Inform us!

“My daughter's illness does not condition her life. His perception of the body and its characteristics makes it possible for him to be authentically happy and recognize his physical and intellectual capacity. That is why his most usual phrase is, don't tell me you can't do it, tell me how I should do it”.

​

This is how the story of a Bogota mother begins, who shares her story about the limitations that families often find in finding inclusive education for their children with exceptional abilities.

​

“How hard it is to find a school for a disabled son in Bogotá. When you accept an illness and learn to manage it, finding a space where you can live with it and despite it becomes difficult,” says Claudia Salcedo, Sofía's mother.

​

​Claudia Salcedo is a 40-year-old woman from Roldanillo (Valle del Cauca), mother of two children. She is a business administrator and at the age of 28 she received the diagnosis of her daughter, a situation that implied a motor disability with many systemic conditions. 

​

From the beginning it was clear to her that her daughter's illness would not condition her life and she took on the task, like many mothers, of looking for the ideal space so that her daughter's life could develop normally despite her illness. Finding that space was not easy. In addition to the economic, physical, and medical efforts that Sofia had to make to achieve integration, there were some key facilitators that, if they did not exist, would automatically become barriers to achieving her goal.

​

Sofia is a happy, intelligent, bright, academically demanding girl who would not settle for an education that simply let her be, she is clear that she always wants to participate and does not like to be told; you can't; but how can you.

​

This demands an important challenge for her parents, but also for the group of doctors who attend her, since she never accepts being told that she cannot dance (for example). She signed up for dance and inquired with her doctor “please explain to me how I can dance!”

​

Sofía receives all the necessary warnings because her medical condition limits her movement, her height is short and her cardiovascular system has some peculiarities. Claudia, her parent, is a strong, sweet, accommodating woman (sometimes too much with Sofía), but clearly intelligent, and she knows that her daughter's life cannot be stopped, she must live it, even if she has a medical diagnosis to attend to. .

​

Claudia quickly discovered that there were barriers that would not be overcome so easily in the educational system, and she focused her search on those schools that far exceeded these barriers, or had a policy of helping to overcome them.

​

"Acceptance goes beyond allowing them to attend school, acceptance includes allowing them to participate with their peers in all activities, even if this means changing the way they do it without affecting the way others do it", says Claudia.

​

Her story goes on to indicate that in her first attempt, they enrolled Sofí in a school that, although it initially accepted her for her academic training, at the age of 5 the directors decided to relocate her because, according to the teachers, “the girl does not fulfill with its performance standards.” 

​

After that, he began the viacrucis of visiting many A and B calendar schools in Bogotá, some of which were willing to receive “voluntary bonuses for Sofía's admission, bonuses that we were willing to pay for; however, even in those circumstances, they told us that they were not structurally prepared for a student like Sofía”, Claudia comments.

​

As unpleasant experiences, he recalls that the schools where they inquired never agreed to an interview with them as parents, they exclusively had enrollment and enrollment personnel, they did not give them a direct answer either, they simply told them to wait for a call that never came.

​

​“We visited more than 15 schools in Bogotá without finding a response, until we finally found an institution where the admission test did not measure their motor skills but cognitive ones. The key for us as parents was the way they approached my daughter, giving importance to her own performance and choosing the supports so that she could achieve her academic performance. That's how she started in kindergarten and now she's in the eighth year of high school," says Claudia.​

​

“I consider that your process is successful due to the key supports in the inclusion classroom: the support of a classroom assistant who supervises the clinical needs of the students in the inclusion program. A place within the campus that has therapists who support the academic and rehabilitation process, the philosophy of inclusion of the campus goes beyond public policies, emphasizing that each person who works in the institution must know each child with some need special, in such a way that it is not oblivious to any need for support that may arise. Sofia is recognized by everyone and feels happy. The therapists work in sync with the medical recommendations, the academic activities adapt to Sofía, at her pace and ability, in cultural and academic matters, managing to give the family relief in the challenge of educating her”, Claudia happily narrates.

​

This mother decides to show us how the school managed to establish this philosophy and share it with all students, which makes her group of children with disabilities feel that they can participate in absolutely all educational activities.