For about a month during February and March this year, Katie London from Boston, who works in education for children with special needs, worked with parents and teachers doing training workshops to impart skills and knowledge enabling them to improve their children's education.
Katie gave two trainings at the Ministry of the Family. One focused on stages of change and one focused on motivational interviewing. The idea behind these was to offer a framework for intervening together with families rather than telling families what to do so as to better engage with their children.
Katie also gave two trainings at Estelí's public sector special education school. These trainings focused on implementing structure and behavior plans in the classrooms. Separately, Katie spent three days observing classes for children with autism and also had various conversations with parents of children with autism and with some professionals like psychologists and social workers to help them identify a few strategies to use at home.
Both parents and teachers and these other professionals were eager to share their own experiences thus enabling them to address various issues they face. This was especially useful for parents in dealing with their children at home. Parents were very open to new ways of thinking and would clearly also benefit from ongoing support such as a monthly parent group. Katie also did workshops coordinated by the Ministry of Health and at the local campus of the National Autonomous University.
We hope we will be able to develop this work begun by Katie during her visit so as to continue to improve education for children with special needs in Estelí in the future.
Katie imparted her workshop at the local university with interpreting by Jerry Aguilar
a total of over 100 people took part in the workshop with people having to listen from outside the classroom
in this workshop at Estelí's municipal health center Katie worked with interpreter Omara Hidalgo
