PERÚ, Adriana Cáceres. The Leonor Tarifa Center of Peru, a charitable institution whose purpose is training and educating children with learning disorders so they may be duly respected, incorporate themselves into society and be useful and productive in their communities, offered a course: the Learning Process of students with ADHD (Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). This course was held March 8th, at the Trujillo Schoenstatt Shrine (in the parish classrooms) and was directed towards teachers, parents and university students.
In relation to the topic from the viewpoint of teachers from educational institutions and for parents whose children have this difficulty, proposals were presented wherein the pedagogy developed by Father Kentenich was applied in several cases and was proven as helpful to the education of children with ADHD.
Father Reinaldo Nann, showed the importance of the program and asked the help of the Blessed Mother with a prayer to start the event. A video of an interview with psychotherapist, Dr. Luis Rojas Marcos, was shown to motivate everyone since Dr. Rojas suffered from this disability in his childhood.
Great expectations
The participants, mostly teachers and parents, were highly expectant at learning about the application of Father Kentenich’s pedagogy to children with ADHD.
Aspects of Father Kentenich’s pedagogy were discussed as well as other concepts relating to school collaboration, between parents and teachers. They highly recommended that the task be done jointly, in an integral effort, to better help with the difficulties of these children’s learning process.
Every child needs an angel…each child with ADHD needs several!
The teacher is an angel in the flesh before class starts, during, and afterwards.
Against ADHD, the school becomes the protector of these angels, it is the training ground, helping coordinate parents and teachers, and providing a pleasant atmosphere for the children, using educational programs, academic as well as artistic ones for children with ADHD. Schools can also invite other institutions to aim at goals for helping in the learning process of these children.
Parents of children with ADHD are also called to become the guardian angels of their children. By helping to learn characteristics such as the importance of acceptance, warmth and tolerance of parents, the more they trust their children, the more improvement in their children to overcome their disorder is seen.
But how is this done?
As demonstrated by the speakers, this is done by awareness that one is called to be a patient and a wise educator who knows how to increase the self-confidence of these children, training them to live within their limitations, freely, and deeply rooted in the awareness that each of them has a mission in life.
The teacher becomes a human angel, geared to discover methods and strategies needed so this child with the lack of attention span due to hyperactivity or not, may freely advance without pressure, and use his overflowing energy to the progressive development of his learning capacity to self educate.
The teacher is his angel. The teacher, based on the conviction that each child is unique, puts his/her full trust in the child, and challenges everything that causes mistrust in the child. With this he/she aims for the child to experience the teacher’s full trust in him/her, that the teacher believes in him/her, with the goal of the child responding to this confidence by trusting the teacher as well, and as a result, there is an improvement in the child’s learning process.
A child linked to the warmth of his family, to the love of his parents, to the God of life, and with attachment to everything that surrounds him, his companions, his teachers, the pleasant surroundings around him. All this helps to overcome his/her disability, to direct all his energy toward the welfare of the people he deals with in his daily life.
The aim is to develop in the child, a personal ideal, a goal, something that he/she can reach: as a person, in a group, a goal for his family, in community, an ideal for the whole school. Each ideal has to include values that become attitudes something that would help him to discover his personal worth, with high esteem and respect from others.
Gifts imply responsibilities
The speakers answered numerous questions and comments from the participants following the presentation. At the end, a photo was taken of F. Reinaldo Nann, the speakers and the participants. They were asked whether this course could be offered at other institutions to train other teachers. The Leonor Tarifa Center of Peru willingly accepted the proposal and is ready to collaborate knowing that the training of teachers and parents would highly benefit the children with difficulties in their learning process.
For more information…
The Leonor Tarifa Center in the Virtual Tents of Covenant Culture
The Leonor Tarifa Center will be present in the tents of Covenant Culture in the Jubilee 2014 in Schoenstatt – Pedagogy
Original: Spanish. Translation: Kohnie Valderrama, Madrid, Spain
