WARNING : THIS ARTICLE MAY CONTAIN UNSUITABLE WORDS, SINCE IAM NOT A NATIVE SPEAKER.
Hi,
Iam currently undergoing the 3.rd and final year of my apprenticeship of , what we call it in Germany, a Heilerziehungspfleger. There is no exact english term for it, but you can picture it as a geriatric nurse for disabled people with a pedagogic touch on top.
So let´s start with something that probably catches readers attention, shall we?
I SO HATE THIS JOB.
Let me explain why.
Once in a month i have to attend a school for a week. We actually do really learn valuable stuff that can be used at work quite handy often. What is really setting me off is that you are treated as a total idiot ( funny enough, that is an outdated word for handicapped people )
Aside from the educational subjects we are tought we have ones that are totally ludacris. Iam not talking about medicine or psychology, but rather about subjects like "playing games, sports, singing, computer class, macroeconomics" and so on.
So after learning a load of latin words for body parts, you are expected to roll a ball to your neighbour, look him in the eyes and say his name out loudly. That is then repeated for 30 minutes untill everybody took his turn and it is ensured everybody understood this game in his complexity. We are expected to acknowledge that as new input and are asked to implement that the next week at our workingplace.
Teachers act as if this would never have gotten to our minds and continue to ruthlessly waste our time with such bogus.
So whilst smoking 3 cigarettes in a row and trying to stomach i have just been labeled an idiot for 90 minutes, iam trying to figure out the sense of teaching macroeconomics to future "heilerziehungspflegern" .
I still dont know and my teachers answer was not remotely satisfying.
On top of that it feels to me the school tries to make up for the lack of content with a enormous amount with bureaucracy. There is rarely a week going by without the need of having to hand in a bunch of signed papers.
Only god knows why.
So much for the school.
At work you are faced with a bunch of other hardships and i will gladly outline them if there is some interest.
I would love to hear back from any experiences concerning caretaking in that field. Please share them with me, since i actually do care about making this a more attractive job and therefore improve the lives of handicapped people