my GEDS experience

It has been a very intense and unique semester for me. I have attended great quality classes and meet many wonderful, competent and dedicated professionals.

A continuous presence of openness to sharing knowledge and cooperating in a positive and secure manner are of the most remarkable qualities I have encountered among North Carolina academics and professionals. I have to acknowledge the way that some people, particularly: Rune Simeonsson, Irene Zipper, Charles Bernacchio, George Noblit, Brian Rybarczyk, Melissa Johnson, Patrick Dollard have encouraged and influenced me for not only as a professional but as a person. Thanks to GEDS and all who made it possible.

Before leaving I will be experiencing one of the most remarkable aspects of University experience in the United States: sports.

Michael Jordan and Vince Carter are two examples of UNC Tar Heels quality in basketball.

Go Tar Heels!

Wright School at Durham

I had the opportunity to visit the Wright School at Durham. Wright School is a child mental health treatment program, one of the original demonstration sites for “Project ReED,”. Re-ED is an acronym for the Re-Education of Emotionally Disturbed Children and builds on positive concepts of normalcy and health rather than deviance and illness. The Re-ED approach is grounded in educational, psychological, and ecological principles. Nicholas Hobbs had been impressed by the "educateur" of Europe and Canada, and his approach blended elements of education, child care, and treatment into the profession of "teacher-counselor." These professionals are trained to build competence and restorative relationships in schools and residential settings, and they work closely with families and communities. Hobbs believed that children "have a tremendous desire to learn and to do well; that destructive and self-defeating behavior must be faced; that young people can help each other sort things out and arrive at good choices; that the world is rich in things to learn; that life is to be savored at each moment; and that decent, caring adults are absolutely essential in the lives of children if these children are to grow up strong in body, quick of mind, generous in spirit."

Click here for a guided tour of the Wright School at Durham.
“Creative people can revert to simpler ways of experiencing, to fresher ways of perceiving. They can throw away the common templates that are used to order the world and confidently seek simpler, newer ones.” Nicholas Hobbs (1960)

WakeMed Children's Hospital

Has part of the Children Development and Assessment course I had the opportunity to visit the WakeMed Children's Hospital in Raleigh, NC. Our visit was guided by the Clinical Psychologist Melissa Johnson, Ph.D. A great opportunity to get to know the important role psychologists have on Hospital environments in health promotion and recovery. Working with children and their families and also making links with social and educational settings.

Click here for some guided tours of the Wakemed Hospital in Raleigh.

Center for Discovery

“The Center for Discovery is inspired by people with disabilities to evolve new options for living. It offers individuals with a range of disabilities and medical frailties - and their families -innovative educational, clinical, residential and social and creative arts experiences designed to enrich their lives through personal accomplishment.”

I was at the Center for Discovery on the past few days with professor Rune Simenonsson. I had the opportunity to meet and talk with Patrick Dollard, a man with a ‘great spirit’ and vision. I visited the Center and the services they provide and I also had the opportunity to work with some of the staff on some research projects they are implementing. Click here for more information on the Center for Discovery.

Memorial Hall

The UNC is a vibrant place of cultural and artistic experiences. In 1883, when lack of space in Gerrard Hall prevented adequate seating for commencement, plans were drawn to build a larger building that would serve as a memorial to David Lowry Swain (former North Carolina governor and past president of the University of North Carolina). And the Memorial Hall was built. Click here for information on the Memorial Hall.

Yesterday I had the wonderful opportunity to see Sutra. It is a show with Shaolin monks. After the show the Shaolin monk leader and the choreographer answered questions from the audience. What a wonderful experience! Today I'm flying to New York to visit the Center for Discovery. Looking foward for that now.

Weekend at Washington

One of the great benefits of being on an exchange visit program abroad is the opportunity to travel and get to know other places. Last weekend, me and two other Portuguese students visiting North Carolina, rented a car a drove to Washington where we spend the weekend. We visited the national archives, the holocaust museum, the natural history museum and I have to say that the Science Club is highly recommended. Here is a video from the national archives.

Classes Start

The UNC is now filled with life! People from all over the United States and the world are here. UNC was chartered in 1789 and was the first public university in the United States and the only one to graduate students in the eighteenth century. Click here for more interesting facts of the UNC history.

