The present study intends to be an excursion through the last fourteen years of teaching in our professional path, as special education teachers. We had contact with very different realities and school contexts, some problematic and indeed shocking and others more pleasant and serene. Until then those scenarios were completely ignored by us as we were starting to wet our feet in this mare magnum of special education, in an area as shifting and difficult and also as rewarding as it is working with children and young people with Intellectual and Developmental Disability. Nowadays the aim which moves us is to present and share the several experiences and situations with which we have been struggling every day for a cause in which we fully believe and for which we had to face, in several occasions, though as a constructive process, our colleagues from subject councils and teacher councils, besides parents and guardians, amongst others, that believed themselves to be the authority of reason and wisdom, rather than pursuing good sense and the wellbeing of our students. In this report we will, therefore, try to analyse what it has been, over the years, special education and working with children and young people with special educational needs (SEN) from the 1st, 2nd and 3rd cycles, even though we had also accompanied, for two years, students from Seia Secondary School, who, despite their rather concerning clinical status, have strived activily and persistently to, under a special regiment, achieve access to higher education, as in fact, to our delight, happened with two of those students. It is also a part of this report to briefly articulate the most relevant obstacles and problems that we have faced, our search for solutions and even the abolishment of some problems, intending to obliterate the barriers that, even today, frequently obstruct and impede our purpose. The integration and inclusion of students with special educational needs in an ordinary educative structure was our first concern. With determination, we demanded from and for these students education and mutual respect; we have appealed to the compliance and reinforcement of the rules, the duties and the rights of children and young people; we have promoted their socialization and interaction with the educational community, in general, preventing or ending any situation that may affect their physical or mental health. Another purpose that guided this intervention was to withstand, whenever possible, at the end of their compulsory education, those young people were left to their own devices. However, finding job opportunities to young people with SEN was, according to the voxpopuli, “like finding a needle in a haystack”. So, in vain, we addressed for several possible aids. Without fading, we pursued and found, at Viseu’s APPACDM, a safe haven, that confided us with professional training courses and posterior job placement for students that finished schooling, and with pre-professional activities for those who followed a functional-oriented curriculum, under protocols. We will also reflect and mention monitored behaviors both from the society and the educational community (parents/guardians, operational assistants, students, educators and teachers), while facing these students’ problems, as promoters of inclusion or antagonists. Briefly, and “because no stomach gets satisfied only with good words”, we have argued at school, in defense of the rights of our children and young people with some deficit or handicap, which presents them as different from the rest of the students considered as normal. Nevertheless, believing that the fortune favours the bold, according to the voxpopuli, we have tried to be and to make the difference towards change, untying the knots and pursuing the path towards the inclusion and equality as promulgated by the Declaration of Salamanca. Obviously, all this presentation will be consolidated with bibliographical research that theoretically bases this work.
| Date of Award | 29 Oct 2013 |
|---|
| Original language | Portuguese |
|---|
| Awarding Institution | - Universidade Católica Portuguesa
|
|---|
| Supervisor | Paulo Pereira (Supervisor) |
|---|