Skills for Kids - a place of great value

Randomly, one day browsing over facebook, I saw a post from Skills for Kids. Their post was about their new classrooms, I got curious, saw the pictures, checked out their facebook page and wrote something like: "Great initiative - would love to see the place one day. Good luck". Before I knew it I was invited.

Skills for Kids is a new school with the beautiful mission of educating special needs children in group sessions as well as in one to one therapy sessions, all taken care of pertaining to the individual child's needs.   

"We empower children who face challenges at school and in their daily lives, and prepare them for inclusion in the community and mainstream education." From skillsforkids.ae

It was the most fantastic villa, furnished and decorated as a mini school. Even though I was visiting outside school hours, I could easily imagine a creative, non stressful atmosphere creating a fantastic learning environment for special needs children. I was impressed by the education quality I felt prioritized in the different rooms and clear ambitions for the future.

Skills for Kids is unique especially of its size, since the center will only host a minor numbers of students at the time. Other than that they have a high priority of letting students learn in a group, if at all possible. I my opinion the best part is the focus on including the students, maybe it will not happen in a mainstream school, but that will not stop this place from including the students in the society.

"From a world of exclusion to wonderful participation"

Skills for Kids webpage - Please have a look www.skillsforkids.ae/

I wish Skills for Kids the best start in their first school year and look forward to follow your journey.

Energizer - the most important activity

5 minutes is everything you need to wake up your audience - 5 minutes is decisive to the concentration level and amount of focus in the classroom, staff meeting or Thursday afternoon workshops.

We all now it, we have all seen ourselves almost fallen a sleep to a "death by PowerPoint all day long- kind of workshop".

Energizers is the key, the key to a higher level of concentration, a significantly presence, a break that gives energy instead of reminding you about how tired you are. Move a little, have a laugh and if it's important you can actually learn something in the mean time.

While planning a workshop for my colleges at school i found this catalogue with 100 different energizers. They are easy to understand, simple to implement and it's possible to find something for all different kind of purpose and audience. It's the best catalogue I have seen for a long time so have a look next time you have to plan find it here.

Thanks to the International HIV/AIDS Alliance for publish the catalogue online and for the well animated, easy accessible inspiration.


Often energizers are well functioning on their own, and in meetings or workshops at a workplace the purpose is often just to raise the energy level/move a little and have a laugh.

I thought that in school environment we can use energizers as part of our teaching and let the students learn and move around at the same time.
So I'm planning a workshop with energizer involving learning as well and I would like to share my favorite one so far, as a little inspiration:

Matching phrase and definition – class activity 

Write a phrase and its definition/example on two different pieces of paper. You need as many pieces of papers as you have students, so each person has either a phrase or a definition/example.  All papers get fold and placed in a box,  each student pull out a piece of paper from the box. Now everyone has to find their match.

Don't be afraid of planing 5 minutes of a moving activity next time you are responsible for the agenda. It makes your audience way more aware of the things going on simply because energizers give energy to the brain and system. People will remember better and be more focused - I promise;)

The Link

I finally found it. The link! The link between my education and job, the connection between my professional and personal life, the bridge to my ongoing development.

I love professional as well as personal development, I constantly challenge myself and I'm searching for a new place or role as soon as it makes sense- sometimes too soon.

I have joined a mentoring program here in Dubai called "The Link" with a vision as ambitious as I am:

"Our vision is to have a generation of women with more confidence and leadership capacity to reach their goals and contribute to the growth of the UAE." the-link.org

I will attend as a Mentee and will get a Mentor to support me in achieving my goals and develop my potential. We will both learn more about ourselves through honest conversation and reflective questions - I hope!

I'm really hopeful about the program in general. I'm wishing to get a goal for the future, for my career, to find the right track for me,  and most importantly all the steps of the "how-to-get-there-process". It's maybe a little ambitious, but hey, that's how I'm.

I have already attended the introduction program, which was a full day of different tasks getting a ground level knowledge of mentoring and especially the mentoring we will experience in "The Link". I walked away with a really good feeling inside: This will be the beginning of my future journey.


  

Edmodo - the new Facebook

I just got to know about Edmodo.com - Facebook for schools is the easiest description.

Every school have to be registered, every teacher creates a profile and a group for their class e.g English 7a. The teacher simply give a code to their students and they can easy join the right group.

You end up with a group very similar to a Facebook group, where teachers can post homework or other information as well as a quiz and register assignments with a due date. Students can post a question or write a comment.

My school has replaced their own (and a bit old fashioned) intranet totally and are now fully using edmodo.com for homework posting supplied by email newsletters.

