One Thousand and One Days

One Thousand and One Days: Magical Tales from a Special School

by Ginny Brown

Published by Amolibros at Smashwords 2013

Table of Contents

About the Book

About the Author

Notices

1 Magical Signs and Symbols

2 Tricks of Speech

3 Teenage Kicks

4 Trial by Puree

5 Hunting in Packs

6 Growing Evidence

7 My name is Maria and I’m mad as hell

8 Just when you think you’ve seen it all…

9 Dream Day

10 Super Siblings

11 Holiday Brain

12 FUDGE

13 Design Brief

14 Positive Thinking

15 I am the ‘they’ they moan about

16 Special Inducements

17 Sex and drugs and rock and Wotsits

18 The Paperless Office

19 New Year Alchemy

20 Butterfly Days

21 Segregation

22 The Jean Genies

23 Playtime Wizardry

24 Your call is important to us

25 More fun than men’s socks

26 Target Practice

27 Girls and Boys

28 Shades of Autism

29 Life Expectation

30 Hate and Love

31 Roman Holiday

32 Chinese Whispers

33 Spirited Away

34 Health and Sanity

35 Joyce Words

36 To everything there is a season

37 Alternate Realities

38 Christmas Presents

39 Naughty, naughty

40 Movers and Shakers

41 Beauty

42 Keeping it in the family

43 The Mystery of the Disappearing Desk

44 Who am I again?

45 We put the Fun in Fundraising

46 Teaching Assistants

47 Top Drawer Secrets

48 Stepping into another world

49 Hometime Demons

50 G and T

51 Music Magic

52 Holiday Blues

53 Important Business

54 Of Cheese and Chocolate

55 The Golden Rule

56 Acceptance

57 Supplies, supplies

58 Balls

59 Martians

60 Lottery Daydream

61 Smile

62 What’s in a Name?

63 Parents’ Evening

64 Disappearing Trick!

65 Sunny’s Seizure

66 Nativity Play Enchantment

67 Visitors

68 Magic Moments

69 Rupert

70 A pinch of S<

71 I’m a teacher, get me out of here!

72 And finally…

About the Book

An enchanting peek into the world of the special school; tales that are touching, surprising and amusing. Find out how useful it can be to play at lions, why custard on your lapels is a sign you might get the job and what teachers do with vibrating snakes.

These are edited versions of articles the author had published in The Times Educational Supplement between the years of 2003 and 2006. They were published under a pen name: Maria Corby. The articles are based on the author’s experience of twenty-five years of working in special schools, but incidents recorded have been fictionalised and characters are completely made up.

About the Author

Ginny Brown is the Deputy Headteacher of a special school in the South of England. After donkeys’ years teaching in a range of schools, she still finds her work fascinating. She has two, marvellous, grown-up children.

Notices

Copyright © Ginny Brown 2013 | First published in 2012 by Djinn Publications, Flat 2, Mildenhall, BH4 8AX

Published in ebook format by Amolibros 2013 | Amolibros, Loundshay Manor Cottage, Preston Bowyer, Milverton, Somerset, TA4 1QF | http://www.amolibros.com

The right of Ginny Brown to be identified as the author of the work has been asserted herein in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data | A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This book production has been managed by Amolibros http://www.amolibros.com

1 Magic Signs and Symbols

Total communication, I tell our visitor, that’s how we communicate with our young children. If we are going to an art lesson, I continue, we will say ‘Art’ and use the sign, show them the symbol and written word and let them hold and smell a tickly paint brush.

That’s fascinating, exclaims my visitor, I’ve never heard of anything like it – is it effective?

Very, I tell her. And I bet you use it more than you think.

These days, all methods of communication are used just to try and keep contact with family and friends – and I mean the ones you live with – never mind the emails to your sister in Oz, the WhatsApp chat to girlfriends, Christmas cards to ex-colleagues, letters to your Grandpa, texts to your lover and phone calls to your mum.

I thought back to Sunday. As I got up in the morning, I saw a note under my bedroom door; it was from my daughter who wanted me not to wake her as she’d had a late night. Going downstairs, I noticed a pair of men’s boots in the kitchen. More communication, intentional or not, telling me that her boyfriend had stayed over. Further ‘objects of reference’ in the kitchen told me my son had had a pizza and a few beers and the scrawl on the chalk board was asking if I would wake him if I was going shopping. I communicated with him by banging on his bedroom door and interpreted the grunts and groans as meaning would I wait five minutes while he got dressed. As I waited I watched the news, listening to and watching correspondents from across the globe transmitting events, feelings and analysis through pictures and sound.

