Daniel Borchardt is an 11-year-old boy from Seville with spastic-dystonic tetraplegia who has managed to overcome an extraordinary challenge: being the first Andalusian student to graduate from primary school without curricular adaptation, that is, achieving and demonstrating the same knowledge and skills as his companions.
This is also a great success for inclusive education, since this student, whose cognitive abilities are fine, has managed to successfully pass primary school, being able to communicate only with his eyes and relying only on the means of the Sor Ángela de la Cruz public school, where the teachers have focused on their evolution since Dani entered the center at the age of three.
The director of the center, Miguel Ángel Toro, tells Diario de Sevilla that Dani’s case has been the biggest challenge for this public center, but that the involvement and work of the educational community have made it possible for this student to go to the THAT within ordinary teaching. Thus, next year he will go to the integrated institute from the first day in the classroom.
“We were aware that Daniel’s intelligence is preserved and that his quadriplegia affects the motor and communication spheres,” Ana Medina, Daniel’s mother, explains to the local media.
It is precisely this circumstance that has made it possible for his son to have attended primary school in an ordinary classroom, helped by a screen moved by an optical mouse and with the complicity of teachers who have been trained in the new technologies that have emerged and that could help Dani communicate more effectively.
According to his mother, because Dani is shy in front of the media, her son even considers attending the University. Among the professions that he has considered for when he is older is that of Teaching.
Daniel has a screen with an optical mouse but 10 years ago that was not normal. Diario de Sevilla recounts that the family acquired this device in Germany and that the teachers had to be trained in handling this technology. “When we started with him, very few children communicated with a visual mouse. Learning has been mutual. Daniel has learned from us and all the teachers with him,” says Esther Abad, a Hearing and Language teacher who has worked with Daniel since he was three years old and who has helped him overcome this great challenge.
Dani, now almost a teenager, now has an improved communication model that has been prescribed by the Neuropediatrics area of ??the Virgen del Rocío Hospital a year and a half ago, with which he will go to his new institute next year under the same conditions as the rest of his classmates.
The school wanted to recognize their efforts by awarding a Diploma for Educational and Teaching Effort to both Daniel and his teachers in an act attended by the Minister of Educational Development and Vocational Training, Patricia del Pozo, who, in addition to congratulating to Daniel, he has stressed that with effort and perseverance and the support of the teachers you can achieve everything you set out to do.
“Daniel is an example to follow and a source of pride, I encourage you to continue on your academic path and achieve your dream”, the counselor told him during his visit to the center to grant him this recognition.