It is possible for more than one teacher to join the same group, even possible to create groups with teachers only. Parents can create their own profile as well and be able to look at their child's homework or comments. 

Edmodo also allows teachers to share articles or 'favorite' teaching resources with other professional. 

Looking back at first term

First term break (or Christmas break) is soon over and I'm slowly looking forward to get into daily life routine again. I would like to look back at the first term of this school year.

First of all I would like to be honest: It has been a challenged starting at my new job. This is my first ‘real’ full time job (a challenge on its own), everyone is speaking my second language (and no one understand my first) and suddenly I had the responsibility for an 11 year old autistic boy‘s school development and with that a lot of new things I had to learn. That was at least the feeling I had the first month or two.

During the months of September and October I was the only one working with my main student, let’s call him A, and that was a full time job! As per the job description I joined in every last one of his academically school lessons by sitting next to him, but it quickly became clear that A needed support to settle in and handle all the other situations at school too. I met with him at the reception first thing in the morning to walk with him to his classroom and at the end of the day to the school bus. He ended up eating lunch with me since the canteen was too big a challenge. I followed him to enrichment classes and tutor time (break class in the middle of the day with a group of students from different age groups) often I even had to stay there to make him stay in the room. I handled every worry that came to his mind (could vary from “I’m afraid the school building will collapse” over “The security guard might not be at the zebras so I’m afraid I can't walk to the other building myself” to “I can’t take my pencil case out, because I might lose stuff from there”) and I spent a lot of time arguing that A has to attend lessons like everyone else.

In the end of October just before mid-term-break I was mentally starting to feel fed up. This job was not only eight hours of work every day, this was mentally challenging and needed a higher level of engagement than I ever experienced before. My superior and I made the most important decision together: I needed someone to share the responsibility and develop strategies with, a break to regain new energy and some new input from working with other students. From mid-November L, a new LSS, took over A’s lessons Monday and Tuesday. It was a pleasure and I was immediately relieved.

As time progressed A learned a lot of things in school and he is now much more comfortable, confident and independent compared to the beginning. He still needs full 1-to-1 support and will always rely on that to be able to learn in mainstream school classes, but he now knows where the boundaries are and doesn't have to test them all the time. He now knows how to find the different classrooms, the bus and the day before break he even asked if he could eat in the canteen with his classmates.

During the first term I became more relaxed and happy with my job, I learned that I’m definitely not the only one with responsibilities towards A’s development and finally I’m more comfortable with the role as a learning supporter. I’m looking forward to experiencing A’s development during the second part of the school year, to push him and support him in being as independent as possible. 

What does a LSS do - the actually work

I am now fully into the job as a LSS (learning support specialist) and able to explain a bit about the job. Every LSS is given one main student to work with most of the time, being responsible for the overall development, to create a contact person for the student and to have weekly contact with the parents. Most of the students with full support have support in every lesson (mostly except PE though).

In the beginning of the school year we all worked with our own main student, full time. Now we have started swooping around so we work with different students, with the aim of getting variation in our work, get challenged in a new way, work closer together as a team as well as the students learn to work with different adults – at least for a few hours per week.

The support we do is support in normal lessons. The aim is that our students can participate as equal as possible with their classmates for normal teaching. We sit next to the student in the classroom and remind the student to focus, repeat the things the teacher have explained and basically helps and motivate the students in their work. In collaboration with the teacher we modify the curriculum so it’s more suitable for the students understanding and level.

A lot of these students are not only struggling academically but often with their social and life skills as well which mean we sometimes have to step into the learning process of life as the role model we are.

Uddannelsesvidenskab IRL

For English version see below

Jeg er blevet kontaktet for at høre om jeg kunne tænke mig at bidrage til et arrangement der skal give "nye" uddanelsesvidenskab'ere inspiration til, hvordan man kan bruge en BSc i UDV.

Og selvfølgelig har jeg lyst til det.

Oplæget fra arrangøren lød på følgende refleksionsspørgsmål:

- Hvad har jeg lavet siden jeg blev bachelor i Uddannelsesvidenskab? 

- Hvordan ser jeg mine uddannelsesvidenskabelige kompetencer i spil på arbejdsmarkedet? 

- Hvilke overvejelser har jeg gjort mig i forhold til ikke at tage en kandidat? 

- Hvilke drømme har jeg for fremtiden? 

Og nedenfor kan du så se resultatet der blev til et synes jeg selv ganske godt første videooplæg. 

English:
I was asked to do a video presentation about my work experiences after graduating. I'm one of the few who started working instead of studying and therefore i'm able to inspire some of the current students on the bachelor education in educational science. The above video is my result. Unfortunately there is only a danish version.