Thank you for twenty years of Conductive Education in Nürnberg, Germany

"Three Nürnberg conductors on this front row"
(far right, fifth from right and 11th from right)

This year we are celebrating twenty years of conductive services in Boxdorf, Nürnberg.

Conductive Education has been around in Nürnberg for longer than twenty years because I and at least one other conductor arrived in the region in 1993 immediately after graduating, but the Verein für Menschen mit Körperbehinderungen e.V started the centre in Boxdorf two years later, in 1995.

By this time I had already visited one of the Verein’s pre-school groups and had discussed how I could help them with some of the children attending, therefore I was also present in Boxdorf on the day that Őrfalvy Kati and Kalay Judit came to Nürnberg for the very first children’s assessments and meetings with them and their parents.

It seems quite fitting that this timely video has appeared on You Tube featuring Őrvalvy Kati –

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmNEFegAh4o&index=4&list=PLLYY4mGqGA5g-PA0uImphuUlgjKoJrRZY

Kati has remained on hand to help us, right from the start. She visited us regularly and she was so busy because we saved up all our questions for her. Our children enjoyed her visits too and loved to show off to her everything that they had learnt and to listen to her stories about her early life at the Pető Institute when András Pető was in charge.

Kati has always attended our German conferences and there is always a crowd of conductors waiting to speak to her. Her advice, help and guidance is much appreciated by many people. I for one still write and ask her to share her wise words!

Thank you Kati for all that you do for us!

Örfalvy Kati 4th from right, Mária Hári third from right, 2 Nürnberg conductors on back row, one in the second row and a few more who are in Germany in the middle.

This is a photograph taken at my graduation at the Pető Institute, Budapest in 1993. Kati and I are both visible, and also at least four other conductors who graduated alongside me who have also ended up in Germany. There were more than the four of us on this photograph who came to Germany, but after twenty years I find it hard to recognize myself let alone the others!

PS

Another interesting film to watch later –

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1V5oOf5RmHM&list=PLLYY4mGqGA5g-PA0uImphuUlgjKoJrRZY&index=6

“I kicked the doctor into the wall”

"Winter" by Susie Mallett

That is what Jason Carr tells us on his blog!

This just appeared in my inbox:

http://jasonsworld7.blogspot.com/2012/01/peto-part-1.html

Please make the time to read it, and not just this posting but all of it.

There are only three posting on the blog as yet so there is not much back-reading to do.

I, for one, will be following it in the future and I will pass the URL on to by budding students who will enjoy the inspiration that I am sure they will receive from reading this and, at the same time, they will be able to improve their English.

Well done Jason! I look forward to hearing more, especially about how you kicked the doctor into the wall!

More from the Petö Institute

"Home, sweet home" 2011

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZ2yZOZXW_Q

"ACP country representatives visit András Pető Institute of Conductive Education, and the College for Conductor Training"

The garden in Norwich, April 2011, by Susie Mallett

Google has started alerting me again!

“Seventy-eight African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries met the European Parliament delegation at the 21st ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly held in Hungary, on 14–18 May 2011.”

The Petö Institute received a visit from a group of these participants:

http://www.egovmonitor.com/node/42055

Amazing

By Susie Mallett, from a 1981 sketchbook

Several weeks ago, right at the beginning of my holiday, I read a blog posting from a conductor who announced her “amazement” at hearing that one of her clients had realised why he was being asked to do a certain task in a lying programme.

The conductor described her amazement that a teenage boy was able to explain to another teenager the reason for holding a stick in the small of the back and bending and stretching the arms. The one told the other that it was so they could learn to pull up their trousers, (and to pull down the shirts and then tuck them in, I hope he was later told).

Now I have time to write about my own amazement

How can it be that these two teenage boys had not discussed with the conductors what they need to learn and how they can learn it?

It is our responsibility as conductors to teach our clients to solve problems. Part of this is to teach them how to practise movements that will help them achieve their aims and how to work out what movements they need to practise.

I have experience of working with seven-and eight-year-olds who are already adept at making up new games for their group mates to play to practise movements that are difficult.

If we begin our work when children are very young then there is a time when we teach them how to play specially chosen games with the mother beside them playing too and learning how to help. As children get older we begin to talk to them about the skills that they need to learn and what they can play and practise in order to achieve these. By the time they reach their teenage years clients will be taking responsibility for their own lives, deciding for themselves what they wish to participate in, and should be starting to discuss with their parents and conductors how they can achieve their own aims.

