I was mainstreamed all
throughout my schooling and I went to a private school called St Georges from
the ages of 7-13. It really suited my
personality quite a lot while I was there I spent quite a bit of time in the
school library reading. For the last two
years there I become a librarian. When I got to high school, I went to an all
girls high school around the corner from my Dad’s until my final year where
they combined my school with the local Catholic
boys’ high school. When I started high school there was a
learning centre where I
could go to get extra help
with classes or do correspondence like maths, life skills or
have one on one help to
talk about things. Mum also noticed that
there was a
widening gap between my
classmates and I academically. For the
last two years I went
on work experience I went
to work at the local public library and also at a day care
centre which catered to
special needs children. After I
graduated from high school I
decided to move in my
Mum’s because I wasn’t quite ready to move out of home. I
went and did a teacher
aide course run through training for you for two years
because when I learn
something new I like to repeat things over so they are stuck in
my brain. I went back to my old high school through the
mainstream employment
programme it is a
programme for disabled New Zealanders to create a job for them
in the workforce and
Mainstream pays in the 1st year 100% of your wages and in the
second year they pay 80%
of your wages and at the end of it you are meant to come
out with a job but my
funding ran out at the end of the two years. In the same year
that I left Cullinane (my
old high school). I started working for a family friend she is an accountant and
I went and helped her do her filing and shredding every second Monday morning
until I quit late last year. I also
started going to a place on Friday mornings for a social morning called Somerville
Centre where I met my boyfriend of four years called
Bryan he is a computer
tutor for them and I was a client and we weren’t allowed to
date. We broke up four times over the four years
and then got back together each
time. I quit earlier this year because I increased
my hours volunteering at the local
YMCA which I will talk
more about later on and plus it was hard to retain a
relationship in that environment.
When I moved out of Mum’s I had recently just
turned twenty four I moved
into a house that my best friend Kayla from high school
her parents had brought
her a house because they were getting older and wanted
Kayla to have girls her
own age to live with. Kayla needs carers
around twenty four
seven because she is in a
wheelchair (can walk with help and a walking stick), she has
epilepsy and has a mind of
a six to seven year old. Her buddy and
my best friend Blue
lives out the back in a
self contained unit without any carers only her Mum comes
and checks on her every
single day. While I was living at the
house a girl called Kate
moved in and we were
getting on so nicely until one day Bryan came round to show
me something on my laptop
and I told everyone including the carer that was on
which was all fine. Kate hid in her room and when he was showing
me something
she turned around through
Facebook while he was there was he still there and I said
yes he is there. After he had gone back to work I asked her
why did you say that and
her answer was like I
don’t like strange able bodied men and after that we didn’t get
along at all. She treated me like I was invisible and still
does whenever I go over to
Kayla’s. Another thing happened while I was in the
house ACC took away a lot of
Kayla’s hours so most
evenings I would be responsible for looking after Kayla and it
went on for at least a
year until the team leader who is in charge of Kayla’s carers
encouraged Blue and I to
write a letter explaining how we felt about things to ACC
and we got back a lot of
her hours. In February 2010 I was in
Sydney visiting a friend
and I realised that I had
outgrown Kayla’s so in April of that year I wrote my parents
a letter which I had
handwritten myself explaining all the reasons that I was unhappy
in the house and that I
needed to grow as a person. My Dad and
my stepmum both
read the letter and Dad
changed his mind that Friday when he read the letter because
he said to me I am going
to buy you a house. We looked for a few
months and found
the perfect house for me
to rent because he wanted to for six months to see if I
could live on my own and I
execced over by a year and a month.
After I moved into
the rented house Mum
turned around to me one day and said out of ten what would
you rate living at Kayla’s
and I turned around to her and said a 1 and she said what
about now and with a big
grin on my face I said a ten. Dad
brought me a two
bedroom house in July of
this year and I love it because hopefully one day Bryan will
move in with me. My house is five minutes away from my Mum’s
work also Bryan
lives down the other end
of my street and town is about an 8 minute walk away. I
volunteer three mornings a
week one morning a week I go and work in a shop. I can
serve the customers, dust,
restock the shelves, go and do the banking for my boss I am the only volunteer
who is allowed to go and do the banking.
Then the other two mornings I go and volunteer at the YMCA doing a
programme called Boogie Buddies for two to five year olds it is so much fun and it is
good therapy for me. At Boogie Buddies I set out a circle of mats on the floor
when I arrive and then I help one of my bosses set up the gym equipment for the
circuit that the children do upstairs. When the children arrive we ask them to
take off their shoes and socks and leave them neatly along the wall and then we
get them to sit down on the mats and then we do warm up exercise with them and
then we do a warm up song like the bird dance, here comes a bear, the Hokey Pokey. After we have done the warm up song we tell the kids
to set on the benches to spilt them into two groups, one group stays downstairs
and the other goes upstairs to climb on the gym equipment and then downstairs
we set up a floor circuit with hula hoops, a throwing target with beanbags, a
wobbly bench with hula hoops one at each end and the children have to crawl
through them. Sometimes we do other activities like at the end of the term we
get out the parachute and put balls and feathers on the parachute and we have
to get them off and then we sit underneath the parachute with all the kids and
make it a tent. Another activity we do with the kids is we have four buckets of
coloured balls around the floor and then when the music starts the kids have to
put the right balls in the right box and so for the balls we have green,
yellow, red and blue and us teachers go and put the wrong balls in the wrong
boxes because we trick them into thinking we don’t know our colours.
