Week 8: Special needs week

This week didn’t really start nicely: instead of going to Rotterdam on Monday evening I got to the city at Tuesday afternoon, 4 o’clock. How did this happen?
On Monday evening I heard the news that the Central Station of Antwerp was closed down because of a fire. Because nobody in Belgium seemed to know what to do exactly and my mother and father refused to drive me because of the poor weather conditions, we decided that I would leave the next day, Tuesday.
That Tuesday I could get a ride with my neighbour who had to go to Rotterdam for a meeting. We arrived at 4 o’clock so I missed out on a day of the program (introduction on the subject of special needs and an excursion to a special needs school).

Nevertheless, Wednesday I was present to go to the Reconvalescentenschool in the morning. This school, with a terribly difficult name to pronounce and spell, is a school for children that are chronically ill. We joined the pupils for breakfast and then got a tour around the school. After the tour we observed some classes but only for 15 minutes because of the pupils’ sake.
We left the school at noon because in the afternoon we had a presentation on Spain, back at the building of the HRO. The Spanish girls talked a lot about their country, showing everything there is to know about geography, tradition, food, etc. It was very interesting.

On Thursday we went to Mytylschool De Brug. This school left a huge impression on me, actually not really the school but the pupils. This Mytylschool is a school for children who are physically disabled or who have severe behavioural problems. The headmistress first gave us an introduction to the school and a tour. The school had things like a swimming pool, therapy rooms, etc. for the treatment of the pupils.
I joined in with a class of 6 year old pupils, not really my target group, but still very interesting to observe. I didn’t really observe, I actually helped the teacher, the teaching assistant and a girl who did her practice at that school. In the end there were 4 people for 8 pupils (as another teaching assistant joined another class on excursion to the children’s farm with F., a pupil who’s just new at school).
During the time I was with this class I was really moved by the way in which these pupils want to work it all out for themselves. They want to be independent, the teacher gives them the chance to be independent and that is beautiful.
I will never forget a little girl in a wheelchair who was very bright and intelligent. Also a boy who had a physical disability will always be on my mind. Why? Because these children are so young but are amongst the bravest people I’ve met during my life. That’s why.

A nice thing about this class was that it had its own weblog! One of the parents had developed it and the teacher puts things on it. I think this is a really nice idea to make parents more involved in school life. If I will “have” my own class once, I think I will do something similar.

On Friday we went all international again as we were expected to bring food typical of our country to school. The students of Biology of the HRO had set up an entire morning of activities in which we were to participate.
We had to mingle amongst the Dutch pupils, which I liked because I could speak Dutch for more than 4 hours!.
I first started with a dancing lesson. We learned a Turkish dance that wasn’t too difficult and very easy to remember. After this we had a real sports lesson. We had to jump, train our abs, etc. and I can tell you, after 25 minutes of this, I was really tired but on the other hand, I was also pleased with myself that I could still do such things without having to stop in meanwhile.
After the active parts we (my group members too) went to the game activity. This game was developed by students of the HRO and was about SOA’s and safe sex. I won the game 3 times in a row! I took some notes on this game because I think it’s a really good way to make pupils aware of the problems of SOA’s and sex.
The last thing we did, was measuring. We had to measure our blood pressure (I had the lowest: 79/44), our long capacity and the force of our longs (on those I also had the lowest).
After this we were summoned to the biology room where all the food was displayed and ready to be eaten. There was a whole range of different things, going from Belgian to typical Dutch, Turkish and Moroccan. It was a really nice experience (not only the food part) but it was nice to get to know some Dutch students as well.

In the afternoon we joined Irene to evaluate our school visits from the last few weeks. I’m still very positive about those visits because I learnt a lot of things and I really felt comfortable and welcome at every school I visited. Let’s also don’t forget the lesson I got to teach!