Children's Development and the Staff BBQ

Thursday March 30th – Lil from the children’s mobility department spent all day with us discussing more children’s mobility topics. We discussed development in general and concept development. We also covered family dynamics, “normal” development, disabilities and their effects on development, learning, memory, pedagogy (The art or profession of teaching), thinking and problem solving strategies, and how with children you are often part of a multi disciplinary team. It was an exhausting day! Lil is a dynamic and interesting speaker who conveys information with lots of stories, movement, and voice inflection. She is absolutely mesmerizing but gives an enormous amount of information is a short period of time, hence the exhaustion at the end of the day. At one point Lil had us each grab a random item out of her "goodie" bag and explain how we could use that item to teach a mobility concept. One of the items was a wig, which she wore when she posed for this photo. It was agreat lesson in being creative with everyday items to teach concepts.

Lunch today consisted of a staff BBQ. There were about 40 GDV employees from all different departments and it was fun to chat with all the staff. Sue and I are very interested in talking shop with the guide dog trainers but still haven’t had much opportunity. We chatted briefly with Peter Tomlins who spent a year working at The Seeing Eye in the states a few years ago. He is interested in talking shop too, so promised to find some time to sit down with us and talk. He mentioned briefly that he has been experimenting with clicker training but the idea hasn’t really caught on in Australia yet.

We continued the afternoon with Lil and ended the day with a quick review of topics to be included on our first test. Yes, I said test! We have to take exams about every other week. Tomorrow will be the first one, with a variety of multiple choice, short and long answer questions.

Like good girls, we went to the gym again and managed to find another shopping mall, as I am in need of new running shoes. Sizes here are misleading as they are labeled US10 (yes, I have big feet), but I am finding the shoe is a size smaller than what I actually wear.

Ron’s Aussie for the Day; “Cooo-eee” originally began as a distress call when a person was lost in the bush. Now it can be used in a sentence to indicate a long distance. “I was drier than a dying dingo with not a pub in cooee”.