Jim was ready so off we drove, obeying all the symbols and signs en route.

In a happy mood, I began to sing. Jim immediately turned on the radio. Nothing more needed to be said. At the market car park, I indicated with a nod and a coin that Jim should go and get the ticket while I listened to the rest of The Archers. We shuffled around the busy market, observing other shoppers’ body language so that we didn’t actually bump into anyone. It was noisy so I signed to Jim: Tea? He nodded his assent.

You get it, Mum, he shouted. I’ll just check out these DVDs. I followed the smell of bacon to the tea stall but inevitably got lost amongst the shoppers, signs and posters.

Luckily we both had our mobiles on and soon met again under the clock – the traditional meeting place. My daughter texted me: Gt strpy sx plz. Although she’d taken all the vowels out, I knew what she meant. The man at the socks stall spoke little English but we made the transaction using gestures. Jim tapped his watch and nodded towards the car park. It was time to go.

Total communication – is it easy to learn? asked my visitor. Oh yes, I said, most people do it without even thinking!

2 Tricks of Speech

Bitch! calls Richard, by way of greeting me as we pass in the corridor.

Richard has a repertoire of around six words, and none is one you’d like to hear repeated in front of the vicar. It’s amazing how some children pick up the most loathsome swearwords before they learn to say anything else. Where do they hear them from? Not from home, Mrs Wilson assures us when she comes in to school to complain that Amelia called her Sunday school teacher a m*therf*cker. Well it’s not from school, we assure her; So few of our children are verbal and, anyway, it’s against the school rules. It must be from the television, video games, older siblings or bus drivers.

Children with special needs come into contact with many more people than their mainstream counterparts; they get into taxis with drivers they’ve never met before; have a range of passenger transport assistants and helpers; are examined by therapists and health staff; and meet with various social workers, sessional workers, care staff and babysitters. It’s no wonder children with learning difficulties can be more vulnerable to abuse, and more vulnerable to picking up bad language.

I suppose when people swear, it’s done with passion, clarity and volume, which makes that word easier to copy. No one says ‘triangle’ or any other word we’d like our children to learn with as much force as ‘bollocks’ when someone treads on their toe. And once children have said that first swearword, the outrage and attention it produces makes them want to repeat it. It’s positive reinforcement in action. I’m sure we’re all the same. Do you remember the words that you first looked up when you got a new dictionary, learned to speak a new language or browsed picture symbols?

I once worked with a young man who had profound learning difficulties, was physically disabled and blind, and who would sit in a corner of the classroom shouting obscenities. Over the years he grew to love the reactions (You mustn’t say that! Stop it! No!) that he got from a succession of teachers and teaching assistants. To solve the problem the class team got together and hatched a plot: we would use ‘gasworks’ as a swearword among ourselves. For example, Gasworks! I’ve got a paper cut from this downloaded government circular or Gasworks! Ofsted are coming.

Sure enough, a few days later, Sean shouted gasworks; I suppose to see what reaction he’d get.

Ahh, Sean said gasworks, we said to each other. what a naughty thing to say. That’s a really bad word, Sean, you mustn’t say that. Sean lapped it up. And although he kept all of his vile swearwords too, gasworks was successfully introduced into his vocabulary. So how should I answer Richard? Probably by looking him in the eye and bellowing good morning with as much venom, volume and vituperation as I can muster.

3 Teenage Kicks

Teenagers on the rampage, teenagers taking drugs, teenagers drunk in the streets. This is the impression anyone would get of our young people if they looked at the newspaper headlines for a week. TV is just as guilty; think of Catherine Tate’s insolent Lauren, Matt Lucas’s mouthy Vicky or Harry Enfield’s grunting Kevin. And as for radio, well, if you have been listening to the shenanigans in The Archers with young Emma and the Grundy brothers Will and Ed, then you will understand what I mean by youngsters getting a bad press.

I have a different point of view. I see teenagers who, despite having learning difficulties and maybe physical difficulties too, grow up to be confident young people who make a positive contribution to society, making their parents and us proud by such things as gaining their Duke of Edinburgh awards, taking