Evidences

Chat with the pedagogy

In my class I found a special case, a girl with mental retardation. Every day I helped her with her activities, some activities adapted to her level, which was first year. A part of my support also came to class the pedagogy from the center, with which I had a meeting to talk more in depth in this case.

At that meeting she explained that she wants to get a midpoint between inclusion and ZDP (zone of proximal development).

This student should be in the fifth year for her age, but she was repeating fourth year, but in reality her "level" was from first year and they were trying to reach a level of second year. For this reason she had to have a significant curricular modification.

It is easily seen that she has difficulties / shortcomings from writing, language (she was foreign), the way of speaking, mispronounces some things, difficult to form sentences, making sentences in past or future, etc.

She is diagnosed with mental retardation, as well as delayed physical growth; she seems much younger than she is and she has gestures and movements of a younger child. At this point she begins to have some interpersonal problems with her classmates.

Most of the time she has to be with the PT (therapeutic pedagogy) she does it in class with the other colleagues, something I see very positive for two reasons:

1- She continues with the group so she will not feel so different.

2- Whenever possible she does the same kind of task that the rest of the class but adapted to her level. For example, the class has to write a completely invented story, as she writes short stories with the help of images that tell something and with the help of the therapeutic pedagogy.

Another problem, and perhaps the most serious is the incomprehensible ignorance of the parents of the true state of her daughter. For example they do not know why her daughter does not do the same activities as her companions although they have signed several significant curriculum modifications. It even seems they did not know she was officially diagnosed with mental retardation.

Regarding the problem in general I have found that it is very difficult for one teacher to give the necessary attention to a person of this nature or if you have any serious difficulties encountered, because the teacher also has to deal with the rest of the class and in these cases is necessary to dedicate a lot of time to the individual concerned. It even becomes more complicated when you also have other kids in class with other difficulties although not as serious as in the case of this class, where a part of the girl in question, there is a girl who has language difficulties because it is the first course that she is in Spain, and two children who receive support in math and spanish language and two other girls who were supported last year but because the pedagogy can not cope, they no longer receive this assistance. In my opinion to cover these cases the presence of a "second" teacher who could give them the attention they need it would be necessary.

When I get to be a teacher I want to make my classroom a place where anyone has a place, I want to promote integration; prepare students for the real world, where they will meet with very different people but I want them to understand that being different is not bad, it is bad to discriminate another person by the simple fact of being different.

Finally I leave here a video that reflects what I think about how to handle these cases:

Interactive groups

One aspect that I liked from the center was that many of the courses are working with interactive groups, which are that every other Friday 5 parents of students went to classto do different activities with them. During the 3 weeks I was there I was able to see this in action twice, also in the second I participated like a father to see how they worked.

Interactive groups class

Being the class divided into 5 groups of 5 students it was easy to organize. The tutor sent to parents the activities they would do a few days earlier so they could look at them. They had approximately 20 minutes to carry out their activities with each group.

The exercises have a common theme, such as the Chinese New Year. With these activities we touched subjects such as language, mathematics and art.

Parent working in class

I consider it a very good idea because it is the best way to introduce families in the education of their children and this makes them more interested in what their children are doing and learning.

Mother with her group