Susie Volunteers

Susie had received her placement details weeks ago, and had been terrified ever since. She had been spending every free minute trying to find a reason why it would be impossible for her to volunteer at Northgate School. She came up with all sorts of excuses, including contracting a highly contagious illness that she would just hate to pass onto the students. However, she knew none of this was even remotely believable! So, she would just have to suck it up and do it. Although, she thought her argument based around "forced volunteering" was a solid one; wasn’t voluntary work meant to be a choice? Unfortunately, given she would fail college if she didn’t volunteer; she was forced to keep this argument to herself.

Northgate was a school for children and teenagers with special educational needs. Susie had heard quite a bit about the school from others and had nothing against the concept of the school, per se. She just truly believed she would struggle to work with disabled people and pupils with pretty severe learning disabilities. Indeed, she was aware that people that went to these schools needed a lot of support; otherwise they'd just go to "normal" schools, right? She swore she'd had disabled kids in her classes, and that was just a local comp. Those guys just got on with it. This would be a whole lot different.

The moment of truth arrived and Susie’s mother dropped her outside Northgate with a smile and a wave. With her heart in her mouth, Susie made her way inside the building, which was decorated in bright and bold colours. Somewhat abashed by the security locks on all the doors, she followed the teacher she'd be working with to their classroom. This classroom would be her working home for the next three weeks! No sooner had she walked in the door, Susie wanted to run straight out again! What she saw just made her panic. There was nothing wrong with what she saw. In fact, in reality this was her ideal work place; fun, creative and active. But she'd never worked with people like this - what did she need to do?

As if picking up on Susie's discomfort, the teacher lent towards her and whispered, "it's okay, you'll be fine."

"But what do I do?" she asked, "I've never done care work".

"You're not here as a carer, you're here as a learning support assistant," the teacher said, trying to reassure. "There is hands on care that comes as part of working here, sure. However, you won't be expected to do this - unless you feel you want to" she continued.

“Right, so what would you like me to do?”

“Well, to start with you can just watch. This is year six but it might be quite different to how you remember year six. Just like you, these pupils are here to learn, they just learn at a different pace to you and I.”

Susie sat in wonder as the class did the register using music and song. She was even more impressed when, before they did anything else, they all spoke about how they were feeling and whether they were upset about anything. She thought that it was a great idea doing that at her school would have cleared the air at the start of each day and stopped so many fights breaking out! In the short time it took the class to do this, Susie had realised that the spectrum of needs in this one class was vast and that it’d probably take her the full placement to learn about all the different needs and issues.

By the end of the first week Susie had been shouted at, cuddled, dribbled on and run into by a wheelchair. There were points where she seriously questioned what she was doing there. She still had no real idea what she was doing. But it appeared that everyone just went with the flow; the school day was nowhere near as rigid as she was used to. Here the class started something and if it wasn’t working, they just moved on! Or if someone was having a tough day, exceptions were made and that person did something else for the day – like cooking. Once again, she caught herself thinking that mainstream schools could learn from this model.

Susie’s placement time came and went. On her final day, she found that she didn’t want to leave. In just three weeks, she’d grown to love these kids. They could be harsh and rude, sure. But Susie figured she’d be rude from time to time if her life was as frustrating as theirs! And anyway, they had also been lovely. One of them, Laura, had even gone in the swimming pool with Susie after years of just dangling her feet in and refusing to go in with anyone else.

Susie promised herself two things as she walked out the door on that final day. Firstly, never again would she judge a book by its cover. Secondly, when she finished college in the summer, she’d come back and see if she can get a job. This was her dream workplace now.

865 words written for the Writer’s Cramp on 25th November 2013
Using the prompt: “It’s your first day as a volunteer. Describe the task/tasks you’re donating your time for, and SHOW us your first day on the “job.”