At the school, I work mostly one-on-one with the students. They do a mixture of academic and vocational training. I have been teaching them addition, counting, colours, English words, drawing and colouring. The kids vary so much in their abilities. All the children have mental retardation (IQ roughly below 70), so teaching new skills is done VERY slowly. Even when a skill is taught, like addition, they may do it perfectly but when given a problem that tests whether they understand the concepts then they can't do it. I don't think many of them understand that numbers represent quantities of something, (eg: there are 4 pencils on the table). When I give some of them the problem 8+0 they have to count it out. They use good techniques for teaching though, for example, learning words the steps are:
1. Trace over the word
2. Connect the dots to make each letter of the word
3. Copy the word
4. Write the word from memory
Only when they've mastered one step can they move on to the next. Once the word is known, fill in the blanks technique (e.g., A_PL_ for APPLE) or word jumble (e.g., PAPEL) can be used to solidify the recognition of the word.
The school is an NGO and the children come from pretty bad homes. One of my favourite boys, Renju, comes from a very poor family. His parents live at the factory where they work. Both his siblings are in orphanages and for vacation he goes to his uncle's house. Another boy is named Arun, and both his parents are deaf and mute. The kids all have behavioural problems too: ADHD, self-injurious behaviour, conduct problems, and attention-seeking behaviour. I have seen children hurt others, themselves, and even make themselves vomit in order to get attention.
The most frustrating part of being here is not speaking Malayalam. The children are always trying to communicate with me and I wish I could understand everything they have to say. One of the children, Renju, taught me to count to 39 which helps me to teach math and it also serves as a little game where I practice my Malayalam counting and they practice their English counting.
I get a lot of questions about whether i'm married, or when will i get married. They can't believe that I’m not thinking about getting married until I’m much older. I've gotten into many discussions about arranged marriages and dowries. It's very interesting to hear how things are done here, but I'm not sure it would work well for me.
One of the teachers went home yesterday morning because her father was in a motorbike accident so I took over her class. It is by far the most challenging class to deal with. There is one girl with cerebral palsy who can't sit up on her own and often wets herself so she must always be watched. One girl has autism and doesn't understand hand gestures and facial cues (my only real way of communicating), one has mild MR and pretty severe ADHD, and the last boy is Chachu. He is severely autistic, non-verbal, conduct problems, self-injurious behaviour, and violent. He's very little and climbs all over you, licks, hits, bites, and destroys teaching material. He is a full-time job by himself, so I don't know how the teacher handles this class everyday. The school purchased a ball pit for the hyperactive children. Moving their bodies through the balls is meant to calm them. I took Chachu there last week, but he was too scared to go into the pit. The other teachers forced him in once, but he was still much too scared to try on his own. This experience made me think of how anciety is treated. In cases of specific phobia, the clinician discusses the phobia with the patient, develops a hierarchy of anxiety-provoking situations, and plans a slow exposure to these situations until the patient is finally ready to be exposed to the fearful stimulus. Throwing the patient directly into the fearful situation (flooding) is not recommended. This process, however, requires a lot of rationalising and communicating with the patient to understand the phobia and develop an appropriate course of action. I am curious as to how the removal of a specific phobia is done in patients who lack rationalising and communicating skills, such as patients with autism and mental retardation. I will need to do some research into this area, as I don't see myself being able to use reason to get Chachu into the ball pit.
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