I´m looking forward to attend some advanced classes on qualitative research methods, child development and assessment, rehabilitation psychology and, particularly, the course Communicating in the American University Classroom that is aimed for preparing international Teaching Assistants to become instructors at the UNC. Preparation for teaching at University will be the main focus and we will have to do some teaching that will be videotaped and feed-back will be provided from peers and undergraduate students.

Arriving at Chapel Hill

Hello! My name is Pedro M Teixeira. I'm a Psychologist working on my PhD at Porto University. I arrived on Chapel Hill on the 15th of August 2010. My GEDS exchange program visit has just begun. As you know the GEDS (Global Education and Developmental Studies) is a mobility project for graduate students across the university partners of the Transatlantic Consortium on Early Childhood Intervention.

I will be visiting the UNC (University of North Carolina) at Chapel Hill for the autumn semester. There are also four German students from Munich, the capital city of Bavaria. You may read the blog of their experience clicking here. This first week was particularly helpful for settling in and getting to know Chapel Hill. Chapel Hill is a town in Orange County, North Carolina, United States and the home of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The population was 48,715 at the 2000 census; its population was listed at 54,492 in the Census Bureau's 2007 estimates. The town was named after an Anglican chapel on a hill, now known as Chapel of the Cross. Chapel Hill, Durham and Raleigh make up the three corners of the Research Triangle, so named in 1959 with the creation of Research Triangle Park, a research park between Durham and Raleigh.

Click here for more information on Chapel Hill.

The Center for Discovery

One of the most amazing experiences (if not the most!) of the GEDS exchange was the visit to the Center for Discovery - an absolutely unique place, gathering generosity, knowledge, ambition and health in the very same project. The Center is located in a small town named Monticello, near Newburgh, New York state. 

In the 1950's, this town used to be a vacation option for many New Yorkers. In a few hours it was easy to leave the big city and take a rest in a beautiful and peaceful environment in deep connection with nature. Today, other vacation destinations are as easy to get as any other place in just a couple of hours, so Monticello is not a favorite spot anymore. 

Currently, most residents of Monticello work in the Center for Discovery. The center makes the difference from other approaches to intervention in severe disabilities due to the existence of a solid philosophy shared by all of those working for the center: the contact with nature,   community integration and work.

In line with this thinking, the Thanksgiving Farm was created, based on the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), with its very own Bakery, Healing Gardens, The Stonewall Preserve with its pastures and Co-op store! Residents of the center and residents of the community work along, side by side, producing the most wonderful food and other natural and organic products - even lip balm is produced here!

The Center offers a residential Program that has been working with people with complex and multiple needs for 35 years, aiming to help this individuals to achieve the fullest life possible and drawing upon a wide range of therapeutic interventions and many different kinds of expertise to shape the programs tailored to each individual’s potential. The Educational interventions also include ambulatory services for autistic young people and another for those with significant physical disabilities. Parents remain actively involved in the design of their child’s program as it evolves along with the child. A team made up of a certified special educator and two and a half para-professionals leads each class, and a class size of six or fewer children ensures that each child receives the individual attention they need. A caring and attentive team of experts safeguards the health and safety of the young people in the program. Full-time nurses are available to administer medications and to respond to medical emergencies.

A Sensitive Teaching model and a Nature based Curriculum are the models in the base of these interventions. Other therapies are also provided such as Occupational and Physical Therapy, Music Therapy, Aquatics, Adaptive Physical Education, Speech Pathology therapies and Psychology. Recently, a RIT (Reciprocal Imitation Therapy) model has started to be implemented. A comprehensive assessment model is also used and specific packages of assessment might be selected with parent training options also.

The Carrus Institute is designed as a resource for families and staff and many others. It serves as a community center as well as a place to convene and bring in others, to inform and be informed by the work of The Center.

The Health Center provides all clinical and medical services needed and, as every other building in the whole center, it is entirely green. Ecology friendly architecture is provided by experts in the field. Actually the administration board of the Centre is a full interdisciplinary approach comprising educators, therapists, families and also economists, lawyers and architects. Together this team is committed to continue with this common definition of community integration.

When we first visited the Center, a special meeting was being held, in which the group was engaged in the definition of a 2030 vision for the future of the Center. We truly believe that this commitment to constant improvement, solidly based in a common philosophy of well being and generosity, is the secret for the uniqueness of this Centre, with the leadership excellence of its director Patrick Dollard.

We fully encourage you all to visit their website, as they provide a whole new and contemporary way of conceiving Disability and Inclusion.

