Working at Crystal Bay Special Education Centre as a co-op student has been a rewarding yet challenging personal experience for me. I work with developmentally delayed children ranging in ages from 12 to 17. Most of the time, I come to work to be greeted by cute smiling faces, ready to learn or to play!
While working as a co-op student, I have learned a lot about children, parents and the children’s education. I also learned about motivation, success and failure. It has been a wonderful job experience that I look forward to doing over the period of the next three months. This experience has shown me that I want to become a teacher of special needs children.
I deal with special needs children who have behavioural problems, learning difficulties, autism, speech defects, and deafness. I do different activities every day. For example; on Wednesdays, we go swimming at Clifford Bowie, swimming is therapy for these children. It allows them to use their legs or their arms if they have trouble walking or holding. On Thursdays, I go to the Nepean National Equestrian Park where I supervise two children on horses and walk along the horse to make sure that each child is properly balanced on the saddle. On Fridays, we go on field trips which varies on the students - they are usually given ideas and when they all agree on what it is they would like to do, we go to the place of their choice. It's quite challenging but at the same time, it's a great learning experience because you learn more of how to handle a child hands on when they are throwing a temper tantrum, having an episode or are just misbehaving because they are not in a good mood.
Working with these kids who have special needs have taught me about many important aspects about life in general. I understand more about the difficulties about certain sections of my future career, or what parents or guardians face in their everyday lives and by doing so, I gain a better understanding of how I can help improve...