Special Education News

It has been a very busy end to the year with farewells to our Year 12 students and a big welcome to our new Year 7 students who have been transitioning this term. 

This term the Special Education Girls Group have been participating in a Self Defence and Safety Program. They have been learning the importance of being aware and prepared when out and about in the community.  They have practised making smart decisions to minimise risks and had a lot of fun role playing and learning some basic self-defence skills. The girls are looking forward to their end of program celebration, where they are going to be catching public transport, ordering at a cafe, interacting with the public and using good manners. This program has been sponsored by The Brisbane Waters Soroptimists Group as a part of their Lifting Aspirations Program supporting girl’s education. We are very grateful for their support and encouragement of vulnerable students in their education. We would also like to thank Sensei Gabby and Sensei Josh from Kincumber Black Belt Martial Arts for making it so much fun.

Our coffee shop has been a huge success again this year and I would like to personally thank all of the parents, staff and friends of our Special Education Centre for supporting this wonderful enterprise. The guests of have all enjoyed the food and service provided by our special education students and a few groups even had a performance from our signing choir which they thoroughly enjoyed.  Our students are gaining many life and work skills from this program. These skills include shopping, food preparation and service, barista, cleaning, harvesting the fresh fruit and vegetables from our garden, personal and communication skills, money skills and many more. The students enjoy the satisfaction of working in a coffee shop. While our customers like our delicious food, fabulous coffees and wonderful service by the students.  . We would like to thank everyone for their continued support of our Coffee Shop program.

Our Special Education Centre has been involved in a recycling program where we collect bottles and cans and take them to the Envirobank at West Gosford. The students are learning the importance of recycling and how to reduce the amount of rubbish in our school. The benefits from this program is used in our garden and craft projects which enhances our students learning.

This term we ran a short trial of a conversation skills program. Volunteer students from Ms Hammond’s Year 9 English class came out of class for the last 10 minutes to talk with selected students from the Special Education Centre.  The trial seemed to be very successful as small groups of students sat around the outside area chatting happily. Students from both groups were positively engaged and seemed to enjoy getting to know each other. As a result we are preparing to offer this to more students and volunteers next year.