50 years of the Special School “Dimitar Vlahov”

School that Brings Light

The school for children with impaired sight “Dimitar Vlahov” is both a primary (including preparatory) and a secondary school. There are two departments: for a bookbinder-card boarder and for a telephone exchange operator. Though, the new technology imposes the need for new departments in the school. The biggest problem with the textbooks occurs when the curriculum is changed. Part of the textbooks is printed with Braille alphabet, but part not, so the teachers manage any way they can.

“Don’t do anything that you wouldn’t like to be done to you”, is written in the classroom of the first-grade pupils Edis, Berat, Keti, Samir and Dimitar who are sometimes naughty, as all the other first-grade pupils, but when they have to learn the letters, they listen carefully to their teacher Snezana Talevska. The teaching goes the usual way. The children learn the letters of the Braille alphabet, read texts adjusted to their age, and the coming of the press photographer and the journalist in their class especially made Edis happy and he told us: “Welcome to our school, can you take a photo of us?”, and, embraced with his friends, posed in front of the press photographer’s lens.

Specific educational forms

Edis is an eight-year-old boy from Prilep who, starting from this year, is a pupil at the Special School for Children with Impaired Sight in Kisela Voda in Skopje, which is the only educational institution of this kind in Macedonia. Edis’s parents, as many others who have children with similar problem, were scared of the idea their child to go to special school, thinking that thus their child will be labeled and rejected from the surrounding. But, the opposite thing happened. Edis is now integrated in the educational system, Edis is learning now, Edis has friends now, Edis has free accommodation and food provided at the boarding school. This school has provided proper education for the short-sighted children for fifty years, finding specific educational forms and methods that will best fit the educational need of the children with impaired sight. In this school the children study the same subjects as in any other school, only the technique is adjusted to the needs of the students. Thus, when they have computer studies, they have special computers, which have both a usual keyboard and keyboard with the Braille alphabet, they have a Braille printer, on the Macedonian lesson they use a tool for enlarging letters-TV magnifying glass, in the library they have computers, so called “ordinary” books, but also books with Braille alphabet.

The school “Dimitar Vlahov” is actually both a primary (including preparatory) and a secondary, and in the secondary school the pupils have a possibility to educate themselves for two jobs: a bookbinder-card boarder and a telephone exchange operator.

Advantages

However, one mistake has to be corrected. The pupils who finish their primary education in the special school for children with impaired sight don’t have to continue their education at the same school. They can continue their education in some other school, according to their possibilities and interests. Many of those who finished their primary education in “Dimitar Vlahov”, enrolled at another secondary school, then at university, they graduated, and today they are teachers at the school where they used to be pupils. One of them is Kire Veljanovski who is an English teacher. He’s a young boy full of enthusiasm and knowledge, a great teacher who has understanding for his pupils because he experiences the same things himself.

“Many parents have a feeling that if they enroll their child at this school, in a way, hypothetically said, he will lose the opportunity to have a normal life. It’s a completely wrong impression. There was resistance in my family as well. My father admitted that he highly opposed the idea of me going to a school with a prefix “special”, but fortunately I began my education right here. Why do I say fortunately? If I had studied in “so called” regular schools, I would have been one of the 35 children in the class, and because I have a problem with my sight, how much attention would my teacher have been able to pay to me? In our school, though, the classes consist of one pupil, two, five or eight at the most in one class (that is the legal regulation). Considering the fact that there are teachers here who gained qualification in defectology, no matter what subject they teach, it’s clear that the child with impaired sight will get proper and quality education right here, in our school, because everything will be adjusted to his needs, and around him are peers with a similar problem”, explains Kire Veljanovski, adding that during his secondary school days when he studied at the secondary school “Josip Broz-Tito” he didn’t have any problems either with the material and the given school assignments, or with his peers.

This opinion is shared by Mirsada Bahic who teaches piano at the school “Dimitar Vlahov”, and who, same as Kire Veljanovski, is a former student of some of the current colleagues: “I  don’t think that I’ve lost something of the childhood because I studied here. On the contrary. Now I teach children to play the piano and I’m more than satisfied with my pupils. It’s known that people with impaired sight have some special gift for music, actually everyone have some special gift, you just have to get the proper directions”. Mirsada says that she’s not against all children to be included in the “so-called” regular schools, but there should be some preconditions for that, she points out. “I can’t understand how a regular school starts enrolling children with special needs, and they haven’t previously employed defectologists or trained teachers to work with these children.”

Problems and needs

“Believing in the possibilities of our pupils”, is the motto of this school, and the teachers who do their job in a dedicated manner, get the maximum from their pupils.

The teachers point out that their success depends firstly on their work, but also on the work of the social services that have an insight in families with children with special needs. “One thing is clear, the primary education is obligatory for all children”, says the math teacher Snezana Peshevska. “It can’t be allowed a child to be excluded from the educational process for any reason”, she explains.

The second big problem that the teachers in this school face are the textbooks. It’s true that there are many textbooks with the Braille alphabet, but for some subjects the teachers manage by printing part of the units with the Braille printer. “The problem occurs when the curriculum is changed, so part of the textbooks is printed with the Braille alphabet, and part isn’t”, says Natalija Filipovska, Macedonian language teacher. And of course, no matter how nice and working atmosphere we have, the children will become adults one day and will have to experience things by themselves. That’s why the question what happens later is imposed. “We need new departments!”, points out Jelena Jurhar, who teaches the specialized subject “telephonia”. At the department where I teach, after three years of education the pupils gain the title “telephone exchange operator”. However, with the development of technology, the question what happens later is imposed. The semi-automatic telephone exchanges are very rare, they have been substituted with digital, so our pupils can’t get employed anywhere”. Jurhar thinks that at the moment, with regard to employment, the pupils from the card-boarding department are in a better situation because they get employed in private companies that deal with this activity.

“We asked the Ministry of Education to open a new department at our school- a health department, physiotherapists, i.e. masseurs, which would be a great step forward for our pupils”, explains Jelena Jurhar.

The children love and respect their teachers, but, of course, the marks are a sensitive issue. Not that the pupils are angry at their teachers, but the closeness with the psychologist Sonja Fortumanova is different, the pupils from “Dimitar Vlahov” literally adore her, and they often say that she’s their second mother because many of them live at the boarding school divided from their families.

“The children here are from the age of six until the age of majority. So they pass the hottest period here with us, and that brings a special responsibility”, says the psychologist Sonja Fortumanova. While they are young we organize parties, gatherings, they have a playground in the schoolyard, but later when they’re teenagers they ask to go to concerts, parties, they want to go to a cafe. Of course, we listen to these requests and we even go to the disco with them. As a joke the pupils ask some of the younger teachers to go to a disco with them, so that they’ll fit the atmosphere, as they say. They are close enough with me to ask me for some advice with regard to emotions. As all young people, they face their first love, but also the first disappointment. And who hasn’t passed through that period? We are here to explain to them that they can overcome that as well, and that the primary obligations remain, and life goes on”.

Marija Kuka