Agency teaching special needs primary children in Work

Not a lot to this one, but it was in my list, so write it I will!

The school was a new one set up to work with children with a range of disabilities, although the majority were on the autistic spectrum disorder.

As I was only supply, I didn’t have to plan lessons or write learning plans, just execute other people’s. I was teaching “English” which is really a very nice way of saying that I was trying to get the children to read and occasionally to write. Any understanding was a bonus.

Part and parcel of working in a very small school was joining in everything else. I dug for treasure with pupils, walked a mile round and round a muddy field on a sponsored walk (I’m sure I walked well over a mile with the extra ground coverage I did in order to shepherd children back into the group), broke up several fights, had to explain to a parent how their child’s glasses got snapped in half, joined in role-play (lego mostly) and sang ‘Happy Birthday’ in Makaton.

The children were remarkably tolerant of each other although any of them could flip at any time. One little cutie, who really struggled, never did learn to call his fellow pupil by his given name - Oscar. He insisted on calling him “Oksar” and it sounded really cute when he said it in his little piping voice. It was a class full of allergies too. This one can’t eat dairy, that one is gluten intolerant, the lad in the corner mustn’t have any sweets (yeah, right!) and two or three of them said they mustn’t eat various things. I’m not sure I believed the one who said he was allergic to vegetables.

I was there a month, then back to unemployment. A while later, the agency called me and said the school had asked if I could go back and cover again. By that time I had got my current job so had to turn them down. But it was nice to be asked for :).