Digging Deeper

It's now been two weeks since I've been at Hilton and school holidays are just around the corner. And I’ll tell you - it couldn't have come at a better time. Two weeks have given me good insight into the school and has also given me time to get to know almost all of its 84 students. I have spent the last 2 weeks orientating, learning basic sign language, getting to know kid’s names and their conditions, commencing initial assessments and searching through dusty cupboards. Each day, the task seems to grow bigger, more impossible and unmanageable each day.

Two days ago I found myself feeling mighty overwhelmed. What on earth have I gotten myself into? NONE of the kids have had any baseline outcome measures done on them. Notes are unclear as to what has been happening with them. Files are EVERYWHERE in random stacks on random shelves. The school files that do exist on each student are patchy and incomplete. There is no system for filing things. There is no concept of filing by alphabetical order, by class or by age. Some of the children don't even know when their birthday is. Some children have multiple names. For example, a child can be called something like "Adi Asenaca Salote Miriama Varei" but will be called "Maria" at school. Birthdates that can be found on files do not correlate to the birthdates on other files or documents that exist on the same student. The spelling of names varies depending on which document you want to look at.

At parent-teacher interviews, Lauren and I thought that we would try and get the story straight for each of the children. We asked questions like:

"How did your child come to Hilton?"

"At what age did you realise something was not quite right"

"What concerns you most about your child?"

And we got responses such as the following:

Lauren and I: "So when did you realise your child was deaf?"
Mother: "When she was 10"
Lauren and I: "So did something happen when she was 10?"
Mother: "No."
Lauren and I: "So before you were communicating with her fine and then one day when she was 10 years old she couldn't hear properly anymore?"
Mother: "Yes."

And others like:

Lauren and I: "At what age was your child first able to roll over?"
Mother: "ohh, about 1 year old"
Lauren and I: "and at what age was your child able to walk?"
Mother: "about 1 year old as well"
Lauren and I: "so they didn't move much before they were one. Then they learnt how to roll, and then they were able to stand up and walk straight away?"
Mother, with raised eyebrows: "Io" ("io" meaning "yes" in Fijian)

I also meant to be training up one of the staff members. The purpose of this is for skills transfer and capacity building so that when I leave, someone can still carry on the knowledge. In theory, it’s a great idea. However, I have a bit of a problem in that my co-worker will turn up to school, disappear, and re-appear at the end of the day. I have no idea where she's been or what she's been doing but I'm still meant to be working closely with her.

I have been told that relationship building is the most important part of the first three months. Even if nothing is achieved in the first three months, the relationship I establish now will be paramount to the success of my year at Hilton. However, I'm finding it rather difficult to build a relationship when the person I'm meant to be building a relationship cannot be found for some parts of the day.

Now that I'm getting to know the kids, my head is beginning to become soaked with ideas for treatment. Some nights, I can’t get to sleep because my head is exploding with information and I am constantly trying to figure out a solution to the problems I am facing. I am being impatient and I want to solve them NOW.

I knew this assignment was meant to be a challenge, but it is now starting to dawn on me just how complex a challenge it will actually be.

So school holidays: not quite a vacation.

84 students

20 interviews completed

20 student’s initial assessments commenced

Number of reports actually completed: none.

Person to complete them: me.

…and a whole term’s worth of activities to plan.

Bring on the school holidays.