Er­line An­drews

When spe­cial ed­u­ca­tion teacher/lec­tur­er Kitts Cadette first heard about ex­ec­u­tive func­tion dis­or­der she was scep­ti­cal. Was this an­oth­er at­tempt to put a fan­cy la­bel on a sim­ple hu­man fault?

At­tend­ing a work­shop by ex­ec­u­tive func­tion spe­cial­ist Sucheta Ka­math con­vinced her that the dis­or­der–which im­pairs a per­son's abil­i­ty to plan, fo­cus and there­fore achieve goals–was re­al and, more im­por­tant, it was keep­ing many chil­dren and adults from ful­fill­ing their po­ten­tial.

Now as the prin­ci­pal of Es­he's Learn­ing Cen­tre, a spe­cial ed­u­ca­tion school in Wood­brook, Cadette wants to open oth­er teach­ers' eyes to the prob­lem of ex­ec­u­tive func­tion dis­or­der and oth­er learn­ing chal­lenges their stu­dents may be bat­tling.

Es­he's is hold­ing a two-day con­fer­ence at the school on May 1 and 2 ti­tled Hid­den Dis­abil­i­ties: A Look Through the Mi­cro­scope–Preva­lence and In­ter­ven­tion. The con­fer­ence will cov­er dif­fer­ent types of learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties and strate­gies for deal­ing with them. Sucheta Ka­math will give the keynote ad­dress.

Es­he's, found­ed 30 years ago, has held work­shops for teach­ers be­fore. This will be its first con­fer­ence.

The dis­cus­sion is par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­e­vant in light of T&T's prob­lems with vi­o­lent crime and school in­dis­ci­pline. Un­di­ag­nosed dis­abil­i­ties may be the rea­son some peo­ple don't learn as much as they should in school. And in­ad­e­quate learn­ing is con­nect­ed to an­ti-so­cial be­hav­iour in chil­dren and adults.

Cadette said while lo­cal re­search isn't avail­able, in­ter­na­tion­al da­ta sup­ports the idea that learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties are linked to delin­quen­cy and crime.

"Usu­al­ly when you have chil­dren whose aca­d­e­m­ic needs are not met in the class­room it man­i­fests it­self some­where neg­a­tive," Cadette said in a re­cent in­ter­view at the school, which is on Ari­api­ta Ave.

Cadette said one of the ma­jor ob­sta­cles to di­ag­nos­ing and deal­ing with many learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties is the no­tion, wan­ing but still preva­lent in T&T, that on­ly peo­ple with ob­vi­ous phys­i­cal or in­tel­lec­tu­al hand­i­caps are dis­abled.

"Chil­dren with hid­den dis­abil­i­ties, they look like you and I. When they look like you or I, no­body knows that there's a chal­lenge. So the ex­pec­ta­tion is that it is a hu­man fail­ing on my part, and it isn't that some­thing is go­ing on here," said Cadette, touch­ing her head.

Cadette tells the sto­ry of when Es­he's founder Es­la Lynch, who has dyslex­ia, first took the idea of the school to a Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cial who worked in spe­cial ed­u­ca­tion.

"She was told that dyslex­ia is a name that rich peo­ple give for the fact that their chil­dren were lazy," said Cadette. "For him, spe­cial ed­u­ca­tion was the vi­sion im­paired, the hear­ing im­paired, the men­tal­ly re­tard­ed, and the phys­i­cal­ly hand­i­capped...She al­ways refers to that."

The sit­u­a­tion in T&T has im­proved a lot since then. More teach­ers are get­ting train­ing in spe­cial ed­u­ca­tion, the Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices is a de­part­ment of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion that was set up to deal with prob­lems that may be af­fect­ing chil­dren's abil­i­ty to learn, and a spe­cial ed­u­ca­tion pol­i­cy pa­per is in the works. Cadette at­tend­ed a re­cent stake­hold­er con­sul­ta­tion meet­ing on the pol­i­cy.

But the coun­try still has a long way to go.

At Es­he's, each teacher has a max­i­mum of 14 stu­dents per class so that stu­dents with spe­cif­ic chal­lenges can be giv­en par­tic­u­lar at­ten­tion. A typ­i­cal class in a pub­lic school can be twice that num­ber, which makes it more dif­fi­cult to iden­ti­fy, much less give ad­di­tion­al at­ten­tion to, stu­dents who might need it.

Most of Es­he's stu­dents are re­ferred from pub­lic schools and are el­i­gi­ble for gov­ern­ment as­sis­tance in pay­ing school fees, but this re­quires a cost­ly as­sess­ment from a psy­chol­o­gist. Par­ents who can't af­ford it have to go through the pub­lic sys­tem and this can be a long process–as much as two years.

And T&T's po­lit­i­cal sys­tem, which sees pol­i­cy and per­son­nel chang­ing with each new ad­min­is­tra­tion, can al­so be an ob­sta­cle to im­prove­ment.

"Every­thing is so politi­cised," said Cadette. Touch­ing a copy of the spe­cial ed­u­ca­tion draft pol­i­cy pa­per, she asked: "If this present gov­ern­ment does not win the elec­tion next year what hap­pens to this doc­u­ment? Does this work come to a halt? What has hap­pened in the past (is that new gov­ern­ments) put a halt to it."

Cadette, a Trinida­di­an who taught stu­dents and trained teach­ers here be­fore mi­grat­ing, is on a two-year sab­bat­i­cal from the Howard School, a 64-year-old spe­cial ed­u­ca­tion in­sti­tu­tion in At­lanta, where she'd been teach­ing for the past 13 years.

When the re­tir­ing Lynch asked her to be in­ter­im prin­ci­pal, she had reser­va­tions about leav­ing her job in the US. But she be­lieves in what Es­he's is do­ing and has al­ways want­ed to help the school.

She fa­cil­i­tat­ed a work­shop at Es­he's in 2012 with a col­league from the Howard School. The school part­ner­ship al­so saw four teach­ers from Es­he's spend­ing a week at Howard last year for train­ing.

Howard's as­sis­tant head, Allen Broyles, will be a pre­sen­ter at the con­fer­ence, and Howard teach­ers will help fa­cil­i­tate a chil­dren's camp at Es­he's in Ju­ly that will use ideas shared in the con­fer­ence.

There's proof among Es­he's alum­ni that the sac­ri­fice and ef­fort are worth it.

"Many of our stu­dents have gone on to ter­tiary lev­el ed­u­ca­tion, both na­tion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly; many of our stu­dents have opened their own small busi­ness­es," said Cadette.

"We have pro­duced stu­dents who are in­de­pen­dent, suc­cess­ful con­trib­u­tors to the T&T so­ci­ety and the larg­er world."

�2 For more in­for­ma­tion on the con­fer­ence Hid­den Dis­abil­i­ties: A Look Through the Mi­cro­scope–Preva­lence and In­ter­ven­tion or about Es­he's call 622-7206.