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After enduring a traumatic brain injury, it is quite certain that the therapy needed for an individual goes far beyond what the hospital offers. A
child’s education is the continuation of his or her rehabilitation. What
factors lead toward creating an optimal educational experience for a child
who is post-head trauma? As the child needs to adapt from the hospital to school environment, a fluid transition acts in easing the changes, and develops a continuity in the rehabilitation and educational processes. As I see it, for these children, the highest reaching educational processes are built on the edification of self-confidence.
Transition
Being post-brain trauma, a child is likely to have a greater flow of cognitive
input and be less adaptive to changes, thus easing the transition from rehabilitative culture to the educational environment should be a prime interest of therapists and educators. The school should be notified of the child’s presence in the rehabilitation hospital as soon as the child enters the facility. In the weeks to come, a member of the hospital’s transition staff should be sent to the child’s original school (or the school chosen for the child’s return), to teach the administration and educators about traumatic brain injury, and appropriate teaching strategies, or to give suggestions regarding formulating strategies. This interaction initiates an interdisciplinary relationship. This communicative relationship should be maintained as long as a need remains. Teachers should feel free to call the rehabilitative staff to find out pertinent information about their student, and to receive further suggestions regarding appropriate teaching strategies.
When returning to school, it may be most comforting for the child, if a therapist from the hospital (i.e. one who has established a close bond with the child, by working with her/him daily) would accompany him or her through the transition back into school and the processes thereof. This would serve as a bridge between the environments of the hospital and the school, cushioning her/him from any shocks.
If it is permissible to the child, the therapist could facilitate peer education so that the children can have an idea what difficulties may be expected, and what types of performance not to expect of the child. The therapist then can approach telling the children ways they can help the brain injured child, and that sometimes he should be left alone to work things out for himself. Enlisting the children’s cooperative efforts could be a significant aid in avoiding negative psychosocial reactions, and encouraging the child’s integration into the school.
Schooling
An educational program for brain injured children must be responsive; it must accommodate to the specific needs of the children. Just as the children are taught to adapt, so the program has to be flexible and ready to adapt. Actually, the children’s ability to adapt is modeled by their teachers.
Educators, therapists, students and families need to work together as a team. What is necessary for teaching strategies to take root is to be reminded of important cues around the clock, hence the importance of therapist, teacher and family relations. The child should carry a notebook for parents, teachers, therapists, and student to communicate about needs, improvements, etcetera, so all can keep updated about what is currently pertinent for the child. (a technique utilized by Stakeholders and Collaborative Communication), (Savage, Wolcott, 1994).
An educational program designed for brain injured children should incorporate therapists in order to create a consistency from the rehab to the school.
Having assistants and/or therapists available at the school also helps ease the responsibilities of the overly burdened parents, such as transportation.
Self Confidence and Creative Rehabilitation
For these children, one of the issues I put the greatest importance on is self confidence, for if a child believes in herself more today than yesterday, then she unlocks many doors with her own initiative. Creativity is an essential tool for encouraging self-confidence. It enables a teacher to be able to utilize a child’s thirst for art as a motivating force in rehabilitation.
Creative activities provide pleasurable social and recreational activities. A teacher can facilitate group artwork in a manner of parallel play (i.e. in which children have their own projects, but use each other as models), or a teacher can facilitate a group project, where each student works together. In working with brain injured students, this process of creating a piece of art together must not be forced, but treated gently. The child is the ultimate decision maker regarding how much sharing s/he will allow of him or herself. Psychosocial improvement is easily facilitated through sharing fun.
Teachers should arrange a significant portion of the content of class, to gravitate around the children’s interests. S/he can thereby increase the likelihood of keeping the children’s attention. If children are interested in painting, for example, this could be used in teaching children new vocabulary. It is my observation that children have more of a tendency to store things in their long-term memory, when they are in the act of creating (i.e. incidental learning is very effective in the creative process).
While the children are independently participating in craftwork, a teacher can stalk the children’s creative process.
She can take notice of each child’s strengths as well as weaknesses, and in the future, arrange artistic activities that would enhance each child’s strengths.
When significant art projects, or outings are planned, family members are invited to participate. If the teacher is arranging an art project that will encourage a certain student’s strengths, he or she may want to call that child’s family and invite them to participate in class that day as this will serve to edify the student’s sense
of self. (Savage, Wolcott, 1994)
Philosophy
When picturing the education of children who have sustained a brain injury, one should envision working toward a balance of the right and left hemisphere’s processes (i.e. the synthesizing of linear-analytic or logical
functions and more gestalt-like or whole processing-dealing with images, emotion & intuition). I believe a person who approaches teaching in an imaginative and intelligent manner can do this. Such teaching would not consist of abandoning cognitive instruction to artistic development; it would involve flavoring rote learning with creative seasoning. Children respond with wondrous enthusiasm when taught in a creative manner; the idea is to use creativity to inspire a thirst for knowledge.
I see the interweaving of these qualities as crucial, for we receive sustenance from both sides of the brain. An education designed to integrate these aspects of self would seek a balance in creative work and in academia. Children would learn to problem solve in an inventive manner, allowing for the fullest employment of the mind. For those with head injury, this would lead to developing the ability to self-strategize and to being better able to compensate for one’s challenges. This creative paradigm of education will cultivate a sense of balance and resourcefulness in the development of our young.
Savage, R.C.,and Wolcott,G.F., (Eds.) . (1994) . Educational Dimensions of Acquired Brain
Injury. Austin, Texas: PRO-ED 279-81.
Pollack, I., Reestablishing an Acceptable Sense of Self: The Characteristics of an Effective Brain Injury Rehabilitation Program. In R.C. Savage & G.F. Woolcott (Eds.),
Educational Dimensions of Acquired Brain Injury. (pp.312-316) . Austin, Texas: PRO-ED .
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