Category Archives: 1.3 Trust & Respect

Monday Meetings

This morning Max and I had two important meetings to help us finish creating the Multi-Sensory story (MSS) for the child that we are working with. The first meeting was at the primary school of the child who is transitioning and the second was at the high school that she is moving to. Both meetings were important but for different reasons. The one at the primary school was our first meeting of the day and this was when we got to meet the child for the first time. It was great to see how she interacts with al of the teachers and how she reacts when her teachers sing to her. The enjoyment that she got from them singing to her while she shook a maraca showed us that we needed to have a song in her story so that she can shake her maraca at the same time. When she is being sung to her full attention is on the song and the person singing it. Meaning if a song is at the start of her story she will be paying attention to the voice for what is coming next. To keep her attention we are also going to have a sing-song repeated line throughout the story.

The primary schools main concern with the transition was that the noise of all of the other pupils within the high school would be bothersome as in her primary school she is in the same room with five pupils and five teachers most of her day. Even though, we did not think it would be a big concern, as she is going to be in a very quiet part of the school all day, we took their concerns on board and addressed it when we got to the high school.

As we had already been at the high school for a meeting we were only really going there to briefly get the recordings that we needed for her story and to speak to one of the ASN teachers  about what he thought best for the MSS, the transition and to let him know of the primary schools concerns. He agreed that she would not hear the sounds of the other children much but showed us the best place to capture these sounds so we could let her hear them anyway. We spoke to him about what sounds would be the most different and unusual for her. The most distinct noise was the school bell as it was not something that she was use to hearing. We made sure to record this noise of the bell as well as the noise of the children when they were moving between classes since that was the primary schools main concern. We also recorded the voices of the teachers that would be working with the child so that she could get use to them recognised who each person was. One of the ASN teachers is male. The child has never had a male teacher work with her. This means that this will be something very different for her. We made sure to record his voice too and incorporate it into the multi-sensory story. This will help her get use to his voice before she goes to the high school and become even more familiar to her through the transition.

These meetings have been very important to us being able to make the multi-sensory story as helpful as it can be in the child’s transition. They were also important for finding out what each schools wants from the story and what concerns they each have about the child’s transition.

Throughout both of these meetings I had to be professional as well as remember that I was representing PAMIS at these schools. These are skills that are always useful to contiously develop for now and when I will fully qualified as I will need to be professional at all times.

Important Qualities of a Teacher.

When looking at professionalism I feel like compassion is an important characteristic for teachers to have. Compassion is helping someone that is struggling or suffering. This is important for a teacher as they need to constantly be helping children who may be suffering. Teachers may also need to be compassionate towards parents or guardians if anything is going on out with the school environment.

Patience is another hugely important quality that teachers need. When working with children, patience is something that you need as children may not pick up ides and concept that you are teaching as quick as adults would. Children can get something wrong several times over, make a mess when doing art projects or playing. Teachers need patience to just keep calm in these situations and not get angry with the children but teach them what they need to do.

Another quality that I find important in teaching is fairness. Children come from all different backgrounds and have different skill levels. A teacher needs to be a fair person and treat all children the same. A good teacher cannot treat children differently because of where they come from or how clever they are. A lot of the time teachers can be seen as not being fair but this isn’t the case. All children learn differently so sometimes you have to teach children differently to combat this but at the same time you are still teaching children fairly. Fairness when disciplining children is also important as teachers cannot be seen as favoring one child over another.

In my opinion, tolerance is another important characteristic that teachers need. Teachers need to be able to tolerate a lot from all angles. Teachers may need to tolerate abuse from parents or guardians on the way they are teaching or how they may think you are doing something wrong. A teacher needs to be professional in these situations and tolerate what the parent say. It does not mean the teacher needs to do what the parent is telling them but they need to be able to tolerate the criticism but be confident in your teaching style.

 Lastly, honesty is an important quality for teachers to have. An honest teacher is a great teacher. Children do not benefit from a teacher that lies about what they are good at. A teacher needs to be honest about what their pupils are good and bad at. If a teacher was not honest then children would not know what they need to work on and what they are good at. On the other hand, teachers also need to be careful with honesty and make sure that they are not brutally honest and that they do not offend anyone.