Two months ago, I was invited by Skola Helen Keller (SKH) to share some reflections with the parents of children with sensory disabilities. The SHK mission statement declares that the school’s purpose is that of offering quality educational services to children suffering from sensory and/or multiple disabilities that will lead each child to reach his/her potential. This is achieved in a caring milieu, which is supportive of the child’s home culture, way of communication and the conventional school s/he are attending.
Helen Adams Keller, the American author, political activist and lecturer, who was the first deaf-blind person to obtain a Bachelor of Arts degree, said with great conviction and tremendous courage: “Self-pity is our worst enemy and if we yield to it, we can never do anything good in the world”. When visiting the SKH school, which currently caters for 36 students, I noticed the living miracle of actively combating self-pity by creatively, constructively, and, most of all, caringly responding to the needs of students with sensory disabilities. The school’s specialised resources, particularly the assessment room, the clinic, the computer lab, the gym, and the life skills, multi-sensory, physiotherapy, rooms together with the resource room, soft play room, and speech therapy room, show the constant and individual care students with sensory disabilities are given at SHK.
The latter has a school-based curriculum, which mainly uses a multi-sensorial style of educating. In certain cases, the guidelines of the National Minimum Curriculum are closely adhered to.
Programmes are drawn up to answer each student’s needs both within the school as well as in the peripatetic service. Personal Education Programmes are designed with the inclusion of all education partners, that is, parents together with other professionals.
The varied services the school provides include the visiting students’ programme, the specialized services, the programme for Post Secondary Students and the peripatetic service for the deaf.
The school has made an incredible effort to portray itself as a centre of excellence for the education students with sensory disabilities.
The school is totally devoted to deliver the students’ education in an inclusive environment and approach. Furthermore, SHK provides a programme intended for children with sensory disability who attend conventional schools. These students are offered the possibility of attending SHK from time to time.
SKH also offers the specialised services of an educational audiologist, a nurse, physiotherapists, speech and language pathologist, teacher of the blind and teachers of the deaf. Moreover, it provides a peripatetic staff for art/craft, drama, music, physical education and transition programme.
The school gives the chance to sensory impaired students who, after finishing secondary schooling, want to achieve added MATSEC certification or improve their literacy and numeracy capabilities. At present, the programme caters for elementary literacy and numeracy as well as any other subject which in the recent past incorporated MATSEC ‘O’ level courses for Maltese, English, Technical Design, Home Economics, Art, ECDL accreditation and Autocad familiarisation.
Finally, SKH offers a peripatetic service for children with a hearing impairment from pre-school to post-secondary level. This service is given by teachers of the deaf who visit the children’s home and conventional state, church and independent schools on a regular basis.
The service intends to boost cooperation with hearing impaired children, their families and other professional agencies that meet with the children regularly.
From the talk and the open discussion that ensued, there was unanimous consensus on the hidden and resourceful potential of every person with disability. Each child, in his/her own mode of being and acting, is an immense resource of love to be received and freely given back. Their way of loving manifests and radiates God’s own unconditional manner of lovingly relating with us, his beloved children. Thus, every student at SKH is God’s gift to the world and to the people around them since s/he offers and elicits loving care.
Their physical and mental disabilities act as a powerful effective medicine to liberate people from their own selfishness.
Every person with a disability harbours the ability (of loving) beyond any disability.
Fr Mario Attard OFM Cap