Geisha Kow­lessar

Four­teen-year-old Kendell Boodoo wrote the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) along with thou­sands of oth­er stu­dents on May 12. His first choice is Bon Air High School in Arou­ca. If he does not pass his moth­er, Amoy, plans to en­rol him in vo­ca­tion­al and com­put­er cours­es.

Kendell's jour­ney from preschool to sev­en dif­fer­ent pri­ma­ry and spe­cial schools he at­tend­ed has been dif­fi­cult. SEA can be trau­mat­ic for any child, but it's been es­pe­cial­ly hard for him. He is autis­tic. Teach­ers re­fused to ac­cept him, say­ing he was "too dif­fi­cult" to deal with, Amoy said. As she de­scribed her son's tri­als, Amoy's voice broke at times and tears welled in her eyes.

"I dis­tinct­ly re­mem­ber hav­ing to peel off his fin­gers from hold­ing on to the front gate of the preschool be­cause he was cry­ing and scream­ing so much," she said. She lat­er learnt that Kendell did not want to at­tend that school be­cause he had been beat­en and ver­bal­ly abused.

Pri­ma­ry school was al­so a chal­lenge. Amoy said teach­ers showed lit­tle in­ter­est in her son. Some even en­cour­aged oth­er pupils to stay away from Kendell and claimed he was dan­ger­ous. Kendell at­tend­ed schools for chil­dren with spe­cial needs but his moth­er be­lieves lit­tle was done there to de­vel­op his cog­ni­tive skills.

"One school in par­tic­u­lar would let the chil­dren watch Sesame Street – and af­ter that they would con­tin­ue watch­ing what­ev­er is show­ing on tele­vi­sion. "Then they would break for lunch, and then nap ... so I felt noth­ing was be­ing taught to him. The school felt more like a babysit­ting cen­tre than any­thing else."

Shel­don Roopc­hand, whose son Jisi­ah, four, was al­so di­ag­nosed with autism, en­coun­tered sim­i­lar dif­fi­cul­ties in en­rolling his child in a preschool. The teach­ers re­fused to take him, Roopc­hand said. The cas­es of Kendell and Jisi­ah raise ques­tions about the qual­i­ty and avail­abil­i­ty of spe­cial ed­u­ca­tion – and what else is need­ed.

Fund­ing ur­gent­ly need­ed

High on the list of ur­gent needs is to im­prove spe­cial ed­u­ca­tion fund­ing, said pres­i­dent of the Pri­vate Spe­cial Schools As­so­ci­a­tion Suzy De Ver­teuil. De Ver­teuil, prin­ci­pal of the LIFE (Learn­ing Is For Every­one) Cen­tre in Pe­tit Val­ley, said it costs close to $66,000 a year to ed­u­cate a child with se­vere autism at the cen­tre.

Half of the cost is cov­ered by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion-the rest is gath­ered from fees, do­na­tions from cor­po­rate spon­sors and fundrais­ing ac­tiv­i­ties. Pub­lic spe­cial schools, she added, have been "cry­ing out" for fund­ing and re­sources. As well as teach­ing, her school of­fers ther­a­py ses­sions and coun­selling ser­vices to par­ents.

The school has 22 pupils with mod­er­ate to se­vere autism. The cost is an ob­sta­cle, De Ver­teuil ad­mits: "We can on­ly im­prove on the ser­vices and ed­u­ca­tion of these schools with prop­er fund­ing." She said teach­ing a child with autism not on­ly re­quires a teacher's aide but mon­ey for on­go­ing train­ing. Lo­cal­ly trained teach­ers don't have suf­fi­cient prac­ti­cal ex­pe­ri­ence to deal with chil­dren with spe­cial needs.

"We need more hu­man re­sources. We n Con­tin­ued from need schol­ar­ships to af­ford teach­ers the op­por­tu­ni­ty to spe­cialise in spe­cif­ic ar­eas, in­clud­ing be­hav­iour analy­sis. Teach­ers are of­ten un­able to recog­nise signs of learn­ing dif­fi­cul­ties and dis­abil­i­ties and there­fore stu­dents' spe­cial ed­u­ca­tion­al needs are not be­ing met," she said.

