I am Réka Ringwald-Derdák, I am an autism-specific development and special needs educator.
I studied social pedagogy at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics during my first years of university. Then I graduated from the Bárczi Gusztáv Faculty of Special Education at ELTE, specializing in autism spectrum pedagogy and pedagogy of the mentally disabled. I have been working with autism-specific special education development since 2017.
After graduating, I worked for six years in a special institution in Budapest, where I dealt with the individual and group development of students with autism and intellectual disabilities, also performing class teacher duties within a primary school framework, where, in addition to the development of cognitive skills and social-communicational developments, education for independence was also a priority. After that, I worked for three years as a special education teacher in an integrating secondary school with students affected by autism and with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. After that, I was the deputy professional manager of a development house in Budapest for one year, within which I also performed professional intervision tasks and provided mentoring for the newly arrived and beginner colleagues. In addition, I organized parent community-building and parent education events and also held individual and group social-communicational and autism-specific developments for (mainly) kindergarten age group.
In addition to the above, I have been conducting animal-assisted therapy with a social-communication focus in group sessions for four years, in connection with which I completed a further training course entitled “Possibilities for using animal-assisted therapy in practice” in order to ensure that the planning and implementation process is characterized by the most accurate professional background possible.
In order to expand my professional competence, I participated in further trainings on the dyslexia prevention and reeducation method developed by Ildikó Meixner, thanks to which, as a Meixner therapist, I had the opportunity to gain insight into the development of children affected by dyslexia and to learn about the methodology related to the planning and management of dyslexia prevention-focused sessions.
In my work, I am convinced that close cooperation between the child, the parent and the special education teacher is of paramount importance, taking into account individual needs and demands. In my opinion, effective special education development can be achieved by establishing an appropriate relationship of trust and providing the appropriate conditions: I consider it important that the child, with positive reinforcement and the appropriate structure, realizes the aspirations that the family and the special education teacher jointly designate. In addition, finding the right communication channel and path with the  parents is also of great importance, which I can establish and provide for the families who contact me within the framework of regular parent consultations and advice.