Kev

Kevin’s pretty much as I imagined. He’s tiny, white, ear studded, gets covered in matter throughout the day and has rather severe learning difficulties. No swearing yet, which is nice. He’s not a bad little fellow, but I think he’ll get into scrapes because he just isn’t functioning on the same level as the other children of his age. If he wants something he reaches out his hands and makes grasping gestures. He has an extremely short attention span; anything colourful or shiny will distract him. He loves Power Rangers and can talk about them, but he’ll constantly change the subject. Not because he wants to get out of work really, it’s just that nothing holds his attention for longer than half a minute. Apart from drawing.

The drawings alone reveal just how delayed he is. I got him to draw himself when we first met. He drew himself as a sort of circle with two dots for eyes and a wobbly mouth. I asked him if he wanted to draw some ears and he drew them on top of the head like a rabbit. He then added four sausage like limbs coming out of the head. You’d expect that kind of thing from a child in nursery. He then started to draw circular scribbles all over it. I asked what they were and he looked bemused. The fact was, within 20 seconds of starting he’d moved on and had forgotten what he was supposed to be drawing. I asked him to write his name and age at the top and he wrote a ‘k’ followed by some shapes for the rest of his name, and put his age as ‘0′.

He can tell you the sound of three letters in the alphabet correctly. ‘K’ being one of them. He said the letter ‘V’ was ‘eleven’. He can’t count to 10 in the right order and you have to remind him of half of the numbers.

During free play he was happy to sit playing with wooden bricks but got agitated because he thought another boy had taken one (he hadn’t, I was watching) and made a succession of high pitched noises until I told him to stop. He holds his pencil like a dagger; the felt tips on his table are all fucked now.

To be honest, I’ve got my work cut out. The simple fact of the matter is that without one-to-one support he’s not going to access anything. We need to get a Statement for him ASAP or he’ll just take up all the time of my Teaching Assistant (thus depriving other children of her support) and myself. This, of course, is not fair on the other children. Unfortunately it takes time to process and get the grant together to employ someone. I don’t know how long he’ll be able to stay in a mainstream school…he’ll struggle whatever we give him.

The children were, as I expected, brilliant when he arrived. Two lower ability girls immediately claimed him and he was quite happy to be dragged around by his hands for the first day. I dissuaded them from doing this on day two as he needs to make other friends. Also, he likes it now but I’m pretty sure when he has enough, as he eventually will, he’ll show this by giving a shove or slap. Not his fault, he doesn’t really have the verbal skills to explain that he doesn’t want the attention anymore.

Trey was off sick when Kevin arrived, which was a good thing. I was braced for Trey’s return, I’m quite worried that he’ll see an opportunity to make mischief and get Kevin to carry the can. However, Trey seemed a little alarmed by him. Good, I hope he stays well away! Most of the other children were very excited when Kev turned up, but most of them (I think) sussed that he wasn’t on their level and lost interest in him very quickly. Don’t get me wrong, they’re still being helpful to him, getting him paper, pens etc…they just don’t see him as a potential friend. I can see their point, although that may sound a little brutal.

I just hope we can sort him out with some one-to-one help quickly, I don’t think he had it at his last school (waiting for them to send us everything they have on him), which beggars belief. If he has gone several years in the school system you’ve got to ask what they did with him! I hope this doesn’t sound too negative, he’s alright and he and I have been getting on just fine. But on a practical level he’s going to find it hard to cope. Actually no, we’re going to find it hard! I’ll just have to give him all the attention I can, but I’m not going to take anything away from the majority of the class, that’s not fair. Perhaps the swearing will start once he feels comfortable in his new school. He might even teach me some new words!

Harvest festival next week. Oh the joys! Glad it’s here. We’ve only been learning the harvest songs for a week but they’re doing my head in. I also have the job of making the harvest display in the hall, stacking the tins and pot noodles etc. I was going to get someone else to do it as my pet rodent is dying of the cancer and yesterday it looked like Monday after work was going to be a date with Dr Death at the vets, but she’s perked up today and is scurrying around like nobody’s business. However Piqued tells me this (in humans) is something called Death Restlessness so if she wakes up in the morning looking like, well, a dying rat, it’s off to pop her cork tomorrow. I’m actually not very happy about it. Little blighter sits on my shoulder while I watch telly and everything. Anyway, in short, I may or may not be making a harvest table tomorrow after school. Either option is not fun but for the first time ever I’d rather stack baked beans.