Dygtige!

Hej! Sorry I haven't updated in a couple days...this whole traveling across the city thing can get a little exhausting. Especially when the road signs are a little discrete and getting lost is extremely easy to do. But anyway, I basically love my practicum site. I have been working with some pretty amazing people and kids for the past three days. I'm definitely going to take some pictures when I go back, the only problem is that isn't for another week and a half. Anyway, here's a not-so-quick bit of info about my practicum site. 

I'm working with two pedagogues named Susan and Mikhel. They are outstanding. In the danish education system, two types of people are in charge of the care and education of the children--teachers and pedagogues. From the best of my understanding (and since there's no wikipedia definition (!?!?!?), I'll have to explain it), teachers are mostly responsible for the academic end of things whereas pedagogues are responsible for more of the whole wellbeing of the child. In the case of my program--which is an afterschool program where there are no teachers, only pedagogues--the pedagogues are primarily responsible for providing the children with situations that will enrich their social and self-help skills. It's really interesting, but very complicated. I don't quite understand the whole gist of things despite my spending 10 hours in this program over the span of this week. In a way these two people serve as counselors for the children, working with both the students and the parents, but additionally they are rehabilitation technicians, teaching them life skills. Fortunately, Susan is british (although she has been in Denmark for 18 years), so the two of us can carry on quite well in English! It's very helpful because she is always very careful to tune me in to everything that is going on. 

So anyway...Susan and Mikhel are awesome. The kids are pretty great, too. I'm pretty sure that all of them have an autism diagnosis, technically, but only one seems to ONLY have autism. This one particular child is 18 and he's really funny. He definitely only has the mental capacity of an 8 or 9 year old, but he certainly has the 18 year old body. It's pretty cool watching him because I can see his mind working. I can also see his lack of social skills and strange behaviors that are key to an autism diagnosis. I also can tell that his speech is a little off, despite my major language barrier. Although this new friend of mine has autism, we've bonded. Today we had some discourse--mostly he was speaking to me in Danish and I was nodding and saying ja and dygtige, very clever. Nonetheless we've shared several laughs and lots of thumbs-up and high-5s. Yesterday, though, he told Susan that he trusts me and knows that I want what is best for him. That's huge! Susan thinks that is says a lot about me because he often has a very difficult time with strangers. 

While this afterschool program is QUITE different from the type of work I've done with children with autism, there are a few similarities. The children have several tasks (mostly social or motor-skills oriented) that they must accomplish--perhaps not every day, but at least one a week. Also, the morning teachers and afternoon pedagogues fill out little summaries of the day in a log book. The best similarity I've seen thus far, though, is that in this Danish school, all the kids use PECS. PECS (Picture Exchange Communication System) is a communication system that we use with a couple of our kids in the Meredith Autism Program. It involves the children having little image-cards that serve as choices for activities or food, and the child hands his or her choice to whomever is working with him or her as a means of communication. The images are all the same for the Danish PECS cards, but the label at the bottom is, of course, written in Danish. It was neat to have a little piece of home at this school! I'm really loving being there, and I'm going to try to work out my schedule so that I can go back and put in some extra hours even once I am finished with my Child Development class. It looks like my Psych class only meets Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings, so that should give me a pretty ample amount of time to share at the Fritidshjemmet. 

Anyway, that's probably enough of an information overload for one day, so I'll finish up. Tomorrow I'm heading to Kullen, Sweden (which I can't quite locate on a map) to do some rockclimbing and Sunday I'm going to Legoland for some fun times, so definitely be on the lookout for lots of fun pictures!

Hej Hej!