#exceptional children

1) Alter the classroom environment to help students focus

Make sure to keep the classroom wall decor to a minimum in order to aid students that get hyper aroused by visual stimuli

Be aware of sounds in the classroom which may affect students. Use a calm sound to indicate transitions. Arrange classroom areas purposefully (keeping loud areas away from quiet work areas)

2)Co-create classroom rules with students 

3) Provide a visual schedule and strive to make the day predictable for students

4) Provide students with tools to help them self-regulate

Provide disc cushions to help students who are hyper aroused

Have fidget toys, play dough or worry beads available to students

5) Use a countdown to notify students of upcoming transitions

6) Be aware of student needs and use games and activities to help with hypo/hyper arousal

Play Simon Says (helps to down regulate when students are hyper aroused)

Use Just Dance videos for down regulation and strengthening attention

7) Model self-regulation

It's essential to show students how to self-regulate themselves whether through scripted interactions or by using skits. Self-regulation requires practice

8) Use student interests to engage and keep them involved

Use of inquiry based lessons and student interests in classroom assignments can greatly improve student work ethic and focus

9) Communicate with parents and guardians 

Provide ideas that parents can use to help their kids self-regulate at home for example, providing notifications to kids regarding upcoming transitions or changes in schedule

10) Use character education to help students learn to self-regulate

Character education is a great way to model strategies for self-regulation for example, how to remain calm during a conflict and how to be respectful with their peers

So, I think I'm going to just start tagging these so if people aren't interested, they can just filter them out. I just have so many stories about the kids I work with that I want to share!

So, this time, I was substituting in another EC (special needs) classroom in an elementary school. There's one teacher and two TAs. I was subbing for one of the TAs. There are six kids in this room with different levels of needs, so everything is really geared to specific skills that each kid individually needs.

Anyway, one little boy was struggling for a couple of reasons.

He was a kindergartener.

While other kids had been in school for threeish weeks, he had only been there a few days (don't know why.)

So, during some of the lessons, he wasn't really participating. They kind of let him do his own thing so he could get acclimated and were just little by little pulling him into activities. Eventually, during free time, he was just kind of standing around. If someone asked if he wanted to do something (like, did he want to look at some books or something) he would either just stare at them or walk to another spot and continue to stand.

So, I figured I'd try.

He was chilling near the coloring station, and I sat in the chair furthest from him and asked if he wanted to color with me.

I got a stare.

So I asked if I could color there?

He gave me a stare.

So, I said thank you anyway and started to color. I drew a flower and did very overdramatic thinking until I pointed to the color wheel and asked him what color he thought my flower should be. He shook his head. My finger was on the purples so I moved him and asked if this color was better? His little head shook again. We did this until I got most of the way around the color wheel and landed on blue, and that time he nodded.

Colored one petal blue and asked if that was good. He kind of eased over and pointed to one of the petals I didn't color. So, there was the overdramatic, "Oh, I have to color this one too?!" He nodded, and we continued until I had about all of them colored, and the boy sighed and said his equivalent of "all" (his speech was really behind, so it came out as more of an aw). So I asked if I had to color them all, and he nodded. Continued to color, and he sat down on the chair beside me, so I started asking what to draw, colors, etc. After a while, I gave him a crayon and asked him to help me draw more flowers. He actually smiled and did.

To put the cherry on top, while we went to lunch, he reached out and held my hand :)

So after a visit to the crazy house some of you might remember, I entered the workforce at a fast food joint. They were really good about working with me and my needs.

But I freaking missed kids. I've always been the group mom wherever I go and I wanted to be a teacher since I was a little girl.

So substitute teaching it is!

I get to still work with kids, much better pay, benefits, and I can make my own schedule. Having an episode? Just mark myself as unavailable and don't pick up jobs. Have a class that I love? Write it down. Have a class that we do NOT jive well? Wash my hands and not deal with them again. No grading, no lesson plan, no meetings.

