‘Our students worry when the summer holidays come, they are happy when the school year starts’

Who are your charges?

We work with very special young people. We have two schools: a trade school where we teach four professions: food service assistant, hotel service assistant, bookbinding process operator and gardener. Next year, we plan to introduce vendor and photographer trade specialities. We strive to provide students with an education consistent with their interests and abilities. The school is attended by individuals with mild intellectual disabilities. The second, special vocational school, is for people with moderate or more severe intellectual disabilities. Here we have two programmes: retail and services, and hotel and gardening.

So all the students are intellectually disabled?

Yes. Some have multiple disabilities, such as visual, motor, auditory disabilities, autism, social maladjustment, that is, problems in contacts, failure to comply with the norms, behavioural disorders, this is quite a broad category. We have 142 students in both schools, aged 15-24.

Do they come to school every day?

Most are brought here by bus. They spend a great deal of time here. The first ones show up before 7 a.m., some are here until 5 p.m., waiting for transport home.

So school is a big part of their lives.

Our students are probably some of the few who don’t wait longingly for the holidays. Unlike the masses, they worry when the summer holidays come, and rejoice when the school year begins.

What are their concerns?

That they will sit alone at home, they will not have any attractions. We strive to make staying in school for these teens and young adults a developmental and interesting experience. We organise a lot of events and celebrations in cooperation with the local community. Before the pandemic, we went to the post office, library, and shops for practice, for example to stack merchandise on shelves.

Have you worked elsewhere?

This is my fourth year at this school. I have worked in a mass elementary school, a centre for deaf children, and in sociotherapy day care centres. I’m a psychologist by training.

What do your charges dream of?

They fall in love, often and hard. The peak of every boy and girl’s dream is to have a partner. But these partners come and go really quickly, sometimes we can’t keep up. I ask, ‘how long have you been with her?’. ‘What do you mean? Since today’, they reply. But for them, it’s already a relationship. We have a lot of scandals about breaking up relationships. E.g. if there is a couple and the boyfriend started dating someone else, it will always be the other girl who ‘broke up the relationship’ and is to blame. Most of these relationships are short-lived.

Why?

I think it’s because sometimes that feeling is a little forced. They want to be with someone so badly that it kind of doesn’t matter who it is, as long as that someone is there. It is very rare to find long-term couples. Most experience love very intensely from the beginning – there are no phases: infatuation, courtship. It’s more like: ‘want to be my girlfriend?’. ‘Yeah, I do’. So, now we’re in a relationship. But this sometimes leads to huge conflicts. Our students argue with their peers, then reconcile like everyone else. Like other teens, they are affected by cyber-bullying and dealing with the online world in general.

And what is their relationship with their bodies?

Girls who come to us have already reached puberty, with boys it happens a little later. People with mild disabilities are aware of their bodies and experience things just like normal teenagers. However, the students with moderate or severe disabilities sometimes don’t understand what’s going on with their bodies because their intellectual development stopped at the early elementary school stage. We once had a student who every month when she got her period, didn’t know what was going on, she was terrified. Despite our explanations, she could not comprehend it.

How and when are matters of the body talked about in your schools?

In trade school, we talk about what happens to the human body and how it changes in family education classes. In the special vocational school there are no such classes – the teachers, pedagogue, psychologist and our non-educational staff – the teacher’s aides – have to prove themselves here; we have three such teachers, two women and one man. They have a big influence on the physicality of the kids because they help them in the toilet. Often students trust them the most because they accompany them during intimate activities.

Are they the ones being asked questions?

If the student can talk. Not all of our charges know how to do that. The girls are attended to by the ladies, who explain their physiology to them while they change their clothes. They were the recipients of the majority of the sanitary pads that we received as part of the ‘Sanitary pads at school for every girl’ campaign carried out by the Kulczyk Foundation together with the Rossmann store chain. They are also the ones who find out if a girl doesn’t want to talk about her period, but just happens to be on it, and they solve the problem.

How do your special girls experience their periods? I hear they’re not ashamed.

The girls in the trade school are aware of their bodies, they know what menstruation is, why they have it, they freely talk to us about it. I think this is influenced by the fact that we are a small facility and we know each other well. I can list all the students by their full names, I know where they live, I know their parents. Female students have no problem asking for a pad if they happen to run out.

And in the special vocational school?

It’s different – they don’t all understand that they’re on their period. Some come from homes where the parents also have an intellectual disability, in which case it is not usually discussed in their homes. There are some teens for whom we were the ones who talked to them about menstruation for the first time. There are also girls who’ll refuse to admit that they are on their period, but the female support staff always know and help them. Others, on the other hand, say outright: it hurts, I’m on my period. People with intellectual disabilities are honest – if they don’t like something, they talk about it. If I feel bad, I’m not going to pretend that I’m okay. There are no taboo subjects. Sometimes we let them go home if the pain is too excruciating, sometimes they just need a hug.

It seems to me that this lack of shame is beautiful and can teach us something. We are saddled with cultural norms that tell us to be ashamed of a stain on our trousers, as if it were the greatest dishonour.

Stains on trousers happen too. We always have spares and help out.

And how do the boys respond?

Jokes do happen, but not on the same scale as in the mass schools.

Why did you join the campaign?

