Together on the way

Since the 2019/20 school year, the Support and Counseling Center Worms has started its work as a department of the Geschwister-Scholl-School. The team currently includes six special needs school teachers who support the Worms mainstream schools with part of their hours with extensive specialist knowledge and many years of experience in all questions relating to school life and learning. If necessary, special school teachers from the cooperation partners Neumayerschule (school with a focus on language) and Dreieckschule (school with a focus on motor development) are included in the consultation or discussions with other network partners (e.g. doctors, therapists, mobile youth welfare) are initiated.

The range of counseling topics extends from learning difficulties to partial performance disorders and peculiarities in perception, language, movement, concentration and behavior to questions related to school careers. The primary goal of the counseling is to set out together to help students to learn successfully by creatively exploiting all possibilities.

In the past school years, teachers at the Worms mainstream schools have each made more than 100 requests for advice to the FBZ. In the run-up to the consultation, the class teachers inform the parents about the consultation request. As experts for their child, parents are an important partner in the entire counseling process. Each consultation begins with an intensive joint analysis of the current situation from a systemic point of view and the formulation of a specific question to be worked on.

In the next step, the competencies of all those involved are brought together and measures to clarify the issue are defined. If necessary, the special needs teacher sits in on the lessons or works with the child individually in order to get their own impression of the difficulties and to identify possible stumbling blocks in learning. If necessary, learning aids are offered, which the child can then continue to use in class lessons. In agreement with the parents, the suggestion of extracurricular diagnostics (e.g. vision or hearing tests) or therapy (e.g. ergotherapy) and the linking of the results with school learning are also part of the advisory work.

What has been achieved is regularly evaluated together and it is considered whether there are further goals for the advice or whether measures need to be adjusted. The consultations are as individual as the problems and can take place selectively or over a longer period of time.

Many learning difficulties have already been solved in this way. Numerous teachers at regular schools are very happy to use the advisory service because teamwork often allows new ideas to be developed that benefit the students. The FBZ contributes to enabling children to attend regular schools successfully in a culture of retention in the spirit of inclusion.