April 26

Spring semester is ending – it is celebration time for most of the students in Chapel Hill. The streets are more crowded than ever and there is a fusion of music sounds and barbecue “perfume” coming everywhere from little celebrations on student’s residencies. The weather also seems to be welcoming the holidays, a bright sun shines almost every day.

However, the diversity of purposes and programs that Chapel Hill University incorporates makes some celebrating the end of a study year and others welcoming and engaging new courses and opportunities – for the majority of graduate students it is time to continue the research and to restart learning.

UNC academic year is mainly composed by a fall semester – between August 22 and December 20 – and by a spring semester – between January 8 and May 9. But, when you think there is nothing new until next year, “here comes the sun”… new and rich opportunities of learning with summer sessions. Between May and July UNC students can attend all kind of courses in the first and second summer sessions.

Between all of this, here we are, two international students from GEDS program walking on the crowded campus, finishing some courses and starting others. The agreement established between European and US Universities opens all tracks that we might want to take – you can freely attend the courses that better fit your interests. The variety of choices and the flexibility to accomplish them is really promissory for you to return back home with a “double size” of knowledge. As my home university supervisor uses to say, it is just the right time to get the bag full of experiences to later reflect and integrate all of them. On the directory of classes of UNC website www.unc.edu/clsched you can find the available courses on each semester and summer session.

From this general picture, we would like to “zoom in” one outstanding piece: the conclusion of our course “Communicating in the American University Classroom”. This course focused on topics necessary for effective interaction in the American classroom and it is part of the Preparing International Teaching Assistants Program. In this last three weeks we have been engaged on microteaching experiences. We had to face particular challenges like accomplishing tasks as defining a term, explaining a visual or teaching a process and presenting these to the audience. These presentations were videotaped and commented by the instructors and colleagues. This brought us brand new ways of disseminating and expressing knowledge, which is a precious part of the research job.

“Zooming out” from this piece, here we are again among thousands of students circulating 24 hours between UNC´s libraries. Carolina´s libraries are distributed across campus in more than a dozen locations. Among Davis, Wilson and Undergraduate Libraries you have a lot of students engaged on their goals.

All this diversity on life tracks and goals seems to be the basis of a common feeling of happiness to be part of this student community.

Dorothea Dix Hospital

The Dorothea Dix Hospital is a Psychiatric hospital, part of the North Carolina State University in Raleigh, state capital. The hospital has outpatient and inpatient services. 8 psychologists work at Dix Hospital and Play Therapy is the main therapeutic strategy used with children in outpatient services. The hospital serves around 200 patients. Criteria for eligibility is defined by the NIMH (National Institute of mental Health), but the children served at this hospital are mainly developmentally disable children or children with specific diagnosis - psychotic and mood disorders. Family involvement is often required and treatment strategies include Family Therapy, Individual Therapy, Groups intervention and Psychoeducational interventions. All children served at the Dix Hospital have IEP (Individualized Education Programs). Visit the Dix Hospital website and the NIMH website for more information.

The Wright School

Anyone who wants to know how effective can a Re-education program be, should visit the Wright School website. This school has a very successful re-education program for children with severe emotional disorders (ages 6 to 12) and their families. In the classroom there are small groups of children, according to their age levels, and each classroom has a particular purpose of learning. On the reading class, for instance, 6 children were working on reading activities with two monitors. The monitors are graduate students from UNC and their role is the one of a "teacher-counsellor". The environment is quite and peaceful. Visit the Wright School Website for guided tour, learning about Wright school principles and Re-education.

April 9

Here we are writing from a really hot Chapel Hill. In the last few days we have had a maximum of 30º Celsius – an atypical situation according to Chapel Hill citizens. The city is now surrounded by trees exhibiting flours that compound an amazing multicolor landscape. Everyone looks happier, walking until late in the evening in the roads with short clothes and enjoying the moment while appreciating the wonderful music played in the Campus… At night it’s amazing to sit down on the campus grass listening to the sound of a violin and a harmonic.

Surrounded by this magic environment we completed the IRB training in social and behavioral research. The Collaborative IRB Training Initiative (CITI) is a web-based training package on issues related to human subjects research. This training is required to all faculty, staff and students who are engaged in the planning, conduct or analysis of research at UNC-Chapel Hill that involves human subjects. UNC-Chapel Hill is committed to uphold the highest standards of ethical conduct and regulatory compliance in research. The training available through CITI is a really new impulse to the increasement of the awareness level and to the understanding of these issues across our research. CITI contains modules on topics like informed consent, vulnerable populations, ethical principles and IRB regulations. Each module has a short quiz at the end to assess understanding. Modules have been grouped in (1) Biomedical Research, (2) Social and Behavioral Research, and (3) Research Involving Data and Specimens Only. You can access the CITI website by following the link www.citiprogram.org

It was in fact a very enriching experience that we strongly recommend to everyone.

