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.

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.

Tommorow it is...

Excited, nervous, prepared with a new wardrobe and an information level equals to zero I'm looking forward to my first day at work. Tomorrow I'm having my first day at GEMS Welling Academy (WA) as a Learning Support Specialist (LSS)! 

I'm expecting that I in the upcoming school year will work with 2-3 students with some kind of special needs. I could be general concentration problems and learning disability among students, could be kids with diagnoses like ADHD or maybe Autism/Asperger - that is at least my understanding. I'm expecting an established team and a professional organization from my experiences with GEMS WA so far. 

I'm looking forward to motivate and support students who is academically behind their year-group average, to help them structure their daily school life and follow their progress. I'm looking forward to know how this school system is working, what about the teaching methods, teachers and different policies? Who will be my new colleagues and how will I fit in? Do I personally agree or disagree with the schools way of handling different situations and how will my own opinions develop through this meeting with one of the biggest school systems in the Middle East?     

Finally in Dubai - what's next?

Now i'm here - in Dubai - searching for a job. 

I have been here almost a month now and already taken some different initiative. First of all I have spent time increasing the value and correctness of my English LinkedIn profile - you are welcome to have a look on it here.
It’s still not perfect, but I keep on edit the profile to make it more effective.
I also signed up and create my CV in different job sites like bayt.com and gulftalent.com – at least it gives me an easy access to search for new jobs.
The first job I have applied for is at a company called The Brain Workshop – pretty interesting and fairly spot on, compared to my education and experience. Unfortunately I don’t think I will get it – think I will try later on though.
I have created and handed out an unsolicited application for a consultancy jobs at different internationals school. The description of my offer is more or less like my experience from Ethiopia and I hope that some school would find it interesting to try increasing their level of learning in the class room.

I still believe to find a job here in UAE even though there are some barriers coming up now and then. My English is getting better and I keep trying to improve it, but of course it’s a challenge to start writing CV and cover letters in you second language. I’m also in a position where I’m more or less a new graduated bachelor with 3 month experience, and sometimes I dream about the time to come where I do have some years’ experience, because I see so many interesting jobs I want to apply for in the future.