Weekend at the Sea, Maths with the Blind

I'm glad to have found a way that I can get photos on the blog at last, but it takes an hour to load, so I have to do it when I know I am going to be in the office for a bit.
I had a good weekend break, staying in Corriverton on the coast near the border with Suriname. We swam in the sea at the only passable beach in Guyana - it felt like a proper little holiday. The sea was pretty clear and a sandy beach - you just have to look out of broken glass. The journey there is by minibus - you have to wait for the bus to fill up before you can leave - that took an hour- then three hours travel including a puncture stop (only 10 minutes). The trick with the travel here is to view it all as part of the entertainment, but it can get a bit wearing - hot, crowded, noisy music, terrible driving and no loo stops. It helps to have a good travelling companion, my Australian friend is both wise to the tricks of the trade as well as full of stories to help pass the time.
I have got a routine of working down at the Unit for the Blind where I demonstrate some activities and games for maths with the pupils, with staff observing and learning as we go. Then I'm writing it all up as a resource to go on the website. I'm trying to help them become empowered to be more creative by following up their ideas. I've got agreement to go down to the other Unit for the Blind In Linden for a week to run training for them. Then a lot of the things are equally useful for other special needs, so I'm hoping to do training in the other special schools. I can also run training in mainstream and for education officials to sensitise them about the potential of pupils with special needs. I can broaden out my work to anyone who will listen! There was cartoon in the paper today which went a bit like this:
"I had to do a presentation to day where I was pretending I knew what I was talking about"
"Oh, did it go alright?"
"Yes, luckily the audience were only pretending to listen"
A lot of training which is done here is like this. We are trying to make all our training sessions interactive and participatory so that helps to educate the people who run training.
Cheers
Kate