The students who shine

On which day were you born,” an intense teenage boy asks me.

“Er...I don’t know,” I reply.

“Well, what’s your birthdate?” I tell him.

“Tuesday,” he tells me, quite adamantly. “You were born on a Tuesday.”

“Maybe,” I say, not unconvinced, just trying to work out whether it feels right.

“Yes, I’m always correct,” he responds. A computer check later reveals he was right. The clever boy is one of the 135 students at the Dubai Center for Special Needs, aged between 4 and 27.

The centre, which costs Dh30,000 a year per student — though the real cost is closer to Dh60,000, with fees slashed through donations — is one of Dubai’s most well-equipped for youth with all manner of physical and mental disability.

In a small, brightly decorated classroom, sit nine of the 11 pupils in the school’s top academic class. The teacher, Dr Karen Menezes is going through a charming poem about a lone traveller, called A Mysterious Story Poem, with the enraptured all-male class.

During a break she explains the class is for those with high literacy and numeracy skills, who can take part in English, maths and science classes: “If you see some of (the classes), we’re just like a secondary school.”

Back to the lesson. The lone traveller “smote on the door”.

“What does ‘smote’ mean?,” asks Dr Menezes.

One of the brightest in the class, Johann Mendes, 17, returns the question almost immediately: “Smote, the past tense of smite. When you hit hard.”

Dr Menezes says the class is a joy to teach: “You can talk with them, you can (have) realistic conversations. For Valentine’s Day they were having such a fun time. ‘Are you going out for dinner?,’ ‘Are you getting flowers?’.”

Bright-eyed Johann was on duty to write the dateline on Valentines Day, and the four hearts he decorated the board with still remain next to today’s date.

“They’re so warm, these kids, they’re such a caring, nice, affectionate group,” Dr Menezes says.

But there are some obvious differences with these children than those at mainstream schools — “normal children”. For one, they have quirks. In droves.

A female pupil enters the boys’ classroom, and for a few moments all is calm. Soon, one boy, Omar, who was sat quietly eating his morning tea, registers the girl’s presence, jumps up from his chair and begins pacing in the corner, agitatedly flailing his arms. The girl leaves.

“She’s left Omar,” comes a chorus from his classmates, all quite accustomed to such an episode.

Dr Menezes is at a loss to explain the reaction: “I really have to be able to work with him to find out what has happened...no other female student has that same affect on him.”

She speculates it’s related to the fact the girl is very vocal, while Omar, who has autism, says very little. There are many other cases like this.

“There’s a child, the minute he sees Starbucks he will throw a fit, he will freak out and we didn’t know why.” The mystery was unravelled when his mother remembered as a youngster a Starbucks staffer spilled a cup of coffee on his hand.

School is as much a place for life training, as it is academics. In the lower functioning streams — the “pre-work” classes — students are taught basics such as how to make their beds or a sandwich.

Star pupils

Each stream must be tailored, says Dr Menezes, who has taught at the school for 10 years.

“We do this very high level poem...it’s good for the kids to use their thinking skills, abstraction. But does it help a pre-work child? I’d rather give them cooking skills...and teach them how to handle money appropriately, rather than doing high literacy,” she says.

Two of the boys, who are usually resident in class, are out at work placements at a data entry office.

“All my boys, I want them to pick up a job somewhere in a very good place, because...they can do a normal job that any of us can do (as long as society is not) prejudiced against their difficulties.”

And there are several standouts in the class. Johann, an only child of Indian parents, has an amazing ability to spell.

A look through his spelling book shows hundreds of words like ‘illustrious’ and ‘marsupials’ marked with red ticks.

And his talents don’t end there. He can remember every National Day of each country, he speaks some Tagalog (he calls Khaleej Times photographer ‘Ate’, meaning ‘older sister’), and he likes to sing and recite poetry. He performs the stanzas of a poem written for him by a former principal, called ‘I am Johann’.

It talks about his agitation, addiction to ranch and barbecue sauce, what sets him apart.

“My brain works differently than other girls and boys, but one thing always holds true. I can give your life so much joy,” Johann projects the words with high drama.

“Please do not think of me differently or love me any less, I’m just like the other kids, I’m trying to do my best.”

Another remarkable talent is his ability to tell you the weekday on which any past date fell. He tells me this ability spawned from a childhood attachment to computers, on which he used to look at old calendars. He says he discovered the 28-year pattern of the Julian calendar this way.

“I checked this on the computer and I worked it out, I’m very genius in this,” he tells me, matter-of-factly.

Another academic standout is 19-year-old Nazeer Ali. The Pakistani-born teen, who spent seven years in Canada, excels in all his subjects.

Besides that, he is also a guitar fan and has taught himself to play Led Zepplin’s Stairway to Heaven: “I also sing (it), I know the whole lyrics.”

