MY EDUCATION WEEK:Noeleen Brennan, special needs assistant, St Colmcille's National School, Knocklyon, Dublin
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 17th
What a brilliant start to the weekend. Ireland beat Australia. My son was in New Zealand to watch the match. My other son Ciaran’s Dublin under-21 team lost last weekend’s All-Ireland hurling final. Tomorrow I will be in Croker. Hopefully the footballers will beat Kerry and make amends. Our school is GAA mad, and everyone is looking forward to seeing Bryan Cullen arriving with the Sam Maguire.
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 18th
Two in a row! I hope this roll I’m on continues for the week.
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 19th
Unfortunately, all is not so rosy in St Colmcille’s. Until last year we had a special needs assistant (SNA) for each child in the school who needed one. Now we have lost five SNAs. It’s only starting to become clear to me what this will mean for me and the children.
This year, for the first time, I am SNA to two children instead of one – and they’re in two classrooms. Doesn’t sound difficult, does it? Straight away this morning we hit a problem. Conor, a junior infant with Down syndrome, and Emma, a second-class pupil with a hearing impairment, have break time at the same time, but in different yards.
Anyone who works as an SNA will know that yard time is as important as class time for a child with special needs. This is the time when they can be left out, left to wander alone, and possibly escape the school.
I have to be with Conor because he’s new to the school. One of my jobs every year is to help the other children in the class to gain an understanding of the needs of my student, so that they can make adjustments too. They’re brilliant, the kids. Once they understand what the other child needs they’re happy to help. They never mean to leave another child out; they just don’t realise he can’t keep up unless someone is around to explain.
I hope Emma’s okay. Apparently, one of the other SNAs is keeping an eye on her, but I don’t know who it is. This month I’ll only work with Emma for about two hours per day. Hopefully, when Conor’s acclimatised, both children will get the care they need.
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20th
Emma was very upset yesterday. She told her mother that the other children won’t play with her. It’s not that they are leaving her out on purpose; it’s just that they don’t realise she can’t hear them and they don’t understand her properly when she talks to them.
I spent the morning with Conor. The teacher was teaching the letter P, and I was assisting Conor. My job is to ensure that he is always doing something, even if he is not quite keeping up with the rest of the class. He did so well today. He got the straight line down no problem. Tomorrow we will work on the curved line. Little by little we’ll get there.
If I wasn’t there to keep him busy, he would sit doing nothing, because he can’t work at the pace of the other children. If he is to come to a mainstream school he needs modified activity. His teacher differentiates the curriculum for various pupils in the class of 29. I’m here to care for Conor and to ensure he’s always included. A couple of years ago I learned Irish sign language, otherwise known as Lámh, to communicate with a child who was hearing impaired. Conor is familiar with Lámh, so I might teach him some more.
Got home and flopped on the couch. So exhausted. I only get a 10-minute break all day, because I have to be with the children all the time, not just in class. It used to be that I would get half an hour when the child was in the resource teaching room, but now I have to spend that time with Emma. It’s a shame, because it gave me a chance to organise the books and talk to the teacher about lesson plans. The teachers and I will be working a lot of overtime this year if we are to plan the best experiences for pupils with special needs.
Got a call from my old friend from school. Her son has a mild learning disability. He’s an adult now and living at home. We talked about his schooling – when he was a child he couldn’t go to mainstream school. Even though he was quite capable of learning, his dyspraxia made it very difficult for him to hold a pencil or do other basic jobs you need to keep up. He had to go to a special school, and his mother thinks it closed a lot of doors for him. She often says how sorry she is there were no SNAs when he was a boy.
Special schools are very important for children who have particular needs, but for many others mainstream is best. Children with Down syndrome are a perfect example. I’ve worked with a few children who had Down syndrome in my 10 years as an SNA. They thrived in a mixed group in mainstream classes. They loved to copy other children and were eager to please. They came a long way in mainstream schools with the right help.
When I started as an SNA there were very few children with special needs in mainstream schools. Now there are so many: about 30 in St Colmcille’s, out of a total enrolment of 720. It’s a wonderful environment for all the children. The others learn to be patient, tolerant and kind to those with different needs. A child in the class asked me today, “What’s wrong with Conor? Is he a baby?” I told him that every child in the class needs a bit of help and that Conor just needs a bit more. “I’ll help you too if you ever need it,” I said. He seemed happy with that!
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21st
I heard Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn on Prime Time last night, talking about caps on SNAs. I understand why cuts have to happen. We all do at the school. We just don’t understand why the most vulnerable are targeted. Our 15 children of the Traveller community no longer receive support teaching, and all of the pupils with special educational needs receive 10 per cent less resource teaching. Up until this year we had such a good system for special-needs children. It was really working. It’s taken the 10 years I’ve been working as an SNA for the system to really get into its stride, and now it looks like they might start picking it apart again.
What I’ve noticed is that gradually, over the past decade, parents have become more confident about using the system. They used to worry about sending their children with Down syndrome, Asperger’s syndrome or other challenges to a mainstream school: how would they cope? If a child can’t use the bathroom alone, how on earth is he supposed to row in with 28 others? Now they trust the system. They know that there is a person there dedicated to their child. If we keep losing SNAs, parents will lose confidence in the system and go back to the special schools. I feel like we’re moving backwards.
A grand day at school. Conor’s getting his own ideas about where he wants to be when the others are learning their letters. I spent most of this morning trying to stop him from running out of the classroom to the sandpit. You have to take a firm hand sometimes, but he got it in the end and settled down to some writing practice. He’s getting on better in the yard too. The teacher has asked the two children who sit next to him in class to include him in their games, and they’re really taking the mission to heart. He loves to be included.
Got home and unwound by knitting a pair of booties. I’ve got piles of them now, because I can’t knit anything else. Very relaxing, though. Someone needs to have octuplets or else I’ll have to learn how to knit school ties.
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 22nd
Coming to the end of a hectic week. My garden is in disarray, so I must commit some time tonight. I once considered being a horticulturalist but went into education instead. There’s plenty in common between the two jobs – nurturing sometimes fragile flowers that have a few challenges to face before they can bloom. They need someone who knows when they need to be covered and when they can be exposed to the elements. With the right care, they can make it.
This time of year it’s all about cutting back, though. It may fortify the garden, but the school is a different matter altogether.
This Week I Was . . .
Watching
Emmerdale, rugby, Grand Designs
Reading
The Shack,for my new book club. A Christian novel and US bestseller
Clicking on
My son’s travel blog. Ive been following his exploits in South America all the way to NZ for the rugby
Listening to
Paul Brady and the pianist Ludovico Einaudi
