Greeting Cards for the Dogs - Tim’s project

Meet Tim!

Tim is 14 years old and is a keen student in Class 8 at Tarremah Steiner School near Hobart in Tasmania. This year is a particularly exciting one for Tim.

Not only has he learned how to ride a bike and participated in two challenging camps already, but he has also – with the help of his mentor Janina Evangelou – been learning first-hand about the process of producing greeting cards.

With Janina’s expert guidance (and Mum’s help when necessary) Tim has:

• Learned how to get some good effects with watercolour pencils and produced some beautiful, colourful pictures;
• Made a selection of drawings from his portfolio;
• Gathered all the information to be printed on the backs of the cards (with some help from Mum);
• Taken his selected drawings and written details to the printer to begin the process of having the images printed;
• Thoroughly checked and approved the proof sheets (a week or two later); then
• Watched and participated in the entire printing process, during which the printers kindly involved Tim in turning on the huge machines, removing the occasional sheet of cards to check colours, and transferring the finished pile of printed sheets to a mini-forklift, ready to be cut and scored. It was a really memorable event!

The final, very professional-looking products were delivered to us, packed flat, in 11 little boxes, which now dominate one corner of our family room. We are currently in the thick of lovingly folding and packaging the cards, ready to distribute them to the world!

You might be wondering why we decided to embark on a project of this scope at this particular time. The answer – that this is Tim’s Class 8 Independent project - will be obvious only to those who are familiar with the Steiner curriculum, so let me explain a little more…
The “Independent project” is an important and challenging part of the year’s work for a student in Class 8 at the Steiner school. Beginning with a topic of their choice - and the topics are as diverse as you could imagine - the students explore, organise, create, raise money for charities - whatever the project entails - all with the help of a mentor who has experience in their chosen area of study. This work is entirely undertaken outside school hours and, apart from occasionally reporting to classmates and the supervising teacher on how the project is progressing, the students work quite independently in pursuing their project goals.

For Tim, the “Independent” aspect of the project has needed to be approached a little differently. Not only does Tim have Down syndrome, but he also has more than the average difficulties with auditory processing, speech and language, so he has needed a good deal of support with all language-related parts of his project. For tasks such as putting together the written information, speaking to the printer, and some aspects of the cards’ distribution, Tim’s support team (mum and his mentor, Janina) have been on the job, making sure that Tim is involved whenever possible. The beauty of this particular project is that there are many “hands-on” steps beyond creating the artwork, as well as opportunities for social interactions – not to mention the need for some maths and money awareness – in the selling stage.

When we launched this stage of the project with a little “Tim’s cards” stall after school one day in early July, the positive response was almost overwhelming! It was like a feeding frenzy; a whirlwind of questions, smiling faces, exclamations of delight, cards everywhere and money filling the cake-tin in front of a completely stunned Tim. All a bit much for a guy who has major language challenges! Watching this, it was clear that we probably could have prepared him better, perhaps by giving him lots of practice at one small aspect of the interaction so that he could have at least been sure of one thing amidst all the action. Tim’s not the only one on a steep learning curve!

By chance, dogs have become a theme of this journey, though not of the drawings themselves. Tim has always had a great love of dogs, and since Janina and her daughter Heidi have three beautiful huskies, it was inevitable that for Tim, the opportunity to play with the dogs became a real highlight of our “card project” visits to Janina’s house. During this time I also learned of the possibility of registering Tim and his brother Asher as volunteer dog walkers at Hobart’s Dogs’ Home, which we have enjoyed doing for some months now. So, when deciding on a useful destination for the money generated by the sale of the cards, one that would also be meaningful to Tim, Hobart Dogs’ Home became the perfect choice.

We are now ready to share Tim’s cards with you! The cards are blank inside, suitable for many occasions (including Christmas), or just to pen a note to a friend. The full set of cards (11 different designs) would make a lovely gift in itself!

So please support Tim’s project and help him to help his beloved dogs!