One of my new clients is a lovely young teen...she is very pleasant and well mannered, enjoys company and tries hard to please. My first thought was that working with her will be a breeze. Little did I realize that food was going to play such a big part in our interactions!
I noticed that she was overweight for her age but she didn't stand out amongst her peers as being obese. As I gathered more information, I started to notice a pattern...the child never ate any food cooked at home. All her food came from packaged meals, she didn't drink any water or juice (only bottled drinks), and always had a bag full of sweets. To top it all, she ate incessantly. She interrupted our sessions to get a bite. She couldn't work independently (too many five minute breaks), fatigued quickly and had poor memory. She was unable to pace herself and complete tasks on time.
There were other underlying reasons for her eating habits and I'll talk about those in a different post. Her inability to stay on task and complete it within a given time frame was creating a lot of trouble for her at school.
Educating her mother was a long process (father worked long hours and had a ninety minute commute). It took me a while to explain to the client's mother that besides long term health concerns, there was an immediate reason to work on her diet—improving her ability to attend in class. My guess is that this is a long term goal for this mother and child.
In the meantime I happened to see this slideshow on how to manage the symptoms of ADHD with diet...an excellent means of education for parents.
The ADHD Food Fix: How to Fight ADHD Symptoms With Diet and Supplements
That old adage Eat to Live not Live to Eat is apt for more than health reasons.
Ms. S
Blog on fostering mental health in the Indian school system. It explores behavioral symptoms, and provides practical suggestions on strategies and instructional adaptations in the classroom. Topics covered include side effects of medication and their impact in the classoom, advocacy skills and locating therapeutic resources to help the student(s).
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Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Monday, November 14, 2011
Meaningful Materials...part 2
Forget their stories, focus on the numbers.
The guest speaker for the day recounted this comment from a trainer at one of the workshops she attended recently. The emphasis was to achieve impressive looking scores on standardized tests.
The speaker went on to quote the works of her eighth standard students’ written works—all revolving around matters important to them. The pieces she read out were very personal and heartfelt. The structure and language use advanced as their work went through revisions. The best part of it all was that it was their own work—no regurgitation or reproduction.
This was the underlying theme in all the workshops I attended. I had selected sessions which focused on strategies—almost all the trainers and speakers stressed the importance of using strategies to produce work which was meaningful to the student.
Sounds easy, doesn’t it? Using non standardized materials to teach reading and writing requires a sound knowledge base and the ability to let the student learn from his or her mistakes. Most teachers have the first but the second is much harder—it takes time and patience to let the student control his learning. (A little bit like teaching the five year old to tie his shoelaces—the adult can do it quickly and correctly but the child needs the practice!)
The trick is to remember that as teachers, we are caralysts—our job is to provide the right environment. The learning comes from the students themselves.
Ms. S
The guest speaker for the day recounted this comment from a trainer at one of the workshops she attended recently. The emphasis was to achieve impressive looking scores on standardized tests.
The speaker went on to quote the works of her eighth standard students’ written works—all revolving around matters important to them. The pieces she read out were very personal and heartfelt. The structure and language use advanced as their work went through revisions. The best part of it all was that it was their own work—no regurgitation or reproduction.
This was the underlying theme in all the workshops I attended. I had selected sessions which focused on strategies—almost all the trainers and speakers stressed the importance of using strategies to produce work which was meaningful to the student.
Sounds easy, doesn’t it? Using non standardized materials to teach reading and writing requires a sound knowledge base and the ability to let the student learn from his or her mistakes. Most teachers have the first but the second is much harder—it takes time and patience to let the student control his learning. (A little bit like teaching the five year old to tie his shoelaces—the adult can do it quickly and correctly but the child needs the practice!)
The trick is to remember that as teachers, we are caralysts—our job is to provide the right environment. The learning comes from the students themselves.
Ms. S
Inclusive Summer Camp in Chennai
Question time for parents...
My friends and I are planning to run an inclusive workshop for young children this summer in Chennai. We are still ironing out the details...but we know our primary focus will be on pragmatic skills. We are putting the feelers out to gauge the interest and needs of parents.
