Lifelong Learning Programme

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Success Stories

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TITLE OF THE SUCCESS STORY
Professional help is needed
COUNTRY WHERE IT TOOK PLACE
Greece
AUTHOR OF THE SUCCESS STORY
Headmaster
SCHOOL TYPOLOGY
Primary school
THEMATIC AREA
Students with learning difficulties
DESCRIPTION OF THE SUCCESS STORY
The story has to do with a small boy in primary school. The boy came from a rather economically healthy family in the region. His father was a lawyer and his mother was the daughter of an old politician. Both of his parents were really busy almost all day long.
John came to school and he was a happy boy with a very social profile. He was really popular among his class mates since he managed to bring toys from home for the rest of the classroom and play with each one of the boys and the girls. During the first weeks of the school the boy seemed to make a lot of mistakes in the classroom. The teacher thought that it was part of his enthusiasm during the courses. Although the time passed, the boy seemed not to follow the rest of the class. His improvement rhythm was slower than the rest of the class. The teacher asked the family to visit school in order to discuss the problem. The father and the mother could not provide an excuse or a cause for that.
The teacher was worrying for the boy and asked for my advice. I asked in the Peripheral Direction of Primary Education to provide to us a professional psychological advice. A psychologist came and followed the boy in his daily work for two days. She took some interviews to the boy and finally she consulted the family to change school. The boy had some cognitive difficulties and he had to follow a different course.
The family decided to follow the doctor’s advice. The boy managed to finish the first three classes in a specialized school and then he came back to our school in the 4th grade. He is now in the 6th grade, with no problems in following his lessons.
CRITICAL ANALYSIS
Professional help is needed in most cases of learning difficulties. Families trend to skip the problem, but the solution is to bend over the problem and the child. In most cases the professional advice solves or eliminates the problem. I am convinced that each school should from time to time get ad hoc advice in every child. It is difficult for a teacher or a headmaster to have the knowledge to discover the problem. Any latency on that can cause significant problems in student’s performance and drive in school drop out.

20 December 2014

Final Partners’ meeting

The fourth partners’ meeting took place in Florence (IT) on 15 December 2014. The meeting had the objective to check the activities carried out since the third meeting of the project and share and assess the in progress results. A special focus has been dedicated to the presentation of the strategies to solve the case scenarios.