Balancing Act

The day didn’t go as we had planned. We stuck to our design and sacrificed little because we tried our very best to come up with an exercise that was “just right” for the capabilities of our post-CVA clients. I’m extremely grateful that we decided to go to CTS-AA yesterday to coordinate with the interns; they gave us a more vivid picture of the clients’ presentation (balance and cognitive impairments included), suffice to say, we were able to devise back-up plans or revisions if our activity was too high or low in demand, and to prepare our guarding as we anticipated falls. So yes, the day didn’t go quite as planned – it turned out better.

I truly enjoyed how cooperative our clients were. Our demonstration was a hit, based from what I heard from the clients. I think our visual cues and activity choices were our saving graces; they were appropriate for the level of functioning of most clients (we had to vary them a little for a few with residual impairments), hence, we were able to achieve our objectives. A major thing we did lack, however, was feedback for the clients. I knew that this was something that will be pointed out, because from the start, I felt a lot of uncertainty in communicating with the clients. It was hard for me to balance being respectable from being controlling – we probably all felt the same way, but in retrospect, we should have been more assertive, especially since the corrections we could have given were still in the boundaries of their current capacity. Actually, even the amount of people demonstrating in front wasn’t really necessary – more people could have been utilized in observing the clients’ performance.

I guess rapport building is the thing we take for granted most in practice, I found out. Since we weren’t fully comfortable or aware of the learning styles of our clients, we didn’t know how to observe their errors, let alone respond to them. Next time, we’ll probably set up the environment more for errorless learning; a pre-emptive approach is always better than a responsive one, just like how prevention is always better than cure in PT. It was a good day, either way; for a teacher, I don’t think anything else can beat the feeling of students excited and enthusiastic to learn.