask us anything, but a few of the older parents and grandmothers were interested in what we could tell them. We also learned a lot from them about how they teach their children basic skills and how to talk. They did mention that now days most of the people who look after the children are actually the grandparents as the mothers are still in high school. While this wasn't something we had heard for the first time, it was still shocking. A desperate need for some form of sexual education is needed in the community.The Library Literacy Group ran a lot smoother this time around, with the children actually knowing what was expected of them and where to go. They were each given a word search o cross word after they listened to a story and had to find words which related to the story. This most of the children were able to do quite easily. Others needed some help. I was really surprised and glad to see Kay join us and she did rather well with limited support (although we did give her one of the easier word searches). It showed initiative on her part which I'm rather proud of her for.
Wednesday (22nd May 2013)
Once again, we tackled Marrian Ridge Primary's grade Rs and grade 1s. The grade Rs seemed to have had a bowel of sugar for breakfast as they were so energetic that it took us a while to settle them down. We lead the session as it was our last session with them and worked some more on phonological awareness and phoneme-grapheme identification. The session went really quickly and we soon found ourselves heading off to screen the grade 1s. By the time we had ended, most of the grade ones who needed to be screened had been screened so it was a victory for us in some way. The only regret that we had was that we didn't have enough time to put together the booklet and pamphlets of how to teach a child who's first language isn't English. I guess we'll have to ask the next block to do some work on that and we'll have to help them out with it on the side.Once again, the stroke group was emotional as we had a farewell party from us to them. we worked a bit on memory and the OTs did an exercise where they were asked to reminisce about the days when they were teenagers. It was really interesting to listen to as it gave us a view of Marrian Ridge that we had never seen before. It was actually really interesting to hear how the community has changed over the years, turning from gang warfare to a more peaceful existence (although the ghosts of that past are still around). With hugs, we said goodbye to the stroke group for the last time before we tearfully went home.
Thursday (23rd May 2013)
Our final Thursday in the community felt as if we ran the whole day. So many people to thank and say goodbye to and yet so little time. We started off at Kay's house (Kay was at home as she was sick) where we did a bit of counseling with her grandmother and taught her grandmother strategies to help Kay in school. We then rushed down to Rainbow creche where we were only planning on saying goodbye... but ended up spending half an hour there doing some language stimulation activities. From there we went to the library where part of the Everland creche was having an excursion to. It was really great to see the little kids engage with the books in such a respectful manner. We even did some language stimulation and early literacy with them with the audios alongside us. From there we rushed up to Candyfloss where we had an hour of language stimulation with the two grade R glasses as a whole. That was the craziest part of the whole day! Taking a quick look at our watches and realising the time, we said goodbye to the teachers and principle and headed over to the clinic to say goodbye to the healthcare workers there. It was overall a great experience.I'm really grateful to have had the opportunity to work in the community and I have taken away so much from this experience.
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Memo to self... when you don't click on publish it doesn't get published.
