After our second week at the school we meet Hanna, the educator responsible for the class. The importance of these reflection meetings is enormous. We get a chance to gain a deeper understanding and knowledge of the students’ situation and the school’s challenges. This overall picture that the educators can share with us together with our experiences of actually meeting the students in the performance space several times, leads us further in the development process of this format where the approach to the students in the encounter is crucial.

Being one step ahead as an educator is something Hanna returns to in order to create a sense of security for the students, as well as having the possibility to adapt not only based on the day’s condition, but rather “minute condition” as Hanna puts it. There are many small decisions that the educators constantly need to make. Small decisions in the moment but which can become decisive for the students’ well-being and experience. Impressions, demands, sensitivity to certain moods, sounds or the intensity of body language can be triggers for some students. Unexpected things constantly arise that educators as well as students need to relate to.

In relation to the process One Pupil – One World of Impressions and our meetings with the students this week the conversation turns toward the importance of preparation which can look and be understood in different ways, temporal flexibility as well as experiences that can offer something other than the demands that school, and in a broader sense also society, often place on students.

Hanna says:

R is so happy about you. It is so nice that you have come several times. It is a pattern that she needs a few times to understand the concept and find some kind of calm and that it can be fun with a new thing. She needs a few times to get used to it.

We call it big snoezelen when you come so that she understands that you are coming. This morning she became very happy. You are big snoezelen. We have a small room with bubble tubes. R loves that room. So when you came the first time I said that now we are going to big snoezelen. Then she thinks it is fun. So I said this morning that big snoezelen would come. Then she became very excited.

We ask Hanna what type of preparation she thinks works best for the students since it can be so individual. We have sent pictures and films. Anything more that can create the best conditions for the students’ experience? Hanna returns to the importance of time and repetition:

When one thinks about preparation one thinks about before you are here. But preparation for R is also that you are here two times and she gets a small taste and then the third time she can really have a very lovely experience for several hours with you. That is also a type of preparation. Or getting used to it.

In the conversation we direct the focus toward another student where both time and place are crucial in order to have a chance to reach him. This week we made an attempt in the morning to meet the student in the corridor to see if he might consider following us into the room we had prepared. Several moments of contact arose but the student also showed signs of worry. In the afternoon we instead chose to be in the student’s classroom, the room with the place on the sofa where the student feels safe and preferably does not want to leave.

Hanna reflects:

It is so good with your concept that you are here for so many hours. I am very grateful that you are here for so long, because the students have very different processing times. P has a very long processing time. He can sit with his plate of food for half an hour before he starts eating it, even if he likes it and it is the same food as yesterday. It takes him a very long time to process what is happening and analyze it and think about what he wants to do and then act. And then it is so nice that he gets such a long time and also gets to be a little worried in the beginning and then settle into it. I think it benefits him a lot to go from worried to very very happy. Not just worried to accepting but that he is allowed to continue for that long and process it for that long so that he can really enjoy the experience afterwards. And I think it takes him two hours.

Going into the classroom Hanna thinks was a very good decision in relation to P since it can also be a balance when it comes to how much worry the student is exposed to before it tips over.

 We talk about what happened during these two hours with the student in his classroom and about different forms of communication and creating contact. Different materials could be exchanged with each other in a shared interaction but the qualities and dynamics of the materials could also be explored. Here we could follow the student’s rhythm in a doing and imitating together where the student had the possibility to initiate a movement that we tried to continue but could also follow to an ending when the student chose to stop.

Hanna continues:

It is a very nice way to find interaction with P and it becomes a very nice communication with you. I also think that it is very important, because very often these students encounter forced communication. It can sometimes be for teaching purposes but often it is that adults come and communicate that now we will do this or point to this picture and then you will get what you want. That it is constantly other people who initiate the communication. I also think that it is very nice with this concept that it is the students who are allowed to initiate the interaction. That it is not a forced interaction.

We continue by saying that in adapted school we sometimes meet staff who want the students to feel the materials, but that it is something we try to redirect in order not to force a response.

Hanna adds:

The material is a path to interaction. The cool thing is not that you touch a cool object but that you do it together. The whole concept is not about touching. It is about interaction. That is the whole purpose I think.

The importance of a lack of demands in communication leads us further in the conversation and to the meeting with another student during the week. Hanna was present when we met O:

I can really appreciate that we have different approaches in how we meet the students. You have the luxury of being able to meet them in such a demand-free way and really follow them in that way. It is so important that the students get to experience that type of truly demand-free and creative environment. Then it is also important that we who usually place demands on the students step back in that situation so that the students really get that experience fully.

Hanna continues about her own reflections and choices in the moment when O begins pulling out drawers in the room (beyond what we had imagined as the staged room):

I notice with O that he looks up at me and wants to know: Is this okay? He took a drawer. Then he threw a glance at me. Took another one. Threw a glance. At first I thought: Should I redirect this? I started to do it a little but then I hold myself and thought no, I actually do not want to do that because he needs to be allowed to play in this way. But it was very clear that he looked at me, partly because he thinks it is fun to provoke me but also because I think he wants confirmation. Is this super crazy or? Because we must have that relationship where we have a bit more demands on the students. I think it would be difficult for O to understand that sometimes when he is with me you are allowed to pour out all the drawers and sometimes when you are with me you are not allowed to do that. So we usually have the rule that you should not pour out all the drawers. There you can have that relationship that when you are with you then you can step on things, tear things apart, throw things. It is really luxurious. And very very important.

When it comes to different expectations and different demands Hanna reflects further about the student group from a broader perspective and the different environments, contexts and relationships that the students are part of. The students are in lower secondary school – an age when many changes take place that can also affect the students’ well-being and behaviour drastically. There are examples of students in adapted school who at this age no longer want to go outside and do not come to school.

Hanna:

They are in lower secondary school this group. They are teenagers. There are many who function worse at home than they do here. I think it is because they are teenagers. They should resist, not listen to their mother. But at school you are a bit more focused. Many times parents call and say: Can you please teach them this because it does not work at home? And I say: “Oh, but they have done that here for a year.” School is an environment with much much higher demands than the home environment. I think that is how it should be. When you are a teenager you should not listen to your mother but at school you should still perform as well as you can. That is part of being a teenager. Then it is also very nice that they get such a creative environment with you.

Take part in the blog post that describes this occasion with the students HERE

Text: Ellen Spens

Image: Johan Danielsson