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”.