SWANs

When I meet a class for the first time, I get each of the students to introduce themselves with no prescribed format or requirements except for their names. Some are brief, taking less than a minute, while others get really detailed, all the way up to their family members.

I take notes but observe them as they speak. I scan the classroom as well, looking at where they’re seated. You have the “huddlers” who seem to have registered with their entire barkada (peer group) and there are loners of varying degrees, like the one sitting on the last row, in one corner, or next to the door. That first class can be very revealing about the students, especially the SWANs.

That’s the way it’s supposed to be written, all caps except the last because it’s one of the latest, and most important, acronyms in educational institutions. It means “students with additional needs,” which is much wider than “persons with disabilities” whose needs are slowly being recognized now in our schools, and in society.

Guidance centers

Most of us are aware of student guidance centers where you have counselors that you can go to if you have problems, especially concerning study habits and career choices. Over the years the training of guidance counselors has become more complicated, as scientific research began to uncover the complicated processes involving learning. In grade school, especially in public schools, there may be students who are not doing well simply because they have undetected problems in vision or hearing. Simple but complicated, because teachers have not been taught to be on the lookout for students squinting, or leaning forward, or sometimes even cupping their ears to hear better.

Others have no problems with visual acuity but have problems with what they see: The letters are jumbled up because they have dyslexia, and so they can’t read. Another version of dyslexia affects the processing of numbers, which can also get mixed up like letters.

Many such students will be brutally labeled as bobo (stupid—yes, a term still used in some of our schools), or mabagal (slow), or mahina (weak). Some will drop out and others will manage, barely manage, without their full potential being brought out.

“SWANs” was coined clearly out of political correctness, avoiding stigmatizing terms like “disorders,” “deficiencies,” maybe even “disabilities.” But I like the term, too, in the way it evokes the often mysterious swan, gliding on a river or lake silently, elegantly.

The growth of special education (SPED) in the country means that more of these students are being identified early and provided the necessary support. But much more needs to be done, especially at the tertiary level, where it’s presumed that if a student gets that far, he or she shouldn’t have major problems.

That assumption can be disastrous because the pressures and stresses of college—from bullying classmates and teachers to final exams to a lack of money for all those student projects—can trigger and aggravate many of the “additional needs” of students. Some of these needs can be very serious—for example, depression and bipolar disorders that can even lead to suicide.

The number of SWANs is not small; in fact, if you were to expand the definitions, all students have some kind of additional need. The problems come about when those needs hamper the learning processes. The adverse effects will not just be on the individual. You have group projects that can’t be completed… or an attempted suicide affects many more students, amplified on social media and leading to more grief and anxieties, even ideas about committing suicide.

Some problems can be culture-specific—for example, a student prone to being “possessed” (masaniban). All it takes is one student to go into hysteria from such a “possession” and you have others following suit. Not only that: News about an incident in one school can set off similar outbreaks in other institutions.

We’re still a long way off from reaching sufficiency to respond to SWANs. The international norm is one specialist per 1,000 students. At the University of the Philippines Diliman we have 24,000 college students but only three psychologists and eight guidance counselors, and we are unable to expand because there are no items in the job plantillas. Despite the dismal figures, we still rank fifth in the country with that ratio. None of the top schools for psychosocial personnel have reached the targets but here are the ones that are better than UP Diliman: University of Santo Tomas, Ateneo, La Salle and Miriam.

Let me clarify that in UP Diliman we do tap our education and psychology faculty, getting them on “additional assignment.” We’ve also started training nonpsychologists and nonguidance counselors to provide psychological first aid or first response.

Communications

The University of Melbourne is one of the leaders with programs for SWANs, and has five categories for these needs. It’s worthwhile to share those five domains so readers may think more about what they can do to identify those needs, as parents, teachers, or parents active in their parent-teacher association.

The first area is communications, simply defined as being able to establish connections with other people. We know there are people who seem to be born shy and others who are sosyal. No major problems here for most people, unless the shyness or sociality becomes extreme. There are people, for example, with Williams-Beuren syndrome, or an extreme trust in people, which translates to “hypersociality.” Young children with the syndrome need to be watched because they’re likely to go off with strangers, or get exploited by “friends.”

There’s much more with communications. Recently, for example, we had a referral for a student who would not speak or smile in class. I realized right away it was selective mutism, which you usually find in young children: They will clam up the minute they get to the school and stay silent the whole day. The minute they leave school, they’ll open up, sometimes babbling away about what an exciting day it was with teachers and classmates.

I was surprised we had a college student with selective mutism. I knew that pressuring such students to speak up would only make them retreat into their shells. The solution is to just allow them to make up for not taking part in class discussions.

I thought I could discuss SWANs in one column. As I tell my students, there’s more exciting stuff coming in the next class (next column). The other four areas to be discussed are: interpersonal learning, literacy, personal learning and emotional self-management. Watch your kids this weekend and see if you can identify their special needs.

mtan@inquirer.com.ph