So, I thought I'd share some stories.

I've recently found myself working at a special needs highschool (the more PC term is Exceptional Children, but the general population isn't super aware of that). It's kind of become my school - a lot of substitute teachers are not comfortable working in that environment but I've worked with a lot of kids like that in the past and Iove it.

Now, I was working as a one-on-one. So, just a kid who in the class needs one person with a them at all times for a variety of reasons. We won't get into that, of course, but he was a sweet kid. Toward the end of the day, I was starting to get a migrane and I guess I made a face because he asked if I was okay. I told him I was just getting a little headache but I would drink some water and be fine (lies!). He got up and patted me on my head a little too hard and asked, "Better?"

My heart melted and I told him it was all gone. He beamed the rest of the day and told everyone he saw.

My 16-year-old client, I’ll call him Ben, was struggling in school. No one thought he was gifted. His grades were average. He didn’t turn in many assignments. He didn’t get high test scores. He was so anxious, he’d miss many days of school. His parents were confused. They knew he was capable of completing the homework. Why didn’t he just do it?

Because I’d seen many kids like this, I could tell that Ben was, indeed, gifted. He asked penetrating questions. Had multiple interests. Spent hours online researching musical genres , computer coding, bike repair, mathematics, psychological theories, and on and on.  He was highly sensitive and empathetic with all plants, animals, and humans.

Ben had difficulty relating to youngsters his age. The friends he did have, he wanted to rescue. They were often the troubled kids. He could feel their hopelessness and their anger and felt a responsibility to intervene. He didn’t understand why they didn’t respond well to his help or why they weren’t interested in his intellectual pursuits.

Ben wanted to learn what he wanted to learn and when he mastered, say, a new guitar playing technique, he’d raise the bar and keep questing for the next big thing. He’d spend many hours worrying about the future of the planet and how he might make an impact.

These are the traits of a gifted human; a person with a rainforest mind.

One day he said to me, I have to know everything before I learn it.

What?

I have to know everything before I learn it. It took me some time to understand what he meant and why this was his experience.

Like many gifted children, Ben learned how to read at an early age. No one taught him to read. He just started reading. Learning was easy. He’d read and he’d remember. He could watch someone riding a bike and be successful on the first try. He taught himself guitar. When he started school, he already knew the material. He knew it before he learned it.

This was the conundrum.

He came to believe that all learning should come easily. If it didn’t, there was something terribly wrong. Ben never learned how to study. Or that it was normal for some learning to be a struggle. Ironically, even though he felt like a failure and like he wasn’t smart because of his experiences in school, he also believed that he shouldn’t have to study something to understand it. This created confusion, anxiety, paralysis, and avoidance when there was a chance that he might not grasp a concept fast enough or succeed at a task. If it wasn’t easy, he didn’t do it.

With gifted kids who, unlike Ben, have been told repeatedly that they’re so smart, this is still a problem. They also know it before they learn it. And they can feel great pressure to achieve, to please the adults who are praising them, and to prove their worth through their accomplishments. So, for them, if they’re facing a difficult task, their identity is threatened. And they, too, can experience confusion, anxiety, paralysis, and avoidance.

Either way, having to know it before you learn it, is a tricky proposition.

And you wondered why it was so hard to parent these kids?

Or to be one yourself

Welcome to your Rainforest Mind.

New Post has been published on http://goodnewsjamaica.com/culture/teaching-exceptional-children/

Teaching Exceptional Children

Ability – it is a short and a sweet word, but it has a deeper meaning, and, when translated to application, this word becomes the marked difference between leading a ‘normal’ life and leading one that isn’t so normal.

In the grand scheme of life, the perceivable ‘normal’ tasks become climbing a 90-degree bare rock face – one has to rely on one’s sheer guts, grit, and stamina to endure that climb, one knuckle length at a time, and where any jutting surface provides enough support for the body.

