Fifty members attended our last PD on Wednesday February 2nd.

Many thanks to Hannah Brown and Kaitlyn Bourke's presentation of ADHD and Autism Spectrum Disorder. We were impressed by their presentation which greatly added to our understanding and empathy for these children in our care.

Hannah and Kaitlyn, from SCOPE in Shepparton, effectively engaged us in observing their opening "classroom" with lots of distracting elements. This set the scene for us understanding how these special children sense the goings on in our classes. (We feel they are calm and organised. They see, hear, and sense so many other distracing elements.)

The explanations and discussions that followed were professionally delivered. It was helpful that the ladies made us feel compfortable enough to ask questions as the sessions progressed and this all added to us understanding and clarifying points of consideration.

Later our member Michelle Harmer delivered a chaotic 'evacuation' with lots of quick decisions needing to be made as we role played leaving our homes and countries. Again another chance to become empathetic for the history that the refugee families have endured.

There were also lots of other interesting facts presented about the refugee children and their families who are now living locally and who attend many of the school we teach in. We came to realise that there are so may aspects of their cultures and the different groups that the families belong to which have enormous implications for these special students' needs in our classrooms.

Many thanks to Michelle for the preparation she put into this session. By now all members should have a copy emailed to them covering all of this interesting information.

Our next day is April 14th. This is a change to our usual procedure as it will be held during the first week of the next holiday break (and not the second week) because Easter occurs during the second week.
(Please see the relevant information in the collumn to the left.)

posted by Wendy