He dreams about performing live in concert. He’s been playing for several years and teaches himself new chords and songs by using online videos.

Prior to coming to the centre five years ago, Nazeer attended a mainstream school: “I left the school because of the students that were horrible,” he says.

Not only did they fight and smoke cigarettes, but “they always made fun of me”.

He says he prefers the centre, and likes his classmates: “We all get along with each other.”

Nazeer has a sadness though: “I’ve never been out with my friends before.”

He lives in Sharjah and says it is hard for him to hang out with the other boys.

He currently works three hours a week in the Kempinski Hotel, doing unpaid check-in and check-out work: “I enjoy it a lot, the people are good there.”

Sam Cleary, in a separate class to the other two boys, is another student with remarkable talent. The school’s top artist has become its resident illustrator, creating the drawings for the school’s annual performance programme last year, and commissioned to do the same again this year.

The 18-year-old autistic boy is not very verbal at the best of times, but when Khaleej Times visits to interview, he is distracted to the point of near silence.

When asked if he likes art, he responds with, “yes.”

Last month Sam won a children’s drawing competition in Dubai’s Children’s City: “I’m the best,” he says plainly.

He tells me he likes drawing cats and time machines, and his favourite subject is art: “I’m artistic. I have lots of drawings in my home.”

But what Sam doesn’t say, his proud teacher aide Lidia Surovichka, who has been working with the Irish boy for two years, more than makes up for.

“He’s amazing, you’ve never seen anyone like him, anyone. Everything is so good and so perfect, and full of small details.”

The perfectionist, who has been at the centre since 2004, will only ever work on one picture at a time.

“If you give him a picture to copy, it will be 100 percent, it doesn’t matter if it’s of buildings, animals.”

She says the patient boy takes up to five hours on a single picture. A look through his work book reveals perfectly printed letters, which almost look typed. Surovichka says Sam will write and erase the letters until he is entirely satisfied with their appearance.

“He’ll do it not only one time, two, three, five times, ten times, till he’s done it perfectly.”

The future

Both Nazeer and Johann have been diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome, part of the autistic spectrum, though Dr Menezes says she is not convinced of Nazeer’s diagnosis as he is very high-functioning: “Some of the cases have not been diagnosed correctly. They put them under the same category.”

Asked about the chances of her 11 pupils graduating and moving on to further study, she says: “I see Nazeer and Johann straight away going for higher education,” though she trails off before talking about the rest of her pupils.

“Do (the institutions) have toilet facilities, medical facilities? If they need to speak to someone is there anyone there with a special needs background? When (the students) are in a school setting, they’re being looked after...once they’re in the big bad world, who will be responsible for them?”

The challenges are even more trying to get pupils into full-time work, she says.

“One student got full-time employment in the hotel industry but they had to really run from pillar to post to get paperwork sorted out.”

The country’s labour laws add further roadblocks to an already difficult task, she says.

“We don’t know what are the visa requirements for these kids? It would be 10 times more difficult for them to cross those hurdles to get the job requirements. Which company will want to go through the hassle of employing someone (with a disability) and getting in trouble?”

Social life

“Some don’t have any social life,” Dr Menezes says of her boys.

Some programmes aim to change that. Emirates International School runs a ‘Best Buddies’ programme, through which pupils pair up with students from the centre and do activities outside of school hours, such as going bowling or to the movies.

But while there are a few outside friends, the classmates are extremely tight-knit, Dr Menezes says.

“They know they have only friends in each other, they don’t have (many) friends outside.”

Some of the boys have sleepovers at each other’s houses, where they will stay up playing Playstation and watching horror movies. Normal teenage boy stuff. Another couple are in the same football club and play together at the weekends.

Another boy, who is wheelchair-bound, has had to learn to be independent to get around his parent’s busy work lives. He takes a taxi to the metro, negotiates the stations himself, and gets around.

“He goes to the mall. You see him hanging out in the mall at fast food joints or going for a movie.”

But what about a romantic life, marriage, even kids?

“If you have a supportive spouse, who understands [then perhaps]. It’s very debateable. Can they get married or not? We don’t know.”

There are many issues that need to be considered, Dr Menezes says.

“Number one, does he want it? Number two, can he take on the responsibility? And number three they should be settled in their job....if it’s an understanding spouse who does know those are the difficulties...why not?’’

Dr Menezes says the stresses of adult relationships — and potential break-ups — could be particularly hard on someone who was struggling to interact socially.

“I’ll leave it with a question mark, it’s a totally family decision.”

However, the young men in her class were normal teenagers with the same hormones as everyone else.

“They talk about girls (and) chat online, which is fine, it’s normal,” however, there needs to be some monitoring, she says.

amanda@khaleejtimes.com