Aya Nakashima, an occupational therapist and Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) volunteer at the Jamaican Association on Intellectual Disabilities (JAID), is working with special-needs students with autism spectrum disorder, attention difficulty hyperactivity disorder, learning disability and physical challenges.

Nakashima is helping these students in to harness and develop mobility – fine motor skills, handwriting, and work-processing skills. It is a labour of love in many manifestations and critically requires patience and understanding.

“They need a lot of support and have to been given positive messages,” she said.

This, she said, has to come from all quarters – parents, teachers, friends and the community at large. Lack of encouragement often, leads to a breakdown in the progress.

“Some of these children lack confidence, and it becomes a challenge to get them interested in trying new things and to boost their confidence that they achieve a lot,” Nakashima said.

  LONG ROAD

  It is a long road, and perseverance is critical.

Nakashima begins by assessing the individual student; the objective is to ascertain their mobility and then draw out a therapy session to improve their functions.

Additionally, she said, she conducts regular meetings with parents and teachers to apprise them of the progress and give recommendations on how to further improve the abilities and functions.

She said, though, that these sessions and interventions help to enhance the abilities of the students to perform their tasks with ease and a critical element in their learning process.

But, she added, these therapies also provide impetus and improve overall capacity.

For these therapies to be effective the overall environment needs to be conducive and amiable.

“The environment around these children affects their growth and functioning,” Nakashima said. “An occupational therapist can help to provide the children with tools to enhance their abilities. They need the proper settings and support for them to function.”

There is a definitive need for proper rehabilitation programmes, she said, and occupational therapy is the critical link in the chain, but is, unfortunately, lacking in Jamaica.

“Most of the students do not have access or have not gone through appropriate rehabilitation programmes,” she said. “This creates secondary issues like behaviour problems, poor muscle strength, and joint deformation, among others.

  PAUCITY OF RESOURCES

  One of the reasons for these children not getting access to therapy, she said, is that there is a paucity of resources in Jamaica.

“Jamaica has only nine occupational therapists, which severely limits the children’s [ability] to get therapy,” Nakashima said.

This is worrisome as, according to UNICEF, more than 37,000 Jamaican children live with one or several forms of disabilities, including sight, hearing, speech, physical, mental, and learning disabilities.

One can do the math the gap between the number of occupational therapists and the children who require the therapy throws a huge curveball.

Most of these professionals, she said, got their licences in the United States or the United Kingdom, and this limits the opportunities for those who want to pursue occupational therapy as a profession in Jamaica.

Closer to home, the University of the Southern Caribbean, Trinidad and Tobago, offers a master’s entry-level training programme.

Nakashima, who came to Jamaica in December 2016 and leaves at the end of this year, is hoping for continuance and sustainability.

“There is a need to establish an occupational therapist school in Jamaica,” Nakashima said, adding that Occupational Therapist Association of Jamaica (OTAJ) is working towards that mandate. “If more professionals can be trained (in Jamaica), the children will have more opportunities to receive therapy.”

Nakashima is putting international best practices in place.

“While I am here (in Jamaica), I would like to share ideas on how to support these children at school and at home with their family and teachers,” she said.

Further, she says, there needs to be social acceptance and a change in perception. Stigma attached to disabilities is a major reason for exclusion.

A UNICEF-supported study found that some parents viewed the birth of a disabled child as having supernatural connections 40 per cent said the child was ‘sent by God’, while 18 per cent thought the disability was due to an evil spirit, punishment for a sin, or looking at a disabled person during pregnancy.

Unfortunate, but, if we were to look at things from the other side of the coin, these children are ‘God-sent’ because all of them are special they are different, and they are exceptional.

By: Amitabh Sharma

New Post has been published on http://goodnewsjamaica.com/culture/teaching-exceptional-children/

Teaching Exceptional Children

Ability – it is a short and a sweet word, but it has a deeper meaning, and, when translated to application, this word becomes the marked difference between leading a ‘normal’ life and leading one that isn’t so normal.