An abstract movement like bringing a stick up and down in the small of the back has to be related to dressing, or to reaching into a school bag that is hanging on the back of a chair, early on in a child’s life. How else will it be possible to relate the learnt movement to real daily life skills?

And as for a conductor being surprised that a teenager should ask and that another should be able to respond… words fail!

Reference

http://playingwithangels.wordpress.com/2011/04/30/angels-among-themselves/

In the news

Getting measured up for a shirt in Hong Kong

There is not only trouble at the mill

There is a lot more to hear about on the radio programme than in the report about the programme that Andrew Sutton mentioned on his Facebook page on Tuesday:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#%21/profile.php?id=1540593482

It is not everyone who gets such a long spot on any medium in Hungary, TV, newspaper or radio.

As far as I could tell, it was, mostly conductors speaking. The professionalism was better than I have heard anywhere else, not so much what they said necessarily but their confidence and their clarity, and the way in which they presented themselves. As to what was said, I think that I understood well enough to know that apart from the information about the financial situation, the rest seemed to be very much about the upbringing that I learnt about at the PAI.

Well worth listening to if it is still up there for you to hear.

http://www.mr1-kossuth.hu/hirek/itthon/bajban-a-peto-intezet.html

Re: Chinese New Year

This is such a great picture to head this story but I just cannot turn it round!

Enjoy it anyway with a cricked neck!

I, and at least one fellow blogger, just received this lovely email from my reader and friend Emma McDowell and I cannot resist sharing it.

I cannot resist sharing it because of the anecdote, one of many that I have heard from Emmi since I have known her, this time about the “birth of the CE Blogosphere” pinned on to on ae wall of the Petö Institute many moons ago.

Chinese New Year

Hello, Susie,

I passed the celebrations of the above occasion – held in Belfast’s newly restored St.George’s Market, yesterday, Sunday – as I was going to a festive “Evensong” to be held in Belfast’s (also recently re-decorated) St.Ann’s Cathedral. I had been invited as a representative of “Carers”.

It was a special service, lead by the Dean and attended by Northern Ireland’s First Minister and Deputy First Minister (the twin Heads of State here!), as well as by representatives of 180 charities receiving donations, result of the Dean’s Fund, an established fundraising organisation, lead by the Cathedral’s Dean from year to year. It is also called the Black Santa Appeal, because the Dean stands outside the Cathedral for two weeks before Xmas (in black robes) and receives donations from Xmas shoppers (of course it is a much wider charity-fundraising work which goes on all the year through.)

Initially I was not too happy to have to attend the service on a Sunday afternoon, after an especially hard week and crammed week-end, but it was very worthwhile after all (and this was not only because of the cheque I received for Carers.)

I can now meditate on how I saw “East met West” in Belfast on a sunny February Sunday afternoon, with emphasis on “West” (= Western European; while I myself come from so called Eastern Europe, as we are – wrongly – perceived by the English; the correct geographical position being Central Europe, with us, Hungarians always leaning towards the West…)

What I experienced in the cathedral was a show of the best of the Western culture, still overwhelmingly so in these parts. I was happy to see that the conductive summer school “Lighthouse Trust” was still represented, in fact its work was worth a particular appraisal from the Dean.

I have just read through some of the Blogs and must say it is very rewarding to see how many there are now, with you in the lead.

Count it as a major achievement of “the Year of the Tiger”: conductive bloggers!!!

I see, the old Institute even participates, with the recent (to Andrew: mysterious) “Thesis”. This latter simply reminded me of the occasional article that I saw pegged up on the Notice-board (Fali Újság) at the corridor of the Faház, written by “better” conductors sharing their experiences in writing, probably as part of their academic work. It was there for all to read while waiting for your child. This service is done by the blogs today. A bigger readership, undoubtedly – but it, too, had a “seed” in the original “Pető”! I hope you are well and healthy, Susie, how can you keep it up? I just pray that you CAN!

Love Emmi

P.S. This was more of a “public” letter, – you are free to “publish” if you wish, as always.

Thank you Emmi, I am well and healthy. I also hope that I can keep it up and will endeavour to do so for as long as I can.

Notes

http://www.susie-mallett.org/2011/02/that-was-year-that-was.html