We're All Special

Ageing Ethiopian Rasta Mrs R returned to her home 18 months ago after nearly a 30 year stint in LA where she also allegedly picked up her qualifications. She has taken over the Special Needs department and, like all the new Heads, has found herself starting afresh due to lack of any coherence or legacy whatsoever.

She is the only teacher operating between both Primary and Secondary campuses. Many of the teachers lack any awareness of what Special Needs entails, and i have requested Mrs R to provide three INSETs per term to get them up to speed. We have split the Wednesday Staff Meetings where i have “performed” handwriting, phonics, spelling and most recently Writing Assessment training. If they sounds rather dull to you, compared to Mrs R reading out Advanced Neuro - Psychological textbooks, i am positively an orgasm on very long legs.

We have now seen influx of students on a wide range of the autistic spectrum, with moderate and above students receiving one-on-one support in classrooms throughout the school day. If it were up to Mrs R all would have been admitted immediately, However i have insisted on vetting these students and in a few cases trialling them. I have been heart-broken to turn away three very severely handicapped students with dangerously wild behavioural traits.

The stigma of children with learning difficulties in Ethiopia is harsh to say the least, and there are no options of schooling for these kids. I did invite the rejected students to enrol in our Extra Curricular Activities programme but the families remain uncontactable.

Even amongst our parent body - so-called “educated” and “internationally minded”, i am told of parents trying to literally beat out autism and other learning disabilities from their child and resorted to “magic” and “witch-craft” in the attempt to cure them. One of my student's was repeatedly whipped by branches of an auspicious tree for hours on end.

Two parents requested to move their children out of a class to “avoid” Kaleb, a delightful Somali boy with quite severe learning difficulties, as well as a cleft pallet. My response was curt to say the least.

Three of my students are teenagers – the oldest being a 17 year old boy in our Grade 4 class. He towers over all my other students and i presume is the only male student to have pubic hair in the school. 

 I have to be weary of Hawi – she is very affectionate to me and wants to hug me like the young ‘uns,  but at 15, she has breasts and it might not look right.

It's taken a while, but Mrs R is adjusting to working life in Ethiopia again.