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In the grand scheme of life, the perceivable ‘normal’ tasks become climbing a 90-degree bare rock face – one has to rely on one’s sheer guts, grit, and stamina to endure that climb, one knuckle length at a time, and where any jutting surface provides enough support for the body.

Aya Nakashima, an occupational therapist and Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) volunteer at the Jamaican Association on Intellectual Disabilities (JAID), is working with special-needs students with autism spectrum disorder, attention difficulty hyperactivity disorder, learning disability and physical challenges.

Nakashima is helping these students in to harness and develop mobility – fine motor skills, handwriting, and work-processing skills. It is a labour of love in many manifestations and critically requires patience and understanding.

“They need a lot of support and have to been given positive messages,” she said.

This, she said, has to come from all quarters – parents, teachers, friends and the community at large. Lack of encouragement often, leads to a breakdown in the progress.

“Some of these children lack confidence, and it becomes a challenge to get them interested in trying new things and to boost their confidence that they achieve a lot,” Nakashima said.

  LONG ROAD

  It is a long road, and perseverance is critical.

Nakashima begins by assessing the individual student; the objective is to ascertain their mobility and then draw out a therapy session to improve their functions.

Additionally, she said, she conducts regular meetings with parents and teachers to apprise them of the progress and give recommendations on how to further improve the abilities and functions.

She said, though, that these sessions and interventions help to enhance the abilities of the students to perform their tasks with ease and a critical element in their learning process.

But, she added, these therapies also provide impetus and improve overall capacity.

For these therapies to be effective the overall environment needs to be conducive and amiable.

“The environment around these children affects their growth and functioning,” Nakashima said. “An occupational therapist can help to provide the children with tools to enhance their abilities. They need the proper settings and support for them to function.”

There is a definitive need for proper rehabilitation programmes, she said, and occupational therapy is the critical link in the chain, but is, unfortunately, lacking in Jamaica.

“Most of the students do not have access or have not gone through appropriate rehabilitation programmes,” she said. “This creates secondary issues like behaviour problems, poor muscle strength, and joint deformation, among others.

  PAUCITY OF RESOURCES

  One of the reasons for these children not getting access to therapy, she said, is that there is a paucity of resources in Jamaica.

“Jamaica has only nine occupational therapists, which severely limits the children’s [ability] to get therapy,” Nakashima said.

This is worrisome as, according to UNICEF, more than 37,000 Jamaican children live with one or several forms of disabilities, including sight, hearing, speech, physical, mental, and learning disabilities.

One can do the math the gap between the number of occupational therapists and the children who require the therapy throws a huge curveball.

Most of these professionals, she said, got their licences in the United States or the United Kingdom, and this limits the opportunities for those who want to pursue occupational therapy as a profession in Jamaica.

Closer to home, the University of the Southern Caribbean, Trinidad and Tobago, offers a master’s entry-level training programme.

Nakashima, who came to Jamaica in December 2016 and leaves at the end of this year, is hoping for continuance and sustainability.

“There is a need to establish an occupational therapist school in Jamaica,” Nakashima said, adding that Occupational Therapist Association of Jamaica (OTAJ) is working towards that mandate. “If more professionals can be trained (in Jamaica), the children will have more opportunities to receive therapy.”

Nakashima is putting international best practices in place.

“While I am here (in Jamaica), I would like to share ideas on how to support these children at school and at home with their family and teachers,” she said.

Further, she says, there needs to be social acceptance and a change in perception. Stigma attached to disabilities is a major reason for exclusion.

A UNICEF-supported study found that some parents viewed the birth of a disabled child as having supernatural connections 40 per cent said the child was ‘sent by God’, while 18 per cent thought the disability was due to an evil spirit, punishment for a sin, or looking at a disabled person during pregnancy.

Unfortunate, but, if we were to look at things from the other side of the coin, these children are ‘God-sent’ because all of them are special they are different, and they are exceptional.

By: Amitabh Sharma

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