Cobden School
Communicating with the community
Cobden School supports families with children who have special needs.
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I'm Annie Guerin and I'm responsible for the mainstreaming of our children with special needs. I have worked as a relieving principal for a small school, as a DP, a senior teacher, and as a classroom teacher for 20 years. Presently I am completing my Masters in Teaching and Learning. My thesis is on intervention with a child with behaviour needs.
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We are very good at transition. If I know that a child is coming to this school, I will ring the pre-school. I will ring the parents, up to a year before they come. I let them know that child is coming, that we are prepared to make visits for them, we are prepared to make any changes to the environment for them, and that their child is going to be included in as many ways as possible.
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We have ongoing individual education plan meetings. If there are any areas that concern me about a child I will ring the parents, I encourage them to come and see me, or I will go and visit them at their house. The individual education plans look at a child's programme for the next three to four months, and we use a variety of professionals to deal with that child, and we involve the family.
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We look at the goals that we have set previously for the children. Have they achieved them? If they haven't, what went wrong? Do we need to change them or alter them? Do we need to change the way we are teaching the child? Do we need to look at some outside help that could reduce those barriers.
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We also have home-school notebooks for every child who has intervention at this school. Those notebooks tell the parents what their child has been doing during the day. Some of our children have severe problems, so parents need to be aware. We always try to end on a positive note to let parents know something successful that their child has done.
The parents in turn write back to us to let us know what's happened overnight, so that at least in the morning we have some knowledge that there could be difficulty during the day.
