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- No one is superfluous: people with disabilities have been helped in the capital since childhood
No one is superfluous: people with disabilities have been helped in the capital since childhood
People with disabilities have been socialized in the capital since their childhood. One of these places was the Social Integration Center on Bolshaya Pochtovaya Street. His teachers teach children with nosologies to communicate with each other through singing, dancing, and acting. Izvestia got acquainted with how one of the usual working days in the center is going.
With a song for life
A blond six-year-old boy and a black-haired woman are sitting at the piano. She plays a chant melody with both hands, brings out the scale, and he draws out the notes in a well-modulated voice. For hours, Roma and his music teacher Alina Mikhailovna have been preparing to record a new song. And nothing unusual, if not for one detail. Roma is blind. Like the vast majority of premature babies, he lost his retina at birth. The absence of one sense organ is compensated by others. Roma's hearing took over this function. Alina Mikhailovna says he's absolutely perfect. Therefore, he was accepted to the Diana Gurtskaya Social Integration Center, where the studio is located, immediately. Roma is artistic. In addition to studying with Alina Mikhailovna at the music studio in the same center, he also attends a theater studio and a speech therapist. Roma is hardworking. He visits the Bolshaya Pochtovaya center almost daily and prepares for an open art competition.
In the seven-year history of the Diana Gurtskaya Center for Social Integration, hundreds of children have been rehabilitated and trained in various artistic professions. More than 600 children with various nosologies are currently studying under the supervision of teachers and psychologists. Most of the pupils are children with intellectual disabilities, among them autistic, mentally retarded and children with Down syndrome. There are also blind, hard of hearing, with special features of the musculoskeletal system.
To get here to study, children undergo a special selection process, which is called diagnostics here. Approximately 400 people apply to the center for rehabilitation every year. In the process, experts look at the child's initial communication skills and physical data, assess how much he can socialize at all, because many children stay at home due to illnesses and cannot communicate, which affects the psyche. Those selected by the commission are admitted to rehabilitation, which consists of two stages. First, the pupil takes a three-month course in physical education, music, and vocals. During this time, teachers determine the specifics of the training program for each pupil, taking into account his inclinations, determine an individual development plan for each pupil, and he learns a specific subject — for example, the same vocals, choreography or pottery.
"The task of our specialists is to determine the trajectory of a child's creative development at the stage of diagnosis and to build the integration process very carefully. In our center, children actively draw, dance, and sing. In the classroom, experts observe the pupil and analyze what he does best and what skills he lacks for communication and speaking. We don't focus on just one creative direction, but rather offer several at once. If the child has good vocal skills, but has difficulties with coordination and movements, we additionally assign him to adaptive physical education classes," says Anton Lebedev, head of the Diana Gurtskaya Center for Social Integration.
Here, for example, is 18-year-old Maxim, a tall blind guy who is currently practicing vocals. After taking part in the final musical as a singer, Maxim caught fire and began attending a vocal studio, wanting to stay at the center longer. "I want to get into one—year rehabilitation, I can make friends here," he says.
Study, work, make friends
Maxim still has a lot of time to study at the center. According to the regulations, pupils are limited by the age limit. People from five to 35 years old can become them, therefore, very adult people sometimes come to classes with teachers along with children. The art room is quiet. Four students are diligently decorating an astronaut's costume in any form — today they have a space-themed lesson. Children are poring over drawings, unevenly colored with colored pencils. At the head of the table sits a large, portly man who could be mistaken for a teacher, but he is also a student of the Center. He is 28 years old and has an autism spectrum disorder. The lesson is coming to an end, the teacher is collecting the papers, everyone is handing them in without words, and only this young man is demanding to the teacher. "Here's my drawing, take it to the Museum of Cosmonautics at VDNKh," he says with edification in his voice. The teacher promises nothing, smiles sincerely and nods in response.
