Visitor from National Star College

12/06/14

This week we had a visit from a local charity, National Star College. One of the girls suggested it as her mum works there and she came, along with a colleague, to tell the girls about what they do and do a couple of activities. They first sat the girls in a circle and told them all about what the College does. Basically, it is a college for children and adults with disabilities where they can "realise their potential as equal and active citizens in control of their lives". They asked the girls if they knew what a charity was, what it meant to have a disability and then talked about the various kinds of disabilities. I was very surprised at the answer given when they were asked what a disability is: "when someone can't do something because the part of their body that helps them do it doesn't work any more"! When I was 9, as the girl who said this is, I would never have been able to say it so concisely and cover all possibilities in one sentence... 

They then got the girls to get into groups to do some activities revolving around removing the use of a certain part of the body and trying to do basic tasks. They had to:

• Pick up a coin with a sock on their hand
• Put a sock on with one hand in a sling
• Talk to a friend while holding a lollypop stick in their mouth and see how much they could understand
• Tell a friend something by pointing at letters on an alphabet sheet

The girls all seemed to enjoy putting on the sock while wearing a sling, and the vast majority were quite good at it too. Some of them seemed to be getting a bit bored though as we only had 5 slings and 27 girls which meant that some had to wait a long time and all the other activities were quite quick to do so they didn't have anything else to do. 

They then got the girls back into a circle and discussed how they found the activities and how they would feel if they had to live like that all the time. Most of the girls said that it made them feel frustrated and they wouldn't like to live like that. They then said that any money we raise (we've had to postpone our fundraising to September because we ran out of space in the term to do it, sadly) will go towards helping the students feel more independent and less frustrated as they'll be able to buy specialist equipment to help them. 

They finished up by giving the girls some stars to colour in and said they could do it any way they liked as long as they didn't use their normal writing hand! We had some girls colouring with their non-dominant hand, some with their feet, some with their mouths and one girl who held the pen between her elbows! Some of the colouring wasn't too bad either.

The girls seemed to thoroughly enjoy the evening as it was more hands on than previous visitors we've had. Most people seem to forget what age group they're talking to and give the talk they would give to adults which just makes the girls bored and thus restless and disruptive. These two women though kept them interested by asking them questions and giving them an activity to break things up. It also gave me an insight into what the girls know about disabilities - a surprising amount!