Outside the Comfort Zone, Steep learning Curve and other cliches

Volunteers with VSO are warned throughout training and preparation that once in placement they will be stretching their skills and talents as never previously imagined.

Last week was my initiation.

As a logical follow up to the HIV and AIDS Awareness training last month for teachers in SEN schools, which I observed and was involved in, model lessons are now to be delivered to pupils. The first group was to be from a school for pupils with hearing impairments. And so with minimal time available, Allen, a US Peace Corps volunteer and I put together Plans A, B and C.

The shared  planning was somewhat tricky and occasionally unintentionally amusing. Allen, proficient in sign language, a specialist teacher of pupils with hearing impairments and himself deaf from birth, had never taught sex education. I had never worked with children with no hearing. Together we made a sort of complete teacher. Monty, my signing interpreter gave me some helpful hints and tips.

Allen (left), Monty (right) and I explaining changes which take place at puberty.

The picture shows the electronic images of the specially prepared posters projected onto the white board. The posters incorporate photographs of Guyanese signers demonstrating the signing for each body part labelled.

Pupils travelled by minibus in groups of 25 to the National Training Centre, which is similar to our Teachers' Centres. Their ages ranged from 8 to 16, with corresponding degrees of prior knowledge and greater willingness to participate with growing maturity.

The following day we travelled a short distance out of Georgetown to an SEN unit within a mainstream school and met with new challenges. This time we taught a mixed class, with 12 pupils with hearing impairments aged 8-12, and another 13 with various learning difficulties, aged  11-15. On a day to day basis the pupils are in two separate classes within one larger room, divided into two by a large blackboard mounted on a wooden frame. This was moved to one end and would have acted as our screen, but the technology failed us and we switched to Plan B, the low- tech option. As there were three of us and the two classroom teachers, we were able to prompt and support the varying needs of the pupils when they worked in groups and individually.

(Picture will be posted on next entry)

This week I move on and with adaptations and some inventive use of Play Do, will work with classes at two "Low Vision" units. In Guyana, there are books which form part of a literacy reading scheme specifically produced for Caribbean schools which include titles which help carry the HIV and AIDS awareness message, both factually and within the social context. A couple of these have been selected and reproduced as sets in Braille, and will form a part of my lesson. The posters we had been using have been sent to be "Matrix" formatted, a process which converts the visual outlines of a diagram to tactile surfaces. I have also taken advice from Roy, himself blind since the age of 15 and now one of the few Braille teachers in Guyana.

And so "the journey" continues.