Working as a teacher at this center is a task with an asterisk. All children are hypersensitive and sensitive to falsehoods, they are easily touched to the quick, they react vividly to what is happening. It is necessary to be able to calmly and kindly give the child a sense of security in the conflict that has arisen. An unkind and irritable person cannot get a teaching position here, because you need to be psychologically very flexible, be able to quickly understand children's reactions without taking sides in them. Sometimes children don't get along with others, they can't study in a group, and the teacher and psychologist have to immerse themselves in their interpersonal relationships. Six children under the age of eight enter the office with a hubbub, two girls shouting "I won't sit with him" immediately occupy the next table and demand to remove a boy of about 14 from the office. It takes a few minutes for the teacher to convince the girls that they are already sufficiently separated from their classmate and he does not represent there are dangers for them.
Sometimes it is necessary to expel a pupil from the center. This happens, as a rule, as a last resort, when a sick child's conflict worsens due to his psychological characteristics. But the return trip, as we were assured, was not ordered to anyone. You just need to adjust the behavior.
More often, children stay at the center and make friends. Stepa is 21 years old, he has a delay in psychological development, but at first glance you wouldn't say that, an ordinary guy. He comes here while his parents are at work. Styopa wants to become a videographer, has already gained the necessary experience in a local studio, and together with other children, Styopa has made a film. "It's about an athlete, we wrote the script, shot it, it turned out very well! Look on social media, the movie "The Thief of Goodness" is called," Stepa says.
The music connected everyone
The class at the center will take place, even if not the whole group came to it. Four-year-old Varvara and her peer Timur will be learning a new piano song together today. But before that happens, they must overcome their emotional arousal and sit down on comfortable chairs. The children are blind from birth and do not see the pretty teacher, who gently asks them to join the class.
The children are accompanied to the center by their parents. Varya's mother brings her daughter to classes regularly, says that she is very musical. "My daughter suffered from cancer in early childhood, spent a lot of time in the hospital, where she did not communicate with the children. She's blind, she's very socialized now, tell her we're going to the center, she's ready to walk at least. Here she studies and communicates. God, everything is fine, but you can't imagine how worried we were about whether she would survive or not. But she survived, she sings with us," says Varya's mother Olga.
Blind children are still on a special account here. Wide guide strips are painted on the floor with special red paint for them, sensors on the ceiling are beeping, and artificial intelligence in the gadget guides them through the corridors. In general, the interior, although it resembles a hospital in design, has a very positive effect on the psyche, so that mothers waiting here communicate and smile. People come from different parts of Moscow, many of them take more than an hour to get there, and they spend about the same amount on the way back. But adults bring their children here, noting the development of their child's emotional and volitional sphere after classes. "My boy is one of the twins, he was diagnosed with cerebral palsy at birth. We had no idea how he would live. We found out about the opportunity to study, came for a diagnosis, took us here, he was in rehabilitation for a year, we looked for his strengths and found them. He's singing here now, studying at the theater studio. Before visiting the center, he was afraid to communicate, but then he was brought on stage, he literally blossomed. He's a completely different kid now," Mom tells us. And here is a boy named Lev himself, rushing to his mother Olga after singing lessons, relaxed, glowing. Today is a big day at the Center for Social Integration. Although she is technically on vacation, its founder and singer Diana Gurtskaya has arrived here. All the children who practice singing here are under her supervision, they say that she knows each pupil by name.
When talking about children, teachers emphasize that many of them can become participants in the international festival "White Cane" or the "Inclusive Moscow" competition — one of the stages of the latter, an art reading, took place on the day of our visit. Since last year, the festival has been open to the participation of children and groups without nosologies. The audition room is sparsely populated, and a girl in an angel costume is on stage reading a poem on behalf of an unborn baby. This is six-year-old Ksyusha, she is healthy, and her participation here is absolutely necessary: healthy children and children with disabilities will communicate as equals, which, according to the organizers, should benefit everyone.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
