Week 12 - Professional Blog.

“Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that a son of a mineworker can become the head of the mine, that a child of farm workers can become the president of a great nation. It is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another." Nelson Mandela

Cape Recife School

 After a very eventful few weeks travelling and an almost emotional goodbye with our friends, the time came for us to finally start into the teaching practise, which also marked the final stretch of time before we had to face going home.  Having done weekly observation day visits into Cape Recife, I had a vague idea of what to expect from my class. However, I was approaching my five week placement with great anticipation as I was aware that within my class of eighteen children, ten of them were diagnosed with ADHD.  The thought of this terrified me, as in my previous teaching experiences I have had just one child with ADHD in my class and they caused great disruption. The thought of managing ten of them alongside the rest of the class was daunting to say the least. Something that has really taken me by surprise is the lack of support for the teacher of a special needs class. The teacher I have been shadowing is the only adult within her class, with no classroom assistants or support. This is in great contrast to the special needs class I visited in Northern Ireland, as there were four adults within a class of ten children. As a result of this lack of adult support I feel like the children’s learning is suffering within this class.

The teacher’s main focus is on the behaviour of the children, rather than their learning, and so with lack of differentiation and individual academic support, the children’s learning evidently suffers.

Some of the inclusive athletics.

Cape Recife was instantly impressive to me when I entered the school, their inclusive ethos and catering extracurricular activities are well publicised throughout the corridors, and you can tell it is a school that aims to include children of all disabilities and special needs. One of the main principals of the school is to encourage inclusion as much as possible. The pupils of Cape Recife have been referred there by teachers from mainstream schools who feel it is necessary, and Cape Recife provide these children with specific encouragement and support, aiming to equip them to be placed back into mainstream schools when they are ready. Cape Recife follow the same curriculum that mainstream schools do, simply with smaller classes in order to provide the children with adequate support as mainstream classes can have up to fifty children within them.

I was surprised and disappointed to see very little differentiation within the class and teaching, as it is clear that the more capable children and the less capable children suffer from this. Rather, the teacher sticks to a very structured routine which has been used year after year, leaving little room for improvisation or alternative lessons. This has made me nervous about introducing my lessons amongst this structured routine as I am unsure how the children will react to them and how the teacher will respond to my change in routine. However, the teacher cannot be blamed for this lack of differentiation within her lessons as the behaviour of the children is clearly her first priority with no other adult support within the class. This is very different from what I am used to in Northern Ireland as there is a great emphasis on differentiation there, and having seen the results of not including differentiation, I now understand the true importance of it to help children reach their full potential. Although this week has been a tiring one, and has presented some problems that I am nervous about confronting while teaching next week, I am looking forward to the challenges and am already enjoying the relationship I am building up with the children within the classroom, which I feel is a vital part of being a teacher to these children.  It is clear how important it is for these children to be inspired as they find school uninteresting and tiring, and I hope to do so in the incoming weeks.