Tüskevár Primary, Specialized Secondary and Grammar School

The main aim of the school is to ensure the chance of successful learning and enjoyable fellowship both for our students and teachers in usual school surroundings.

We endeavour to form such a tolerable environment where we can help children and their families to accept their possible differences as well as give them chance to experience their strenghts.

Our colleauges’ education and practical knowledge guarantees the strong basis of successful work. We are supported by wide professional background also we have got effective working relations with institutions and specialists in the same fields.

Family support worker, teacher of learning disabilities, drama teacher, school psychologist and special education teacher all help our teachers’ everyday work.

We put special emphasis on teaching Information Technology, Art as well as English as a Foreign Language; relaxation, social and health care studies, drama and Adapted PE. Program are all built in timetables. Our sports club regularly participates in competitions among schools of Budapest.

In our secondary education, we would like to ensure our students the choice, even at the end of grade 10, to prepare either for profession-choice or trade-learning or school-leaving exam according to their own developmental and progressive pace.

Our school can be found close to Normafa, in the area of The Leisure and Youth Centre of Csillebérc in pleasant and splendid natural surroundings which definitely has got great positive effect on our students’ health.

Not only during summer camps but throughout the whole year we regularly go hiking, canoeing, caving, visiting museums and theatres with our students in order to make the process of learning a life-like experience. Since the school is maintained by foundation, it requires more attention of families to ensure effective working, however, the mutual responsibility, the self-organization of parents association, the experience of becoming one community can give each active participant of school-life worthwile knowledge as a present.

The school

Relation-centred as beside acquiring the knowledge of letters, numbers and various sciences, we consider studying relations in human fellowship and forming value-based relation culture also specifically important.

Child-centred as we endeavour to teach the child and not the subject itself also to educate a human and not a student. When making development plans, curriculums, school programs, we bear in mind individual pecularities.

Teacher-centred as we consider teacher’s personality as the most important pedagogical therapy-treatment.

Family-centred as stable, positive change in children’s personalities and education can be achieved merely with the cooperation between us and the family. In addition to shared programs and tasks, we help parents association with professional family-care, guidance and parent-groups.

Free as we consider freedom of fundamental importance in the development of a child’s healthy personality. We believe that merely free educational environment based on characteristics of the age-group support the rising of a person who truely accepts avoiding licentiousness, respecting rules and who is capable of making real democracy.

Alternative as the school endeavours to create real choosing opportunities:

• Beside existing institutions, it offers alternative possibilities of solutions according to the content of the pedagogical program for families in search for a school.
• Teachers working in the school get the chance of real methodological choice and realizing their ideas.
• Our aim is that a child develops decision-making ability and he looks for an alternative when solving a problem of his own.

Complex as we endeavour to cooperate with the representatives and institutions of other fields. This way the teacher who works with a group is constantly supported by psychologist, family-care support worker, child-psychiatrist and special education teacher.

Therapical as we try to focus on characteristics of the age group, changes of life-periods when making timetables, annual planning and the rules. We build up the personal and physical environment which surrounds the children or define the process of treating their behavioral and socializing problems according to our experience in child-psychiatry.

It focuses on small-groups as beside one-to-one development, conscious community-building is emphasised as well. Number of students in classes is between 10-14, however, we also devide these groups into smaller ones when teaching English, Information Technology or Mathematics.

Art Club for youths with Asperger syndrome and mild Autism

The aim of the club is to provide place and time for youths with Asperger Syndrome and mild Autism to experience the process of creating, the pleasure of a product as well as to make relations with contemporaries (and fellows).

According to us the most effective way for achieving this aim is the wide and colourful world of Art. Therefore the program is built on activities of Art, Drama, Music and Literature relating to each other in topics. We believe that being in fellowship, thinking toghether and creative work can have strong developmental effect.We would like young people joining the club to open to the world throughout learning more about themselves. Providing the structure and dymanism of the group let us, we occassionally would like to go hiking, visiting museums and exhibitions or do sports.

Activities are instructed by specialists, our work is constantly helped by social education teacher, music and art therapist, psychologist and teacher of learning disabilities.

Application for the club is constant. As we consider individual therapy specifically important, we try to get to know the youth and his family beforehand. First we organize a meeting both with the family and the youth in order to get to know each other well. If the trust is mutual, he can join the club at any time of the year.

Teacher trainings

Training for Teachers of Learning Disabilities – Teacher Training In The Field Of Teaching Students With Learning Disabilities (316 hours)

Unfortunately year by year there are more and more students who can become cooperative and „teachable” merely with curing aid. Teachers of learning disabilities can help their integration at school.

For six years our training has given help for more than 120 colleagues mainly because our trainers, lecturers are well-known child-psychiatrists, psychologists, special needs teachers, teachers of learning disabilities with great experience. The training is child- and practice-centred. We intend to emphasise activities with self-experience. We introduce the effective strategies and results of the latest foreign and Hungarian researches.

Permission number of foundation: 299/16/2006.
Permission number of functioning: OKM - 2/181/2007.

The aim of the training

To train teachers who are capable of teaching, educating and improving the skills of children who are permanently and seriously distracted in educational and learning process due to the disorder in their psychic development.

Teachers who accomplish the course successfully, will be able to:

• recognize and identify precisely learning and/or behavioral and socializing problems,
• use acquired techniques and strategies in practice,
• make tests, and examinations within their competences,
• make one-to-one developmental planning and fulfill the basic developments,
• spread their attitude in teaching students with learning disabilities,
• help their colleagues, students, their parents to find the proper specialist.

Other speciality of the course is the regular practice and visiting classes in kindergartens and schools during the 18 months of the course as well as the one-week-long training and practice, the latter in a curing-educating hospital where effective cooperation between doctors and teachers can be observed and studied.

Once final essays are submitted by teachers participating in the training at the end of the third half of the course, they shall become prepared for working as teachers of learning disabilities in accordance with the provisions of educational law.

Teacher Training for How To Use The Method Of Relaxation At School (30 hours)

Briefly about the training:

1. We consider the training specifically important as NAT (Hungarian National Curriculum) contains the barely-known method of relaxation, however, at present there is no course for relaxation methodology in the system of teacher’s training programs. Still, at school the method can be used easily by all the participants of school-life.
2. Learning autogen training is built up of the three units of theory, practice and methodology. The latter is based on the theory and training of activities for children.
3. Specific features of the training are self-experience, attitude-forming (positive thinking) and practice („autogen training”).
   Each unit of the syllabus is built up of special „absorbing” trainings which complement, strengthen and deepen the learning process of certain units. In our school, relaxation lessons (for students) can be visited and teachers can also participate in the lesson during the whole period of the training.
4. The aim of the course is to provide theoretical and practical knowledge of relaxation and its methodology. We believe that everybody is his own trainer therefore our lecturers’, trainers’, instructors’ task is to teach the background of relaxation theory and practice. Since self-experience is in focus, we cannot use the general tests for revisions or testing. The final essay written by the participants shows us the changes in their attitudes (positive thinking) and the knowledge of theory and methodology.

Advantages

For teachers:

• learning how to relax, becoming capable of loosing tense of muscles
• learning and using relaxing formulas, also using the techniques of active and passive breathing
• becoming capable of observing and experiencing consciously the feelings of „getting heavy and warm”
• learning literature of autogen training
• learning the basis of attitude-forming necessary for positive thinking

For the children (with a few weeks of practice):

• body-functions can become harmonic
• organs of senses can become more sensitive
• their attention can become more concentrating
• waking-up in the morning can happen more easily
• self-confidence can grow, self-esteem can become stronger
• self-knowledge can become better
• their relations to environment can become more flexible