MY MEMORIES

Wwww.kayomoru.com e will always live with memories. I am constantly in the process or practice of telling or thinking about my past experiences. I frequently go back memory lane especially on how my Teachers Diary column started in the 1990’s! I wrote as a teacher within mainstream primary education at Corona School Victoria Island and St. Saviours School Ikoyi, mostly children without learning disabilities. My intentions then and now are to entertain and inform my colleagues, of our noble teaching profession and vocation, as well as to hopefully coopt parents into my readership. I got very encouraging feedbacks from my venture. I could easily recall several of such encouraging and very thoughtful words. But one that particularly stands out in my memory was a letter from a lady in Bauchi State who wanted me to suggest tips for improving her spoken and written English. I mused then as my focus in teaching was changing. I wanted formal knowledge of why some children would possibly not learn the way we wanted them to no matter how hard we tried. I wanted to know why some children at the bottom of the class were not demonstrating learning despite painstaking efforts by teachers to teach them. I dabbled into dyslexia. This provided me with some answers and more importantly tools for teaching specific aspects of English and mathematics. My hunger remained. I wanted knowledge to enable me teach and support children with more visible usually congenital physical and behavioural conditions. Dyslexia is a topic that I have often written about on this platform. But for want of clarity, dyslexia is a common learning difficulty that can cause problems with reading, writing and spelling. It is a specific learning difficulty, which means it causes problems with certain abilities used for learning, such as reading and writing. Dyslexia is not like a learning disability as intelligence is not affected. In formal education, we consciously as teachers create the environment for learning. Without equivocation, we have expected outcomes, and we garner resources to achieve this. We engage in a planning process and plan a strategy for success. At the end of the teaching session we judge success by changes in behaviour. Indeed, this change may have occurred as a result of some cognitive processing of information, or by forming some associations, through experiential or insightful learning etc or through a combination of all forms of learning. A lot of learning however takes place outside formal education. Learning can take place at any time or anywhere; may be observable or otherwise; may or may not be readily measurable. I have found this to be readily true in my present preoccupation as a specialist practitioner. I work within a multidisciplinary team of therapists, in a further education college for people with profound physical and learning disabilities. Our work is to enable and empower people with profound physical and learning disabilities achieve their greatest potentials. Allow me to introduce to you one of the students in the college where I practice disability. Vwede is 19 years old with a Statement of Severe Learning Disabilities and Epilepsy. He is visually impaired being blind in his left eye. He has a left-sided hemiplegia and therefore is mostly paralised in the left side of his body. He is wheeled about in his wheelchair, but can weight bear during transfers with the help of two staff. Vwede was not born with a condition resulting in his learning disability. He suffered a brain haemorrhage at three weeks old which left him with a severe brain damage. Vwede displays challenging behaviour now and again especially whenever his routine has been altered. At such times he lets out his frustration in severe self-harm. This is however being successfully managed in college by structured learning and routine. Vwede experiences an average of six epileptic seizures weekly. These usually require the administration of emergency anti convulsant medication. Vwede’s self-help, survival skills if you like, are being retained in college. For example he feeds himself successfully with the aid of adaptive utensils. Vwede uses a range of communication modalities to express himself. He makes vocalisations to gain attention in order to communicate. He also combines vocalisation with gestures. He does a particular eye-twitching and mouth movement that expresses his ‘yes’ and ‘no’. Vwede is able to use some basic Makaton signs to support his vocalisation such as signs for the toilet or for a drink. In terms of comprehension, Vwede needs his attention gained before giving him an instruction. His comprehension is demonstrated by the use of gesture such as eye-pointing at what you are talking about. Vwede understands his daily routine with the help of cues like activity related objects. He is enabled to cope with change by being told about it, reminded of impending change and being prepared for it. Essentially change is introduced gradually, explained clearly and given time to be worked out by Vwede. How often do we as teachers leave behind our ‘slow learners’ in favour of the ‘high fliers’? Do we actually have a right to pronounce anyone as ‘slow learning’? This is more so, when the condition is linked to genes, which is why the condition often runs in families.