Hillingdon Manor School – Yiewsley
As part of our community Project academic Module at Brunel University, I was given the chance to carry out some work experience in a field of my choice. I thought it was important for me to use this opportunity to gain some experience in a school environment as I wanted to develop the skills and qualities that may be needed as a teacher. I connected with people within the course who also had similar ambitions to explore the art of teaching and we formed a theatre company named “The Trail of Thought”.
Our main aim as a theatre company was to create a series of drama workshops which would help to enhance children’s confidence, communication and social skills. After speaking with members of the company, we recognised that we all shared a great interest in helping children with learning difficulties and special needs. We decided to explore in detail the traits of Autistic children and the specific learning difficulties that they endure. I found through my research that Autism can affect children in many different ways and there various support systems that can help them with their personal difficulties. Autism develops in many stages and there can be more complex forms of the disability that must be treated carefully. For example, I found that the “The National Autistic Society” presented the features of Autism clearly as it explains that Autistic individuals can become sensitive to specific sounds, colours and drastic movements. Our research period was vital during the project as we needed to make sure that our company was familiar with the general features of an Autistic child. Research also helped us to gain an insight into how each drama workshop needed to be tailored to the characteristics of each Autistic child, to encourage each child to participate in the workshop.
I took the lead role in leasing with head teachers from different Autistic schools around the London area. The head teacher of Hillingdon Manor expressed her interest in our drama workshops as she explained that drama therapy and drama lessons were used frequently within the school to encourage the students to express their internal emotions and feelings which they would usually keep hidden. During the interview stage at Hillingdon Manor, I expressed our company’s understanding of Autism generally and how we intended on benefiting the children with three drama workshops which would take place for one hour every week over the space of three weeks. We were assigned to a class of eight children, who all had different forms of Autism. The head teacher of Hillingdon Manor gave us a summary of each child’s personality traits and their learning difficulties which meant that we could tailor each workshop to the children’s specific abilities.
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Balinder Minhas 