Special Education

Working in a foreign school system is difficult; I think that goes without saying. But one of the hardest things for me to deal with is the lack of recognition of students with special needs. People are different, and everywhere you go, people work differently. Classrooms everywhere are multilevel; you cannot escape that, no matter where you are. And Moldova is no exception. Just like in the States, there are a number of students with special needs. The unfortunate difference is that “special needs” is not as well recognized, and therefore, not accommodated for. Being a teacher who studied and worked in the USA, this is incredibly difficult for me to work with.

The most common need I see is students with AD/HD. So just to give you a quick background on my beliefs on students with AD/HD, I believe that AD/HD is a diagnosis that needs to be recognized and accommodated for. However, I believe that too many parents and teachers are using a diagnostic of AD/HD as a cop-out, thinking they just give their child Ritalin as a “fix” to the problem. Many cases only need teaching rather than treatment. With the right discipline and expectations, the child can learn (without medication) how to deal with AD/HD. However, that is not to say that I think all AD/HD diagnoses can be approached as such. There are many cases where a child needs a little bit more than the right teachings. But in many cases, I think the student just needs the right teacher.

The Moldavan school system does not work in a way that diagnoses students with specials needs. Additionally, the teachers do not receive training on how to work with students with special needs. And there aren’t special education teachers in the schools.

With an understanding of my philosophy and the Moldavan school system, you might be able to understand my personal dilemma. While I have several students who might be diagnosed with AD/HD, there is a student in my 5th form who clearly has AD/HD, possibly extreme enough to need medication (which says a lot coming from me).

Since I value teaching over treatment, I want to provide this student with the right kind of accommodations. But without all his other teachers helping and accommodating, I wonder how effective I can be. Furthermore, there is the need of sustainability from the work I do. So I have this internal battle: do I give him the time and attention he requires and hope my teacher learns from my example (which, so far, has not proven true in other situations, unfortunately), or should I focus on teaching my partners how to work with AD/HD and deny him some of the help he would get if I personally worked with him?

I don’t know the perfect answer to this, which is often the response I have to the dilemmas I have working in a foreign school system. I wish that answers to my problems could be more black and white. It would make this job so much easier. But if that were true, I guess they couldn’t advertise the Peace Corps as “the hardest job you’ll ever love”.

Survival Instinct

Getting through some days here is a monumental task. Working within a foreign school system provides daily challenges. Constantly coming across the same problems over and over again without any change is overwhelming. Performing what were once trivial daily tasks (in America) now require my full concentration to complete. My mistakes are often seen as jokes, and many Moldovans accredit them to my misfortune of being American. Add in my poor Romanian and no Russian knowledge, you’ve got a very stressed out Maggie.

For example, yesterday I went downstairs to make myself a snack, and my host dad was in the kitchen. As I was trying to put some food together, Roman started talking to me about something. I eventually understood that the topic was about cleaning the kitchen. He was either telling me that I should vacuum or that I shouldn’t vacuum; I couldn’t tell. Every time I thought I understood and said “okay”, Roman would just shout “no okay”, slap his hand to his head, and yell at me for not understanding him. At least I think he was yelling about me not understanding him; I don’t know what he was saying. And all I wanted was a snack. Some days, right?

Anyways, today I was listening to a podcast about Stockholm Syndrome, and the hosts were talking about how those who are kidnapped develop this psychological disorder as a survival instinct to this stressful situation. And this got me thinking about what new thoughts or ideas have I started thinking as a result of my mentally strenuous experience.

Obviously, comparing my situation to someone who has been kidnapped is quite melodramatic. I know that I can’t even begin to put myself in the same category as those so unfortunate as to be kidnapped. I am not here against my will, and I have all my necessities and more. But sometimes hearing about extreme situations makes me think about my tiny problems.

So my survival instinct. For my first year here, I think the main thing to help me deal with my daily stresses was apathy. It took me a while to realize how much apathy I had developed since I had been here, seeing as it was building slowly. But I realized that not caring was helping me get through my difficulties.

My first months working in my school were incredibly difficult, and it was all I could do to not pull all my hair out. I joined PC to help those in need and inspire positive change by dedicating my time, knowledge, and skills; however, I could barely get my partners to listen to me or think of me as a creditable source. So I started by telling myself to not let it bother me. I would then tell myself that when other things didn’t go the way I hoped, and it eventually grew from “not bothering me” to me not caring.

I don’t know if apathy is the right or wrong way to deal with this, but I do know that apathy is not my way. I’m very passionate, and I love caring about things. I happy to say that it’s my passions that have gotten me to where I am today. So when I realized that I was using apathy as a coping mechanism, I was heart-broken. I couldn’t believe I had changed so drastically, and not in a direction I liked. So I made a decision that I had to rid myself of this apathy.

Nowadays, when things don’t go my way, I try not to let it bother me and think about how to improve things for next time. Or sometimes I think about whether or not this requires reflection. Maybe this is something I can’t change, so I need to focus on other tasks.

I also use the small and infrequent successes I have to get from one day to the next. These little successes are what help me get going sometimes, and they are what inspire me to keeping working. And most importantly, they remind me why I joined the PC, something I think all volunteers need to constantly remind themselves to stay strong.

My successes are usually really small, and they don’t come around too often. Sometimes, the most recent success that I use as motivation was from two months ago. It’s not much, but I believe using successes is a better survival mechanism than apathy.

“All evil needs to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”

–Edmund Burke

The Odd Couple

Whenever my host dad is in the mood for social drinking, he asks me to join me. So while drink Cognac together, we try to converse with each other. And as we are talking, we struggle with understanding each other seeing as he only speaks Russian (and very little Romanian) and I only speak English (and a little more Romanian than he can speak). So I’ve always thought that if you can understand Romanian, Russian, and English, you would find our conversation most ridiculous.

Tonight, as we were enjoying a bottle of Congac from our neighbor, Roman and I were arguing about Obama (who Roman thinks is low in evolution since he is black), pets (which I think are companions and he thinks are laborers), and American history (he thought he knew more since he was older and I though I knew more since I grew up in America).

During one of our arguments, my host mom walked in on us. As I suspected, we are hilarious to listen to. Since she understands Romanian and Russian, she understood most of our conversation; she was laughing so hard at us that she couldn't breathe.

Whenever we’re talking, I think I understand what is going, but who knows what is actually being said…except my host mom, who thinks it’s hilarious.