Just think what would happen if teachers said things like "you can't read" (happened to me, actually), "you can't do maths" (people do get that idea, don't they?). No-one seems to think of special needs in singing (or PE), do they?

The "or PE") bit in Penny's post got me reminded about a situation I experienced many years ago. I ran school camps full time and this particular camp concentrated on dealing with group dynamics and novel approaches to learning, rather than the usual run of PE-based Outdoor Ed. Because of our approach we received a grant to have some "Mildly-" and "Moderately retarded" (the "official" definitions, not mine) adolescents and young adults for a week in summer, followed by a week the following summer.

Most had some motor disability which impeded their progress around the place (we were in an Oz bush setting) but we got up to all sorts of mischief, even to the extent of towing one kid in a wheelchair behind the LandRover up a stretch of goat track. Great fun.

We couldn't take them to our usual swim location as the river was flowing and too deep for this lot, so we took them to a secluded pool in a creek. Trouble was, the nice 'beach' for this pool was at the far end from the 4WD access track (hence the towing bit) and the only way to get to the beach was to traverse about 100m of rounded and jumbled boulders ranging from pebbles to about 1m diameter.

After considerable thought, we decided to have a go. It was agonising, watching these disabled people gritting their teeth, knuckling down to doing it and helping each other (with our help as well, of course); it took them more than 3/4 of an hour just to traverse this 100m. But once they were in the water, they were like fish! Every one of them had been in a serious hydrotherapy program for yonks and the water was almost their native element. The return trip was only marginally quicker.

The following summer we made sure we incorporated another visit to this pool in the program; the whole lot of them insisted on it. What I found fascinating was the fact that, although there was no appreciable improvement in their motor skills around the camp itself, when it came to traversing this boulder field to get to the beach (and thus into the water), they were across it in about ten minutes!

It struck me that nobody had bothered, in their motor skills program, to teach them how to walk. All the physio had been directed through hydrotherapy so they were terrific in the water, but it was assumed they would always be handicapped 'on land' so only minimal concentration was put into that part of their program. At Steiglitz, they wanted into the pool so badly that they were prepared to overcome a formidable barrier and had learned some significant motor skills on the way. This hadn't been noticed, let alone capitalised upon during the year, until after the repeat visit. At this time it was certainly noticed and their carers changed their physio routines after that. They also changed their approach in the rest of the institution, as well.

For me, it reinforced my view that it's best to start with an assumption that "anything is achievable", it's just a matter of working at it.

Go, skip!

Cheers, Rowan