Aba A Luke

It takes some­one with a very big heart to care for chil­dren who re­quire spe­cial at­ten­tion. An­nette An­toine is that per­son. She's the brain be­hind Ari's In­clu­sive Learn­ing Cen­tre, a school ded­i­cat­ed to the de­vel­op­ment of chil­dren with learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties. From autism to Down Syn­drome and even slow learn­ing, Ari's caters to the needs of chil­dren from tod­dler to ado­les­cence in a very in­ti­mate way.

A pas­sion like no oth­er

An­toine has been an ed­u­ca­tor for the past 36 years of her life. She how­ev­er ad­mits to hav­ing a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent pas­sion for teach­ing chil­dren with dis­abil­i­ties than she did while teach­ing at Tran­quil­i­ty Gov­ern­ment Sec­ondary School where she spe­cialised in Arts and Crafts. In fact, An­toine was the arts and crafts cur­ricu­lum fa­cil­i­ta­tor in the North East­ern Di­vi­sion for eight years. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, she told the Guardian that she was a pro­fes­sion­al nurse for six years pri­or to teach­ing, a pro­fes­sion that has cer­tain­ly equipped her with the know-how when it comes to car­ing for dis­abled stu­dents at Ari's In­clu­sive Learn­ing Cen­tre. Af­ter re­tir­ing from the sec­ondary school sys­tem, An­toine said she de­cid­ed to help chil­dren in a dif­fer­ent way.

The school was opened in 2008 and was ded­i­cat­ed to An­toine's grand­daugh­ter who died of Leukemia in At­lanta at the age of 12. Lo­cat­ed at 1A Evan's Street at the Scherzan­do Pan com­plex in Curepe, the school, ac­cord­ing to An­toine, has en­joyed a 100 per cent suc­cess rate at the SEA ex­am­i­na­tions since its in­cep­tion. At the school, chil­dren are catered to in an all-in­clu­sive way with aca­d­e­mics and re­me­di­al at­ten­tion of­fered through An­toine's teach­ing tech­niques. "I use vi­su­al and per­form­ing arts like dance, dra­ma, arts and crafts, mu­sic and oth­er hands on ac­tiv­i­ties to teach the chil­dren," she said. Cur­rent­ly, Ari's In­clu­sive Learn­ing Cen­tre has 15 stu­dents en­rolled, one of whom is a 24-year-old who An­toine ex­plained is in first year. "It's im­por­tant to ad­dress the prob­lems that slow learn­ers face so that when they go out in­to the world, they can be treat­ed equal­ly, so they won't be treat­ed like fools by John pub­lic," she em­pha­sised.

Ben­e­fits of spe­cial care

An­toine is urg­ing par­ents of chil­dren with dis­abil­i­ties and par­ents who ques­tion the learn­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties of their chil­dren to vis­it her for con­sul­ta­tion. With four teach­ers on staff and an af­ford­able cost per term, she as­sures that all chil­dren en­rolled at her in­sti­tu­tion gain from the at­ten­tion that is of­fered. At Ari's, stu­dents not on­ly ben­e­fit from the spe­cial at­ten­tion giv­en but al­so from a num­ber of ex­tra cur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties, among them steel pan, swim­ming and gym­nas­tics. In her chat with the Guardian, An­toine ad­mit­ted, "I love what I do." She has writ­ten two books on ed­u­ca­tion, which are yet to be pub­lished, one of which is en­ti­tled Us­ing Per­form­ing Arts to En­hance The Aca­d­e­m­ic Achieve­ments of a Child. Cur­rent­ly, An­toine is keep­ing some of the chil­dren oc­cu­pied with an on­go­ing hol­i­day camp. On Au­gust 14, she held a wa­ter park event at the school's com­pound, which she ex­plained was an aid dri­ve, to as­sist with the costs as­so­ci­at­ed with run­ning the school.

A call for help

Even with ad­ver­tis­ing, An­toine ad­mit­ted to hav­ing some dif­fi­cul­ty in get­ting the word of her ser­vices out to the mass­es. She ex­plained that St Joseph MP Her­bert Vol­ney was aware of the school's ex­is­tence and promised to as­sist in his ca­pac­i­ty as Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment, but to date she has re­ceived no gov­ern­men­tal help. She is al­so call­ing on mem­bers of the pub­lic and cor­po­rate en­ti­ties to lend a hand if they can in equip­ping the school with the nec­es­sary equip­ment for learn­ing. "We would re­al­ly like to get com­put­ers for the school. Any help would be re­al­ly ap­pre­ci­at­ed," said An­toine. One par­ent, Pa­t­ri­na Leza­ma whose son, 20-year-old Steelon has at­tend­ed the school for the past four years, said she has seen many changes in her son's be­hav­iour since his en­roll­ment. "Steelon is autis­tic and I can say that the re­sults I've got­ten have been fan­tas­tic. When he start­ed, he couldn't speak and he couldn't clean him­self. Now, he speaks a lot clear­er and he's more in­de­pen­dent," Leza­ma said. Pa­t­ri­na said she took Steelon to oth­er in­sti­tu­tions but nev­er got the re­sults she's got­ten since his en­roll­ment at Ari's. "They weren't tak­ing care of him. They would ill treat him and they would not clean him up so I would meet him sit­ting in his mess," she lament­ed. Pa­t­ri­na be­lieves the gov­ern­ment should as­sist An­toine in some way, ex­plain­ing that the in­di­vid­ual at­ten­tion that's of­fered to chil­dren at the school, is un­like what is of­fered at any oth­er school for slow chil­dren.

• To lend fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance to Ari's In­clu­sive Learn­ing Cen­tre, you can make de­posits at any First Cit­i­zens Bank, ac­count #179143, or call An­nette An­toine at 755-7197.