CHERYL ROCK found herself working with children with special needs purely by chance. However, that encounter led to a 27-year career in special needs education and her recent appointment as principal of the Derrick Smith School and Vocational Centre.
Rock, who is now working on her doctorate in infant mental health, said she was called to work in that area. “If you ask my mum, she would say it was because of my godmother’s son, who was hearing impaired and we used to sit on the stairs for hours on end and have amazing conversations.
“But I started at Barbados Community College (BCC), where I was studying art education, and for my final project I went to the School for the Dumb And Deaf – now Irving Wilson School – and I completed my art project at that school and for some reason I became interested.”
Rock was also involved in lots of youth activities in the West Terrace area, where she lived. She said that at a luncheon at the Barbados Museum she happened to sit at the table with the “right people” and before she finished she was offered a job teaching at Erdiston Annex when she was just 20 years old.
The English-born Rock felt she did not know enough about the area or was not making as big a difference as she could, so she returned to England and did a bachelor’s degree in speech therapy.
There she did residential work with people with special needs and worked for a few years before returning to Barbados and taking a job at the Challenor School. While there she completed her master’s in inclusive education and curriculum design. The passion just grew and through observation with fellow special needs educator Julie Sealy, Rock noted that at that school they were getting the children at five and six years of age, which was too old, and a school for younger children was needed. Therefore the two founded the Sunshine Early Stimulation Centre.
Rock introduced the Developmental Individual-Differences Relationship-Based Model (DIR) to the school because of its use with children with autism and developmental delay and because of its humanistic approach.
Concerning the headship of the Derrick Smith School, Rock admits, “I feel everything that I have done from the time I was 20 has led me to this.”
The Jackman’s, St Thomas school has a roll of 99, with children from age 11 in the secondary school and adults through its vocational centre. “In the secondary school [section] they have academics in the morning and in the afternoon they go over and experience the vocational activities: woodwork; art and craft; culinary arts and agriculture and landscaping,” Rock said.
It’s the reverse for the adult students in the vocational programme.
“If we do have any students who are able to sit an exam, we definitely will do that, but it will be on an individual basis and the plan for in a year’s time is to have the school accredited so we can issue our own types of certificates,” Rock said.
“We have amazing plans for these kids and youngsters. Firstly, we do not have a cut-off like most other schools. What we are doing is encouraging students to stay with us in one vocation for at least two years before they move on to another vocation.
“Those students who we can support with finding work I think we can do that. I think that with the four areas that we have selected to start with, we are finding that there can be specialty areas we can have students who can go on and have their own business or support someone else,” Rock said.
“Our youngsters are [also] having surfing lessons and they are taking part in beauty pageants and do amazing things at Special Olympics – these are the shifts that I have noticed and I think that people are noticing now that when a student has developmental delay or special needs it just means they have a brain that works differently . . . needs to be supported and stimulated differently,” she added.
Rock said her overall plan was to see when the students become mature and they are able to go out into the world of work that we see a lot more people with disabilities in every field and every walk of life.
About the various developmental diagnoses of children, she said: “Sometimes children are diagnosed with labels such as autism or ADHD when it is really particular challenges they are having with their sensory system . . .
“The more we understand because of modern technology and magnetic imaging and neurology and psychiatry what is happening to an infant, the more we understand why they have challenges and can support them,” Rock said.
She said the increased ability to understand the challenges has led to more correct diagnoses but not necessarily more cases.
Rock said diet was an important aspect parents have to consider when it comes to their children.
“I have seen lots of children who when you shifted their diet, it does not always have to be the wheat-free, gluten-free shift that some parents do, it could be just cutting out the corn curls, soda and fast food that you see a difference in their actions, reactions, behaviours and emotionality,” Rock said.
She said the syndromes found in Barbados ranged from the common Down’s syndrome and autism to things that are very exotic and occur in one in every couple thousand, like Sturge Weber and Angelman syndrome. “We have a very varied pool of youngsters with special needs in the Caribbean and a lot of research is available worldwide and whatever happens there we can recreate in Barbados and see what it means for our population,” Rock said.
She also called for in-depth training of local practitioners in the different therapies available so that a full complement of skilled and knowledgeable practitioners would be available.