Week 43. 25th to 29th of October

In this week we had to make the presentation of our Project work that we had been working in it for 4 weeks.

“Music therapy for autistic children”

First of all, I was really happy because I liked the topic of our project and I really wanted and I want to learn more about it. The music therapy can work with a lot of situations and problems but we had to focus on one concrete tagged group.

Like I said in another post the group of the project work was formed by Bea, Signe, Yoran and me. We had to compare the music therapy for autistic children between Denmark, Netherlands and Spain.

About the process, when we started to search about more concrete information about the countries, sometimes I felt that it was a little bit difficult to found all the information in the Internet. I tried to be in contact with some professionals but I had one answer too late and some of them didn’t answer.

But really, above the difficulties, I think that we found good information to discuss and to think about it. I was surprised about some information for example that the autism was considered as a disability in an international way on the year 2001, so what was the situation before? They didn’t receive any help?

I didn’t know too that it was an International Association about Music Therapy and there are a lot of similarities about the way of work with this therapy on the three countries. Also I knew that there’s a lot of movement about music therapy in my country and now I know some projects too.

For me, to do a project like this in English was a challenge. Sometimes it was difficult to me to express myself and I was frustrated because I wanted to say things and I couldn’t find the way to say it; so it made me nervous and unconfortable. I think that to have different ways to work was an obstacle too; sometimes it was difficult to work in the same way and of course I know that when I will be working on my job it can be the same. But I think that to work in a same way is very important and sometimes it's because a lack of communication.

I didn’t know a lot about autistic children so it was helpful to learn more about this tagged group and I’m happy about that. This year, if it’s possible, I want to make my practical placement about horse therapy and in the future I want to work in it, so it was useful to learn more about the autism too because like music therapy, it works too.

….After making this project I was attending to one cinema session and there was a film about the autism and how can work the therapy with horses; is the story of a family to found ways to improve the situation of their son. The film is “The horse boy”, so if somebody wants to see it, here is the link of the trailer: http://www.horseboymovie.com/Film.php

Week 42. Autumn Break

Berlin!

Week 41. 11th to 15th of October

On Tuesday and Wednesday we has the guest teacher Bill Cleary to talk about the topics: “How religious values have influenced educational thinking practice in Ireland and Denmark” and “Are religious values relevant for the education of teacher/social worker professionals in post modern society?

I think that the religion has some values but one agnostic person can have the same values too. I know that the religion had influenced the social education on the beginning of this profession and that now there are work places that it has a big influence.

Sometimes I have dilemmas because for me the religion it’s not important but I know that I will work with people from different religions and of course I will consider this.

We could know some more aspects about the social education in Denmark and social work in Ireland. It was interesting to see the different ways of work.

For example, in Ireland the social workers are divided in 4 groups to work with different tagged groups, so maybe are more specialized. In Spain if you study social education you can work with different tagged groups, there isn’t different groups of social educators. Of course you can specialize by studying a master or some courses to work with one tagged group, but you decide it by yourself or because the institution want it.