Hygiene items: nappies for changing the children or sanitary pads, must be provided by parents. We couldn’t always count on them; we often used our own. We have children of varying financial resources attending our school, and we have not always been able to meet their needs. This assistance is of great importance to us.

Isn’t it the role of the state to provide menstrual products like they do toilet paper?

I don’t know how it’s supposed to be. I don’t know if the state should be required to buy pads for schools. In my day, there wasn’t even soap or toilet paper. Now we are slowly moving towards normalcy, soap and paper are there. Menstrual products can be found in restaurant toilets. Maybe someday this will be the case in schools as well. If it was talked about more often, maybe this normality would happen sooner.

How is the programme being implemented in your schools?

We designated two volunteers among our female students. At the beginning, one of them came running to me scared: ‘miss, they’re going to take them all!’

‘They are stocking up?’

‘Yes, for home.’ And she was outraged: that’s not allowed, you have to take one at a time. I explained to her that schoolgirls need to learn that sanitary pads will not run out, that they will always be there when they need them. I asked her to replenish them every day no matter how many disappear. The most important thing is that the pads are available in the school. That a girl who doesn’t ask directly will be able to reach for them.

There is a disabled toilet on the second floor with ladies who help. So we hung the dispenser on the second floor, that’s where most of the girls from the trade school use the toilet independently. We told all the students about it and volunteers fill it up every day. Everyone in the school knows them, so they can also report the shortage to them directly.

Have you noticed any changes?

They don’t come to us any more, they don’t have to explain themselves. But they’ve always been able to talk freely with us, so nothing has changed in this respect.

Was this also such an open topic in other schools where you worked?

In a mass school, there are more than 20 students per class, there is no chance of having a close relationship with that many people. We have five people in each class. In those schools, girls solved all their menstrual problems among themselves; in ours, we are the first point of contact. The psychologist and pedagogue also have pads to give out if we happen to run out of them in the bathroom.

What do we need in menstruation education?

Sexual education classes are lacking. Family life education classes are optional; many students do not attend them. This idea doesn’t work. Maybe it’s the name that isn’t catchy enough. Or perhaps the people who teach these classes? It seems to me that they were not always chosen well. In my school days, sometimes it was the RE teacher who taught those classes – it’s hard to talk about the body and sexuality with someone who, by definition, has a different view of the world.

I’m wondering myself how to encourage boys and girls to participate in these lessons. It would be good if sexuality was discussed at school by specialists, and not by teachers or school psychologists, who are too few in Polish schools anyway. I think the ministry needs to think about where in the programme to put these classes so that they are held for all students.

Sex education for people with disabilities is a sensitive topic. There is a young adult with a disability in a friend’s family, and she fell in love with a boy she met in a special education school. And picture the scene: they are going to the mountains with their family. The stressed parents take turns keeping a watch outside their tent to have an eye on them. A humiliating situation for both the young couple and the parent. Is talking not enough?

We talk to our students, but it doesn’t always work because sometimes they don’t remember it after a while. Parents have a huge role to play. Girls may not be adults intellectually, but their bodies are developing properly, as in any human, so they have wants and needs. That’s why some mums provide our students with hormonal contraception. You can’t always keep an eye on a kid.

Contraception also needs to be talked about and explained a lot. It’s harder for people with intellectual disabilities to stop themselves from doing things. We, people without disabilities, are capable of refraining from sex or eating candy more often. With them it often goes like this: I want to, now, because it makes me happy. Reflection often comes too late.

I think that the next step after the pads in every school should be to make contraception available to young adults.

Oh, that’s a long way off.

But it’s a logical next move, right? Contraception is even more expensive than menstrual hygiene items.

Yes, although it’s definitely a more difficult area – there are different types of contraception, they have to be adjusted more individually. But the idea seems good to me, especially among people with intellectual disabilities who find it difficult to restrain physiological needs. They often want things now, right away. Why am I not performing today? Because today it’s someone else’s turn. But I want to, period! We try to teach them that they can’t do or have everything right away. We had a girl with Down syndrome who would strip naked and dance in the school bathroom because she felt like it.

She chose the best place in the school to do it. Do you have any pregnant charges?

One, but not with our student, we had no control over that. Three of our students are fathers.

Disability and parenting is beyond all reason for a lot of people.

Students with mild intellectual disabilities sometimes do very well in life – they get jobs, start normal families, and live like everyone else. The truth is that a few decades ago people with mild intellectual disabilities went to school with us, they were just the ‘worse’ students who got the lowest passing grades. They are no different from us at all. They are capable of supporting themselves and taking care of their families and often lead full lives. I visited one of our girls recently – she works in the kitchen at a hotel, has two children and a husband. In our school it’s just like in normal society – some people manage, others don’t, regardless of their intellectual abilities. Some require parental assistance. Not everyone chooses to keep [SW(1] their child and raise them.

What have you learned from your charges?

The students teach me the joy of the small things. It’s the beginning of COVID, everyone’s saying: keep your distance. We knew right away that it wouldn’t work in our case. I walk into the school and there are already two or three people clinging on to me at the door because they want a hug. This is their way of showing they’re happy to see me. Not everyone can say it, so they express it that way. I admire their spontaneity and sincerity.

 

Author: Maria Hawranek

Illustrated by Marta Frej

The text was published in „Wolna Sobota” a magazine of „Gazeta Wyborcza” on 22 January 2022