Siauliu "Dermes" mokykla

Siauliu "Dermes" mokykla (previous - Siauliai Logopedic School) is school for speech therapy and it is the only school in Lithuania for students having large and very large speech and communication impairments, emotional and behavioral, self-regulation impairments, hardness of hearing etc. There are 102 pedagogues and 276 students. The school gives a basic education (primary and basic school) for students having special needs. There is a pre-school department where children from 3 to 6 years old having speech and communication, other social development disorders are educated. The School is very interested in international volunteers to get to know different cultures and to create the new possibilities for our students to learn from other young people. Also the social landscape of other countries, especially how the youth work is organized, would be very interesting for the school. Spheres of the school’s work priorities: - Improvement of educational process differencing and individualizing it; - Consolidation of children and students' motivation rendering comprehensive special help for a child as for an educating person with his individual strength and skills. The aim of the school work is to supply requirements of students having speech and communication disorders according to their skills and forces, realizing programmes of primary education, adapted primary education, adapted basic education, special basic education which conform to standards of national background. There are 276 students (age 3–20) at the School. More than a half of students arrive from 28 municipalities. The biggest part of students is from risk-group families (one of parent's excess drinking; they can’t care of children because of the lack of social skills, outrage, etc.) All students living in the hostel don’t have possibilities to communicate with their parents, nearest relatives every day. Students of asocial families are left for a long period at school. Children feel cast-off, unwanted and that stimulates their aggression, diffidence, etc. It is comfortable for parents to leave a child for whole year at school, don’t care about his health, feeding, outfit. Our school has formed a team of pedagogues which cares how to involve parents in school life. The team organizes lectures, meetings with psychologists, social workers, pedagogues; exhibitions of parents’, students’ and pedagogues’ work; open days, national, traditional festivals and etc.