De Ver­teuil, who said the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem needs to be re­search-dri­ven, said teach­ers trained lo­cal­ly, grad­u­ate and en­ter the ed­u­ca­tion­al sys­tem with in­suf­fi­cient practicum in spe­cial schools. There are ten schools reg­is­tered with the as­so­ci­a­tion that re­ceive fund­ing from the Gov­ern­ment and four oth­ers which are not mem­bers of the as­so­ci­a­tion but re­ceive grants.

Call­ing for mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary teams in the ed­u­ca­tion­al sys­tem, De Ver­teuil said these should in­clude ed­u­ca­tion­al and clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gists, autism and be­hav­iour­al spe­cial­ists, be­hav­iour­al ther­a­pists, oc­cu­pa­tion­al ther­a­pists, speech and lan­guage pathol­o­gists, re­me­di­al spe­cial­ists, guid­ance coun­sel­lors, so­cial work­ers, au­di­ol­o­gists, au­di­ol­o­gy tech­ni­cians, and mo­bil­i­ty and ori­en­ta­tion per­son­nel (for the blind).

Dis­abil­i­ty reg­is­ter

Thir­ty per cent of chil­dren in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem have spe­cial needs, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said last week at the open­ing of the Mara­bel­la South Sec­ondary School. Ear­ly in­ter­ven­tion for these chil­dren must be­gin at hos­pi­tals and health cen­tres, not when the child reach­es school age, said pres­i­dent of the Autis­tic So­ci­ety, Teresina Sie­u­nar­ine.

She said in Ja­maica and Guyana, there is a dis­abil­i­ty reg­istry for the im­me­di­ate screen­ing and di­ag­no­sis of sev­er­al con­di­tions. "Do not wait for the child to reach in school to be di­ag­nosed. We need greater co­or­di­na­tion among hos­pi­tals and health cen­tres and to en­sure that cas­es are fol­lowed up to de­ter­mine ex­act­ly what the child is af­flict­ed with," said Sie­u­nar­ine, the moth­er of a 30-year-old autis­tic son.

There are some 400 chil­dren reg­is­tered with the so­ci­ety to date, and Sie­u­nar­ine said the fig­ure is con­tin­u­al­ly in­creas­ing. At least three new par­ents and their chil­dren seek ad­vice each day. Sie­u­nar­ine said un­like a nor­mal child who smiles, cud­dles, laughs, and re­spond ea­ger­ly to games like peek-a-boo or hide-and-seek, an autis­tic child re­sist cud­dling and avoid in­ter­ac­tion with oth­ers.

A child with autism may dis­play an ex­tra­or­di­nary tal­ent in art or mu­sic but may have prob­lems with school ad­just­ment. "If they end up hav­ing at least one good friend this is a great achieve­ment," Sie­u­nar­ine said. The biggest hur­dle, how­ev­er, is get­ting teach­ers to ac­cept an autis­tic child and of­fer kind­ness and re­spect.

"The ma­jor­i­ty of fam­i­lies we meet have chil­dren who have been re­ject­ed by the school sys­tem-even the pri­vate schools and spe­cial schools. "This may be un­der­stand­able as our teach­ers are not trained to teach chil­dren with autism." Autis­tic chil­dren learn dif­fer­ent­ly and re­quire spe­cialised teach­ing meth­ods to suit their in­di­vid­ual needs.

Sie­u­nar­ine ex­plained: "Each child needs an in­di­vid­ual ed­u­ca­tion­al plan. Many of our autis­tic chil­dren have toi­let-train­ing prob­lems and par­ents are told to bring the child back when they can go to the bath­room on their own. "Many al­so do not speak . . . they are non­ver­bal and they must be taught a par­tic­u­lar com­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tem."

She said chil­dren with As­perg­er's syn­drome, of­ten de­scribed as a milder ver­sion of autism, may be ac­cept­ed in­to the or­di­nary school sys­tem-but they al­so re­quire sup­port. "These chil­dren, how­ev­er, are sub­ject to bul­ly­ing and the school en­vi­ron­ment is very dif­fi­cult for them, es­pe­cial­ly to in­ter­act with peers," she added.

Greater teacher prepa­ra­tion, re­sources

Teacher train­ing in spe­cial ed­u­ca­tion must be­gin at the preschool lev­el, Sie­u­nar­ine urged. She said there should be a spe­cif­ic mod­ule on teach­ing chil­dren with spe­cial needs. Par­ents of autis­tic chil­dren who are in the school sys­tem have to shell out ad­di­tion­al mon­ey on spe­cial tu­tors – once they can af­ford it.