Greetings from a warm land,

March 26

Dear all,
It has already been one month since our GEDS program experience began. Looking back, we can confirm that the time runs through the different and engaging experiences that we find day by day. Till now we’ve been immersed in a growing network that has been expanding in terms of contacts and knowledge in all the – almost endless – research life contained on Chapel Hill University. Everyone we meet knows someone else that also has a research theme that fits our interests – and then here we are engaged in a snow ball of new worlds of knowledge and perspectives. Quickly and simply they connect us and a new window of learning opportunities emerges – it’s amazing how flexible and effective is this communication and openness of everybody to share their work, ideas and projects.
Among these experiences, as you already know from the previous post, we met the Pam Winter’s project named CONNECT: The Center to Mobilize Early Childhood Knowledge. This is a about providing a web-based resources and supports to implement inclusive evidence-based practices: http://community.fpg.unc.edu/connect. Addressing inclusion issues this web-based resources focus on and respond to challenges faced each day by those working with young children with disabilities and their families. Through a friendly user web-site you easily get absorbed on a new brand space that links the research evidences with the daily practices – by building learner modules that adopt a Five-Step Learning Cycle: (1) dilemma: is about a child’s participation in an inclusive setting viewed through the eyes of both the teacher and the family; (2) question: turn the dilemma about child’s participation into an answerable question; (3) evidence: consider research, consensus statements and policies, and experience-based knowledge related to embedded interventions; (4) decision: integrate sources of evidence, different perspectives, and unique contexts to make an informed decision; (5) evaluation: consider ways to evaluate the plan for promoting child’s participation that resulted from the decision-making process. The research evidences are presented and highlighted through practices examples that represent inclusion theoretical principles, namely embedded interventions, family involvement, family-professional partnerships and transition. A case report given by teachers, other professionals and family show how the same situation can be perceived by different persons, knowledge domains and contexts.
In knowledge diffusion domain we found on that web-based researches a powerful tool to evidence-based practices.
Looking forward to hear from you through comments and new posts.
Best,

The Connect Project

The Connect Project is one of the Early Childhood Community projects, developed by the Frank Porter Graham Center and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The aim of the Connect project is that everyone trying to study or just know more about Early Childhood Intervention issues can have access to their website and attend their modules. Several resources are provided (such as videos, reading materials and activities to implement in the classroom), as well as quizzes where you can test your knowledge. A participant attending the Connect modules can learn more about Family and Teachers' perspectives on Early Childhood Intervention, Policies, Transdisciplinary teamwork, RTI (Response to Intervention) and many other topics to improve practice in working with children with disabilities.

The Connect aims to divulge the ways in which you can teach Early Childhood Intervention topics, so anyone is encouraged to use the materials provided and apply them in their own teaching!

Visit to Murdoch Center

Hello everyone, 


here comes the time to share with you another great experience that the GEDS exchange program allowed us to have: the visit to Murdoch Center.

Murdoch Center is one of the four regional centers operated by the Division of Mental Health, Developmental Disabilities and Substance Abuse Services of the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Resources. The center provides comprehensive residential care, Person-centered, for approximately 550 citizens from  18 counties of North Carolina State. The center has 1720 employees that provide care 24 hours a day to in short-term programs when the family cannot support the needs of the client.

Staff includes Teachers, Psychologists, Physical Therapists, Social Workers, Speech and Hearing therapists, Occupational therapists, physician, psychiatrist, dentist, dietician, pharmacist and vocational instructor.

To be eligible for admission to Murdoch Center a person must have a diagnosis of profound, severe or moderate mental retardation or a related developmental disability.

Murdoch has specific programs for specific populations: young adult males with developmental disability diagnoses and extreme behavior problems from the entire state in a specialized behavioral unit (BART), specialized residential services to children who have Autism with accompanying severe behavioral challenges (PATH) and adolescents with developmental disabilities, mental health issues and behavioral challenges (STARS). Most of the intervention are based on Functional Assessment and Behavioral approaches.

