Evaluation Erasmus study trip from 31/3 to 5/4 Escola l’Estelada, Canoves
What a wonderfully warm welcome we have on our first day here at the school! Nice Spanish colleagues, with whom we immediately felt very comfortable. And that has remained the case all week, I think I could work well here too.
Diagnosing children with special needs is no different from how we do it in the Netherlands. Here too, mainly children from groups 1 to 4 are filtered out. The conversations with the parents are frequent and in some cases the children receive a special program such as our OPP. Together with the parents, they then look at what would benefit the child most. This could also result in extra hands being brought into the classroom.
Just like in the Netherlands, there are parents who are reluctant to give their children medication because their child does not bother them at home. However, it sometimes happens that, after a holiday, a child has “suddenly” become much calmer and there is a suspicion that medication is still being used.
The conversations with parents take place in the same way as with us. There are 3 moments when the reports are issued and therefore the same number of conversations are usually held, with special needs students there are of course more conversations.
The care is divided as follows: there is a specialist for the lower groups and a specialist for the upper groups. These specialists are not given any extra time for this and must therefore do this during school hours. They also participate in discussions between special needs students and their teachers and parents. Without extra hours that they are rostered off: respect! Last school year, about 70 children were sent to another school because they could no longer receive proper help at a regular school.
Big compliment to this team: they make many methods themselves. This way they can make it very adaptive for special needs children.
What was striking in a class with many special needs children was that after the break there was a moment of rest. The children were allowed to give each other a massage while enjoying a quiet song. How nice that we also got a massage!
The groups in which the children sat together were divided with 1 special needs child in each group.
During group discussions we saw that a teacher sat next to a boy who needed extra attention, so that she could continuously involve him in the conversation. It was also striking that there were often many extra hands in the classroom for the special needs students.
It was also nice for us to see that the entire school was involved in a project about sustainability: the children gave each other their presentation about how we can combat the plastic soup. Nice to see the whole school together.
All in all this was a great experience. We have seen, heard and learned a lot. Thank you for this experience.
With regards, Ulrike Loos