SUSIE MALLETT

My visitors today

Monday 24 September 2012

Thank you



While making a golden costume this child learn to use scissors  alone for the first time!



There was such happiness on her face when she
realised what she had achieved.

Those real-life occasions that we all learn from

For three weeks the children in the conductive groups and in the integrated Kindergarten have been working during every spare minute that they can find to produce costumes for a fashion show. We have been asked to present this fashion show at the fifty-year anniversary celebration of the Association that I work for in Nürnberg, that took place last Friday.


The whole event was a great success, including the weeks of preparation and the excitement that developed amongst conductors, children, parents and other colleagues.


I was so happy after the event was over that on Saturday morning I wrote a letter of thanks to the lady who asked us to do this project.


This letter contained so much that I often try to express here that I decided to publish an edited version  –


‘Thank you so much for asking us to produce a Golden Fashion Show, therefore once again giving our lovely children the opportunity to take part in “real life”.

Once again these children excelled all our expectations, and my expectations are always very high!
 
It was a lovely experience for me to see how a conductive upbringing really does pave the way to allow our children to become fully participating adults in our wider world.
 
I am so pleased to be able to work in your wonderful team.

With your enthusiasm for our work and through your spontaneity and action the conductive team is able to offer our children most of the opportunities that they need. With the protective wings our Association around them they are able to blossom in the way that all children should be given the opportunity to do.
 
The children learn skills that they can use to be functional within their chosen communities as adults. When I speak of 'skills' I do not mean just walking skills, I mean those skills that you yourself are so good at – looking people in the eyes, communicating well, reaching out a hand and smiling at them, enjoying life, being motivated to take part, wanting to be part of the action!

These are the skills that we all need to live a joyful life and these are the skills that we try to help the children to learn in a conductive upbringing. Of course they do this as part of learning physical skills. They children can also learn to take steps and to stretch a hand to shake someone else’s. These motor skills are all so very important but not necessarily attainable by everyone, a lust for life most certainly is attainable for everyone.

I thank you very much for sharing your lust for life with me, with us all. I thank you for sharing your enthusiasm to be part of the action with us and for allowing me and my colleagues to exercise our own enthusiasms for our work and for our lives with our children, to help them learn to enjoy their own lives to the full too.

I would also like to thank you, for encouraging your colleagues who are responsible for publicity and fund-raising to incorporate our children in as much action as possible. Whether it is celebrations like yesterday, making paintings for your visitors, making birthday cards, collecting donations or putting on exhibitions, our children just love it when I say that you have a new idea for us, or that your colleagues in the office need our help. The children’s ideas flow faster than mine and the other conductors’!

It is exhausting sometimes but the tiredness is soon forgotten, especially when, this week I was asked to phone the homes of two children so that they could ask permission to stay with us an extra hour in order to help complete art work for Friday’s big festival!

It has been such a pleasure to come back after the summer break. Having arrived a little sad at once again leaving my Dad in hospital, I was immediately enveloped in enthusiasm and smothered in golden ideas for three whole weeks until the climax yesterday.

Everyone who has entered our conductive rooms over this period has been caught up in the atmosphere as there have been costumes and gold paintings hanging around everywhere, drying off and waiting to be worn. The anticipation and the looking forward to an appearance on stage has been great motivation.

We, the conductors, were still beaming when we left work at 18.30 pm on Friday evening, having returned from the Fest with two children, as promised by public transport. With their help and our smiles we tidied away our crafty leftovers and prepared for work on Monday.
 
We met our cleaning lady, as we left and she said to my colleague – ‘You look like you have fallen in love!’ My colleague told her that this was just happiness because we had had such a lovely day. The children had been so good right up to travelling by public transport.

But it was not only the day on Friday, it was working so closely for three weeks on this project that made our smiles that much bigger.

I thanked my colleague yesterday for entering into her work with just as much passion as I have. It is a joy for me to work with her, especially with all the extra energy she provides and her great sense of humour.

It is important for me that I can express my thanks to you in English. If you need help to understand I will try to explain in German, but I am sure you will understand what I mean in your soul .

I want to tell you how grateful I am to you for your enthusiasm for your own life and for the lives of everyone else. Your style fits so well with our philosophy of conductive upbringing. Your spontaneity and lust for life are inspiring for me and for all the children and adults that we work with.

Yesterday you said that you won’t still be here for the 60th celebrations, but perhaps I shall be, who knows. If I am still here this will be because of what I have learnt from you, what I have been given through your enthusiasm for my work, because you have given me the freedom to develop conductive upbringing with our team, and because you inspire others in your team to help us along our way.

I set out to write a short note to say thank you for yesterday but it ended up being something much more. And I still have a PS!

PS

I was lucky to meet two other people yesterday who have also been, together with you, part of my conductive life almost from its start. It was a joy to see them both at the party to celebrate fifty years of our Association. Before i came to work here they had been ever-present in Budapest while I did my training. The child of one of them was in the Kindergarten group where I trained in 1991, and the child of the other was there in another group at the same time. In 1993, their wives were a great support to me at exam time, always waiting for me to finish my final exams to hear how I had succeeded, and to drink a celebratory coffee with me! They were both instrumental in my finding work when I came to Nürnberg.

If it was not for the early commitment of these two families to continuing the development of conductive upbringing in Germany, and later your own enthusiasm, I doubt that I would now be working here in your team. I thank you all once again.

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