Our hope is to have children with and without social language needs, and plan to have a program which challenges a range of abilities. Please contact me at resource4education@gmail.com to let me know if you are interested. We will send out a survey to see if our current program will serve your child's needs.
This is our first attempt at planning and running a summer camp in India and as such we plan to start small and iron out the details before we embark on an extended program. The camp will have the professional services of a special ed teacher, regular ed teacher, speech language pathologist, social worker and hopefully a developmental occupational therapist. We are working on including the services of related professionals as well.
Please contact me if you are interested.
Thank you,
Ms. S
My friends and I are planning to run an inclusive workshop for young children this summer in Chennai. We are still ironing out the details...but we know our primary focus will be on pragmatic skills. We are putting the feelers out to gauge the interest and needs of parents.
Our hope is to have children with and without social language needs, and plan to have a program which challenges a range of abilities. Please contact me at resource4education@gmail.com to let me know if you are interested. We will send out a survey to see if our current program will serve your child's needs.
This is our first attempt at planning and running a summer camp in India and as such we plan to start small and iron out the details before we embark on an extended program. The camp will have the professional services of a special ed teacher, regular ed teacher, speech language pathologist, social worker and hopefully a developmental occupational therapist. We are working on including the services of related professionals as well.
Please contact me if you are interested.
Thank you,
Ms. S
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Meaningful Materials
"Explain to me why this text book shows a white/caucasian child in the illustrations? Is there something that I am missing here?" my friend pointed to an illustration in one of the text book series.
Have you seen those advertisements for residential communities and schools with smiling 'European families'? As an advertizing gimmick it appeals to some members of our society. It's like watching Bollywood movies where the characters drive sportscars in uncongested streets (the implication is that it is in India). I would love to visit that India for a first hand expereience:)
But when the same reasoning is applied to educational materials it puzzles me. To make instruction meaningful, text books, teaching materials and classroom activities have to be adapted to our social conditions. That means we have to rewrite and recreate in the classroom.
A lot of our materials are like this-not suited to the current environment. Even if we set aside the 'European children' in our books do they even reflect the differences between our urban cities and the rural communities?
Last month a friend and I visited schools in a very rural community. When the students saw my friend (who is an American) they decided to sing only English nursery rhymes. I absolutely loved to see how proud they were of their ability to sing in English-never mind that the class 1 student and the class 5 student all sang the same rhyme:) But what struck me was how redundant that rhyme was and how it had no meaning in their environment. To give the teachers credit they were teaching something that would expand their students' knowldge base. But in reality I don't know how much it helped the children understand an alien language.
Soem schools are innovative-they give their teachers a free hand to adapt and create new materials. But others love the 'old style' versions. If we update the software on our computers continuously, shouldn't we do that with our educational materials too?
Ms. S
Have you seen those advertisements for residential communities and schools with smiling 'European families'? As an advertizing gimmick it appeals to some members of our society. It's like watching Bollywood movies where the characters drive sportscars in uncongested streets (the implication is that it is in India). I would love to visit that India for a first hand expereience:)
But when the same reasoning is applied to educational materials it puzzles me. To make instruction meaningful, text books, teaching materials and classroom activities have to be adapted to our social conditions. That means we have to rewrite and recreate in the classroom.
A lot of our materials are like this-not suited to the current environment. Even if we set aside the 'European children' in our books do they even reflect the differences between our urban cities and the rural communities?
Last month a friend and I visited schools in a very rural community. When the students saw my friend (who is an American) they decided to sing only English nursery rhymes. I absolutely loved to see how proud they were of their ability to sing in English-never mind that the class 1 student and the class 5 student all sang the same rhyme:) But what struck me was how redundant that rhyme was and how it had no meaning in their environment. To give the teachers credit they were teaching something that would expand their students' knowldge base. But in reality I don't know how much it helped the children understand an alien language.
Soem schools are innovative-they give their teachers a free hand to adapt and create new materials. But others love the 'old style' versions. If we update the software on our computers continuously, shouldn't we do that with our educational materials too?
Ms. S
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