Aboom Methodist Special Needs School

Because I recently realized I haven't included anything about the project I'm doing here with ProGhana, I decided I'd finally post something regarding the Aboom Methodist Special Needs School.

First things first...

Sadly, children with disabilities are severely looked down upon here in Ghana. Even worse, many Ghanaians see having a child with special need as a punishment from God. For these reasons, as well as limited resources regarding schooling in general, children with disabilities are rarely given a chance to develop with their peers and it is even more rare that these children are given the opportunity to attend a school that employees teachers specifically trained in special education. The Aboom Methodist School for children with special needs is one of the first of its kind and is only two years old!

Thankfully, the children with special needs living in Cape Coast now have somewhere to go and learn.

The good old Aboom Methodist School for Children with Special Needs

There are 30 pupils at the 3 room school, ranging in age from about 5 to 17 and ranging in disabilities from autism and cerebral palsy to a simple delay in speech. The children are absolutely wonderful and greeted me with open arms from the second I walked in.

With ProGhana's help, my main mission during my month in Ghana will be to help facilitate a learning environment that is conducive to each student reaching his or her fullest potential. I'll be mostly doing anything the teachers ask of me, as well as simply providing one on one time with students I feel will benefit it the most.

The first week I mainly tried to build rapport with the children in the younger classroom while also assisting the teacher in keeping the children on task. The best days so far seem to be when math is being taught because addition is quite simple to explain. So far we've used bottlecaps and rocks from right outside the door to help illustrate the idea of adding two numbers together.

Here the students gather rocks for their math lesson

Because my exact role is sort of unclear, I have taken on several.

1. I've taken a page out of my older sister's book and have lead the physical education portion, including a relay race activity that helped teach them to wait in line and to follow instructions and a sweet beach ball passing game that got several students to yell out the name of who they would pass it to, in order to help with vocalization.

Here we are with the beach ball. Paul (the one with the hood on) is always smiling and is one of the students I spend the most time with. So far I have taught him to say "go" when he wants me to push him around really fast and "up" when he is slouching and wants to be repositioned.

2. For those of you that know I have no rhythm, I have surprisingly been able to lead a drumming session.

The two boys pictured above are best buds and are always together. One day, when the middle boy didn't show up and the other was feeling somewhat bored, he decided to walk home. We had no idea where he had went and we checked all over. Sure enough, we phoned his father and he confirmed that he had made it home safely . No one seemed too bothered by it so I guess it happens quite often.

3. Shoe tying! I'm not sure why but all of the children come to me or the Japanese volunteer when they need help tying their shoes. It's fun though, except when they're all slobbery...

This little guy is another one I spend a lot of time with. He's always smiling and loves to play soccer with me during our free time. Luckily, his laces were not slobbery when this picture was taken.

4. Stretch! Although I didn't lead it, I did help one of the teachers get the children to stretch. It was a really fun time seeing how flexible a lot of the kids were and how flexible I'm not. They tried to help me touch my toes but I think I ended up pulling something instead...

Stretch 1 2 3 4

5. Making something out of what seems like nothing. At the end of the day, when all the teachers are absolutely pooped, I seem to be the most useful. There are a couple of children that stay late because they live too far and need a ride home. Because I've already tried every trick in my book at this point in the day, I have to get super creative. When the soccer ball has lost its appeal and the chalkboard is filled with numbers and letters, I get desperate. One day I found two old car tires under a table and started rolling them around. 10 minutes later, we had two lines going and they were taking turns and communicating the most I've seen for some of them.

Here we are rolling the tire back and forth at the end of the day.

I'm currently working on an album with more pictures from the school but due to heavy rainfall and high winds, the internet has been down for a while. Stay tuned!