Problem Children

I want to share my personal experience of working with "special children", and my experience is not a small one, I have 46 years of work in correctional institutions, 36 of them are at the boarding school (VIII) No. 37 of the Frunzensky district of St. Petersburg.

In our institution, we began to teach children with moderate and severe mental retardation, and also with a complex defect already about 20 years ago. At that time, the training of such children in our city was still only at the level of experiment. In our institution at first the life too was created by one experimental class, then several. Everything had to be invented from scratch, many interesting ideas arose. Now we have 5 classes "Special Child" in which 36 children are studying.

These children are often called "special" because they have special educational needs, even when they are in the walls of the VIII school, but they need a special corrective-developing environment, more space for games and self-realization, a lot of attention from all Specialists and special approaches in training.

With certain difficulties one has to face even when enrolling students in these classes. If the child attended a correctional preschool, then as a rule, such difficulties are much less. Observing the child for a long time from 1 to 4 years, specialists can say with certainty what type of program the child will learn, what additional help he needs, what specialists of the escort service should work hard with this child. And most importantly, parents, as a rule, already fully understand the problems of their child. Unfortunately there are children who did not attend preschool institutions. In this case, the difficulties begin already from the moment of correct diagnosis, which is carried out by the specialists of the City and District medical-psychological-pedagogical commission. It should be understood that when the commission passes the specialists observe the child for several hours and not always the child for the time allotted to him shows all his real opportunities and problems. After all, he needs time to adapt in a new room and with new people. Therefore, we often meet with the wording "probno" in the final documents of the commissions. This means that during the first year of schooling the child should show himself and the school staff will be able to determine the exact route of training.

Unfortunately, parents do not always adequately understand the problems of their child and often do not even accept such a child. This is where the main problem lies, which should be solved by all specialists from the teacher and educator to the administrator. To explain to the parents the possibilities of his child, problems, to show the route of his further progress, to designate joint interaction with parents. It happens that not all parents are willing to cooperate with the school. After all, it's easier not to deal with the child at home, just put him in front of the TV. It is very difficult to take such a child to a museum, a park or a children's theater, picking up a performance that is easy for him to perceive, and if a child can see at least a piece of this performance, then this will be a small joint victory. Of course, the school organizes tours, trips to children's theaters, but this is not enough for the development of a problem child. How do you want parents to keep up with the school, and not become opposition to it.

In our school "Special child" classes are formed for 5-10 people, depending on the severity of intellectual insufficiency and accompanying diseases. In accordance with the Regulation on the acquisition of these classes.

At present, with the children of "Special Child" classes, teachers work under two programs. One of them is more simple, providing for the later development of children reading and writing, and the second involves the development of letters from the first year of schooling. The type of the program is determined during the first year of study, depending on the intellectual abilities of the children. For each child, in fact, there is an individual training route. It happens that the kid successfully mastering the letters and the process of reading, absolutely can not master the account and vice versa. Do not forget that the main thing for our children is the development and consolidation of social, everyday, communicative and hygienic skills. These children will never read books. Their reading process will be limited to signs on the institutions and labels in stores. But they will have to live in human society. Somehow to contact people, if possible, to service yourself. These skills we should try to instill in them.

To achieve these goals, all the necessary specialists work at our boarding school. Classes are taught by teachers-defectologists, speech therapists, psychologist, specialist in physiotherapy exercises , etc. After lessons, children can stay on with a tutor. If the child has already formed social and hygienic skills, as a rule, they are students of secondary and high school. Such children can be left in the boarding school from Monday to Friday.

In our school all conditions are created for a comfortable stay of children, for their successful development and socialization, as well as for mastering educational programs.