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INSIGHTS IN A NUTSHELL: FROM CLEVELAND, USA TO ST.PETERSBURG, RUSSIA
We hope you enjoy Dr. Susan Turben’s review of her eight visits to the western Baltic country of Russia, specifically to the city of St.Petersburg. This is her story!
First, Susan shares certain important statistics related to her story; she includes them because they are important to those who allow Dr. Turben the privilege of carrying out her mission to improve the lives of Russian families living in dire and difficult situations whose children have disabilities.
Statistics: Since October, 2004, more than 200 families and teachers have received learning profile reports, home visits, evaluations and training with homemade and home available toys. The purpose of Susan’s project is to acquaint adults with knowledge of early intervention and special education strategies which are effective tools for working with children with moderate and pervasive development disabilities, including autistic spectrum, in integrated settings where children without disabilities provide a role model for learning.
Young children from three months to eleven years of age and their parents have participated in more than 30 training classes; during classes, parents observe with Susan’s help, unique abilities and skills which their children demonstrate during play and recreation. Informal conversation with the help of the interpreter provides answers to parenting concerns. Susan’s suggestions for home-based activities are included in a booklet, “Play, Play, Play” containing areas of development and activities for home-based learning. “Play, Play, Play” is presented to each parent or family member as a home guide to child management and tasks that match each child’s age and stage of development.
At all sessions, teachers, parents and observers sit in a closed loop formation making it easier to share information. In some cases, a confidential conference may take place outside the classroom area. Susan conducts most sessions at floor level, called “Floor Play (Stanley Greenspan, conference workshop, Chicago, 1990”.) She demonstrates sensory-motor, language, social and emotional and mental and physical strategies. Teachers meet separately with Susan after class to share observations, identifying life style parental issues, problems of motivation and child’s personality, identification of weaknesses and strengths and language and communication strategies.
The most acute challenge for Susan and teachers, families and parents, is to learn observation skills and formal and informal methods of record-keeping, thus accurately monitoring an evolution of change of dynamics that will, over time, allow children to “graduate” from Hesed Aavram and Adain Lo Family Center into school settings.
Susan’s story
Susan’s teaching mission to St. Petersburg, Russia began in 2004 when she traveled to Adain Lo Family Center, an integrated school for children with disabilities, and to Hesed Aavram Social Services Center, to work for the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland, Ohio and Jewish Federation International, as a volunteer professional. Susan appealed to both organizations and was interviewed by the director at Adain Lo Family Center and granted permission to begin visits every six months.
Her mission is to teach teachers and parents of children with disabilities and typically developing children who are role models, knowledge of new advances in ameliorating childhood disability. The goals are to motivate and educate parents and teachers in early intervention learning strategies, ranging from physical and motor development to language acquisition and more. She understood the poverty of the families she would be serving and their needs because of earlier work that began in Albany, NY.
In 1964, Susan, working for NY State Departments of Health and Education and Department of Developmental Disabilities, pioneered family life education and infant toddler programs in New York State, as result of her participation, along with her children, in the first and only summer Head Start program, as part of the War on Poverty. Head Start was a pioneering effort by child development experts to address the War on Poverty, declared by President Lyndon Johnson. Head Start remains a magnificent endeavor (authors include John Richmond, Ed Ziegler, Betty Caldwell, etc.)
So what does Susan do in Russia each visit since 2004? She uses simple home available toys and tools to demonstrate how household toys teach children to be smart and strong! She trains pediatricians, social workers, family members about specific difficulties such as autism, fetal alcohol syndrome, cerebral palsy, cortical vision loss, feeding programs and speech production, eating and playing and talking and learning. She has workshops and makes home visits and shows parents effective exercises for anxiety, bi polar disorders, behaviors that can be fixed with simple games.
When she returns to Russia October 16-24th, she promises a blog each day and hopes you join her!
Each time she travels, Susan sees improved housing conditions and schools, easier access to basic necessities from better social services, and hope from visits that give families ideas about how important healthy and smart children with disabilities can be! But families that share Shabbat or worship in a marble-floored church or mosque also occupy a shared set if three small rooms and a communal bath and kitchen with numerous other families. And still, in 2009, generations of families live without sanitation, education, beds, covering and coats in winter, clothes wash and wear healthy food, doctors, medicine, depression and alcoholism.
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