Murdoch Center in Butner is located, an area that historically has hosted numerous prisons, residential homes,  psychiatric hospitals and special education schools. 

Another unforgettable experience among many that we have the chance to experience.

GEDS Program - 3rd Week

Dear all,

Here we are, beginning our third week of the GEDS Program.

The huge change in our daily lives brought by this exciting experience has demanded an adaptation process to reorganize our routines.

From this standpoint, our second newsletter is mainly about “getting engaged” with the planned experiences, the people and the social and cultural life of Chapel Hill.

Our day begins with a 15 minutes’ walk to Chapel Hill University, mainly to two distinct destinations: the Peabody Hall and the Family Support Network. Even though the cold is hard, the landscape is beautiful: large roads surrounded by quiet spaces of houses and trees.

The two distinct locations of our work, the Peabody Hall and the Family Support Network , although different, have been conducting us to convergent action lines.

Peabody Hall is usually the starting point. There we attend the interesting course of Child Development and Disability – which emphasizes typical and atypical manifestations of cognitive, social/emotional and communicative development in children. Very close to Peabody Hall – in Greenlaw building - we have been engaged on the course Communicating in the American Classroom, where themes as learning styles, typical expressions and non-verbal communication in an American classroom, have been addressed.

A beautiful office was kindly provided to us at Peabody Hall. It has been the reference point to develop our individual study and to face other interesting research challenges regarding ICF domains and the available measurement tools. A little bit far away - in Seawell School Road – we have been discovering a brand new knowledge about appropriate learning environments and curriculum strategies for young children with and without disabilities at Early Childhood Intervention and Family Support Course.

The “American experience” is being really interesting, particularly the opportunity to attend courses at the Chapel Hill University, as well as to have the opportunity of learning from different perspectives which are being very important steps for our learning process.

Regarding the other preferential destination - Family Support Network - we have been deeply engaged on the core literature reading and on the interaction with the whole excellent team, achieving a brand new learning on Parent-to-Parent Programs and Family-Centered Practices. Today the FSN-NC is a statewide affiliation of community-based family support programs that also promotes the involvement of family members in the development and implementation of family-centered practices in North Carolina.

For last but not less important, we are finding on Chapel Hill a great center of cultural activities that promotes every weekends at Memorial Hall a different show – from artistic dance to beautiful Jazz concerts. Also, there are emotive sports activities related to the North Carolina Basketball Team.

We are engaging on Chapel Hill life and the knowledge and personal growing has been amazing – so much experiences we are collecting.

Soon we will tell you more.

Hello!

This is the beginning of our experience as GEDS (Global Education and Developmental Studies) fellows in UNC (University of North Carolina), Chapel Hill. GEDS is a mobility project for graduate students across the university partners of the Transatlantic Consortium on Early Childhood Intervention, in order to prepare leaders with a global perspective and skills related to educational policy, program development, evaluation, and research. Participants in GEDS will include 24 U.S. and 24 E.U. students, who will gain experiences at their home institution and during a one-semester, full-time experience at an institution abroad involving field placement, seminars, an independent study, and interactive experiences with a foreign language and culture.

We are Susana Castro and Mónica Maia, from Porto University. The first week's stay at UNC has been really exciting! We are based at the School of Education (Peabody Hall, which you can see in this picture). People working at he School of Education are extremely friendly and helpful!

There are lots of interesting things going on at UNC and we will be engaged in as much activities as we can, but today we will focus on FSN (Family Support Network), which stands for exceptional intervention programs completely focused on families of children with disabilities. Here, the focus of intervention is not the child, but whatever is considered by the parent as a need, will make them eligible for the services!

Within the Family Support Network at Orange County (FSN is spread all over the State of North Carolina) there are several programs, directed to the different needs of the family. All resources might be seen at www.fsnnc.org. This website also includes information on laws and policies regulating the special education and early childhood intervention services.

A very recent project developed in FSN relates to supporting military parents with children with disabilities, always considering that the needs are reported by the parents themselves! Marines are a very young population of parents in USA, so most of these children are under age 5, and have specific needs due to the fact that these are military families, where often the father has to go away of his home. In the scope of this project an assessment instrument is being developed concerning the perceptions of these children’s functionality and based on the International Classification of Functionality Disability and Health, Children and Youth version (ICF-CY; WHO, 2007).

In the next posts we will report specific tasks in the scope of the FSN team, as well as other centers we are about to meet and be a part of!