Last
class, on Wednesday, May 16th, Pilar Alonso, responsible for the
Counseling and Innovation department of the Gaudem School, visited us.
She told
us about how Diversity is understood in this school, what her opinion about it
is and how they work on it.
Gaudem School
is a charter one located in Madrid. Their
peculiarity is that they have many children with special needs or learning
disorders. In this sense they have chosen to work with both ‘kind’ of kids, those
needing special attention and those that do not all together since they are
very little.
As far as
I could understand, they have two kinds of children with special needs, one
being those suffering from deafness and those with learning disorders such as
TDAH. Children from the first group are integrated in a regular and permanent class
since they start their schooling life. In this way, all kids learn sign
language at the same time. This school also offers a bilingual education, so children
with no special needs will end up with a trilingual education.
As for
the other group, the one with learning disorders are also integrated in regular
classes but not mixed with deaf children. These classes will not learn the sign
language. This is my main objection or critic. But I can understand that it is
very expensive to afford al the human and material resources needed for such
project.
They do not
belief on curricular adaptation but on curricular accessibility, on breaking
down the barriers that may exist. In this sense, and according to Pilar, is the
class that has to adapt to the child not the other way around. Hence, there has
to be a personal educative plan.
Their
three key points are Permanence, Participation and Learning. This is what should
guide the educative process of every student.
Pilar
gave us some steps that they follow to identify and deal with children that may
need special attention. First, the
counselor should enter in the classroom in order to see the child in its own
environment. In this sense, direct observation is rather important at this
point. Then, if needed, the counselor may have to take the kid out of the class
in order to carry out some psycho-pedagogical tests. If we get to this stage,
parents will have to be aware of the situation and medical assessment may be
also needed.
What characteristics
should a teacher have in order to develop his/her work in a successful way?
Pilar provide us with some hints: Ethics, Techniques and Empathy. In my opinion, these three are the guidelines
we all should have in mind our entire career long.
I really
appreciate this visit because it gets you in touch with real life, real
situations and that makes you feel like you are working for a very important
objective. I found it rather useful.