Chil­dren with dyslex­ia and oth­er read­ing dis­abil­i­ties al­so re­quire spe­cial at­ten­tion at schools, some of which are lack­ing in re­sources. Chair­man of the Dyslex­ia As­so­ci­a­tion, Cathryn Kelshall, said teach­ers must al­so be prop­er­ly trained. "What they should have in schools is one teacher who is able to teach these chil­dren their read­ing, writ­ing and spelling skills.

"Not just a teacher who is us­ing the same meth­ods, but teach­ing them with meth­ods that work for dyslex­i­cs and just pulling them out, maybe two or three times a week, dur­ing their nor­mal class­es so they don't miss oth­er things," Kelshall rec­om­mend­ed. She said in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, spe­cial ed­u­ca­tion teach­ers are as­signed to spe­cial rooms where dyslex­ic chil­dren can be taught in small groups.

Kelshall wel­comed the Gov­ern­ment's pro­pos­al to build cen­tres for chil­dren with spe­cial needs. She said it is in­ter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised that ten per cent of any pop­u­la­tion would be dyslex­ic. "That tells me that in a class of 30, there are at least three chil­dren who are go­ing to need some sort of spe­cial­ist teach­ing. In a pop­u­la­tion like ours, with 1.3 mil­lion, there are 130,000 dyslex­i­cs.

"We don't have to go around test­ing all these chil­dren or adults to see who's dyslex­ic-we pret­ty well know, and the teach­ers know," Kelshall said. The so­lu­tion for them may not nec­es­sar­i­ly lie in build­ing cen­tres. The cen­tres will be good for chil­dren with se­vere dif­fi­cul­ties who can't fit in­to or­di­nary schools, she said. "But with the dyslex­i­cs, they don't need that. They need maybe two or three class­room hours ex­tra a week."

Kelshall said the as­so­ci­a­tion is in dis­cus­sions with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and has for­ward­ed a list of all the teach­ers in the pub­lic sec­tor who have com­plet­ed train­ing with the as­so­ci­a­tion. "What they then have to do is re­place those teach­ers...use those teach­ers as re­me­di­al teach­ers in the class­room.

"It's a big hu­man re­source ex­er­cise. We al­so have to make sure that the teach­ers they are us­ing are still up to scratch." If spe­cial ed­u­ca­tion is not im­ple­ment­ed, every­one los­es. Many dyslex­i­cs, Kelshall said, are "very bright and cre­ative. They come up with cre­ative so­lu­tions to prob­lems so when you lose these young peo­ple it cre­ates a loss to so­ci­ety."

The min­istry re­sponds

The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion is do­ing a study to de­ter­mine how many chil­dren need spe­cial ed­u­ca­tion and what their spe­cif­ic needs are, said CEO Har­ry Seecha­ran. He said once eval­u­at­ed, the chil­dren will be sent to the cen­tres where they will be taught a cur­ricu­lum in ac­cor­dance with their needs.

"Chil­dren in need of spe­cial ed­u­ca­tion is a big con­cern for the min­istry and it is a mat­ter we are vig­or­ous­ly pur­su­ing," Seecha­ran said. He said there were al­so plans to pump more re­sources in­to the min­istry's stu­dent sup­port ser­vices and teacher train­ing.

What is autism?

Autism af­fects in­for­ma­tion pro­cess­ing in the brain. It leads to im­paired so­cial in­ter­ac­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion and re­strict­ed, repet­i­tive be­hav­iour. Ear­ly signs and symp­toms which sug­gest a child may need eval­u­a­tion for autism in­clude:

• No smil­ing by six months of age

• No back and forth shar­ing of sounds, smiles or fa­cial ex­pres­sions by nine months

• No bab­bling, point­ing, reach­ing or wav­ing by 12 months

• No sin­gle words by 16 months

• No two word phras­es by 24 months

• Re­gres­sion in de­vel­op­ment

• Any loss of speech, bab­bling or so­cial skills

What is Dyslex­ia?

Dyslex­ia is a very broad term for a learn­ing dis­abil­i­ty that im­pairs a per­son's flu­en­cy or com­pre­hen­sion abil­i­ty in be­ing able to read.

Source:wikipedia.org