Several Bastion Elementary School students will be leading by example.
Six Grade 4 students from the school’s French immersion program were filmed in French and English last Friday for a Ministry of Education Provincial Outreach Program for Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (POPFASD).
“Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) is an umbrella term that covers a range of harms or disorders caused by the mother’s use of alcohol during pregnancy,” says Janet Hohner, program consultant and former Salmon Arm teacher.
Individuals born with FASD often have lifelong physical and learning difficulties. These can include problems with memory, reasoning, attention and judgment due to the neurological damage, Hohner says, noting that Health Canada estimates nine out of 1,000 children born in Canada are affected by FASD. It is, the most common form of preventable birth disorder in the western world.
Teaching children with FASD presents challenges, and part of the provincial outreach mandate is to support teachers through presentations on the program’s website to help them increase their understanding of the disorder.
Hohner says one of the ways the program does this is through e-learning modules, at the elementary level and at the secondary level to provide a framework for working with learners with FASD to help them acquire the social skills needed to succeed in their daily lives.
“We will demonstrate different aspects of FASD,” says Hohner. “There is a real need out there for more information to help teachers and parents teach social skills to some of the students.”
The secondary module was filmed in Richmond and Hohner turned to Salmon Arm for help with the elementary portion.
School District #83 employees who are involved in the project are Michelle Rasmussen, Cathy Steeves, Catherine Auten, Alan Harrison and Nora Kennett.
Steeves, a teacher at Bastion, says the students were very excited about their participation in the film.
“They think it’s really cool,” she laughs. “I think they’re excited because they’ll be in a movie. They’re not acting out as FASD students, they’re regular kids modelling a lesson.”
Emphasizing the would-be film starts do not have FASD, Steeves explains lessons will model behaviour.
“The students will demonstrate scenarios that could occur when a teacher is teaching students about social skills,” said Hohner last week.
“They will demonstrate all sorts of real-life scenarios and Cathy Steeves will be demonstrating how to work with FASD students.”
Anyone who is interested in learning about the FASD outreach program can visit www.fasdoutreach.ca. Five of the learning modules are available on YouTube, Facebook and as free downloads on iTunes. The Bastion module will be available on the FASD outreach website sometime in the fall.