More news from San Lucas

On Monday, we were introduced to the kids we would be working with for the week at the school for kids with special needs. There are 20-25 kids enrolled and about 10-15 will show up on any given day. Many of these kids don’t have an official diagnosis but from our evaluations there are kids with cerebral palsy, autism, down syndrome, and a variety of learning disabilities such as dyslexia. The model for teaching in Guatemala is a lot of copying and rote memorization. The teachers working at this school aren’t given special education training and the current school model doesn’t work well for this group of kids. The teachers must also grade the children the same way they would grade a typically developing child. It appears that the parents of the children and the government have high expectations for these teachers wanting the kids to read, write, and learn math when just counting and copying numbers is difficult. The teachers are eager to learn new techniques for how to teach these kids in a way that is meaningful. 

We completed arena evaluations for each child, taking one child, one Guatemalan teacher, the U.S. therapists, the U.S. teachers, and an interpreter. The teacher explained the struggles each child is experiencing and as a team we asked questions, had the child demonstrate different skills, and gave recommendations based on what we observed. The rest of the team worked in the classroom, giving examples of different activities and new ways of learning using visual, auditory, and kinesthetic techniques. Our team consists of a speech therapist who is also fluent in American Sign Language, two occupational therapists, myself as a PT, a teacher specializing in literacy and ESL, a paraprofessional with experience working in special education, a business administrator, a Guatemalan teacher working toward a degree in social work, an interpreter, and a grandma who also knows Spanish. It has been amazing to see what each person contributes and how God has hand picked this team to work with this particular school.

If it were allowed to have a favorite student, mine would be Dylan. He is a 10 year old boy with cerebral palsy. He is very active and loves to play soccer. At school, he has a hard time paying attention and writing. What I noticed was when he is sitting in his desk, he is working so hard to keep himself stable, he has a hard time controlling his arms and hands to write. He is constantly moving to the floor to do his writing activities so the floor can assist with stabilizing his body. I added a piece of foam to the bottom of his feet when he was sitting at his desk to give him stability at his feet. He really liked it and was able to write easier. He was so excited he drew straight lines in his picture, he wanted to show everyone his drawing. 

Tuesday, we were able to join the kids for gym class. It just happened to be soccer. It was so much fun to play with the kids and a few of them have some skills! My wonderful teammates took some videos that I could watch later to look more closely at how the kids move and offer suggestions for exercises. I am still amazed at how soccer is the same in any language. We continued our evaluations at the school as our sunny day turned to torrential down pour, turning the street into a river. We hoped the rain would slow enough for us to walk from the school to where we eat lunch, but it didn’t so we hitched a ride on the back of a truck driven by one of the student’s father. We ended the night playing the game of Things which lead to much laughter and team bonding.

Even though that is only the beginning of the week, I’ll have to post more later. There is so much more to share!