The Special Educator is an indispensable part of any specially abled child’s life. These teachers train them through the use of toys, visual cues and physical training in life skill resource rooms. In academic resource rooms, they aid their learning through innovative teaching methods which would drive the concept home.
So, what inspires someone to be a special instructor? For me, a student of the Goa Institute of Management (GIM) working on the Give Goa initiative, whose purpose is to promote social responsibility among the students of GIM through service to the less privileged communities and thereby contribute to goal of an inclusive society, the question is indeed food for thought. As part of a group of students from GIM working with the reputed teacher training institute Nirmala Institute of Education (NIE) towards creating awareness about inclusive education, I looked for the answer.
I found that being a special educator is a job which requires consistent effort and the fruits of that effort are not immediately and obviously visible. The pay is not even proportional to the importance of the job and the effort and strength that the job requires.
I believe it is something more than just plain altruism. It is the deepest form of love for mankind and a reminder of all that is good in the world. They spend day in and day out helping each kid to reach her own personal goal as listed in the Individualized Education Program for each kid. This means that every kid needs a different plan, different techniques of learning and different ways of being taken care of. The educators are thus not just training the kids, but also deciding on the way to train them. Thus their tasks involves not only the execution of the tasks set out, but also making huge life impacting decisions. They need to come up with new ideas to accommodate any situation that may appear.
An illustration of a situation faced by Dr Marita Adam, who designs courses for children with learning disabilities, was that some students had difficulty coping with academic subjects like Mathematics and Science. For such students, new vocational subjects like floriculture, vegetable gardening, cookery, bakery etc were introduced, which were more practical, and might provide these students with employment in the said fields. An inspiring example is of a student who was asked to be removed from a regular school because of his inability to cope with the academic subjects. With new teaching methodologies developed by the teachers, the student was able to stay back and is now pursuing his BA.
These new ideas have changed the lives of these students, who would otherwise be only seen as dependents. A combination of optimism and innovativeness has managed to impact a great many lives.
Avelino de Sa, president of Disability Rights Association of Goa (DRAG), states that one of the biggest challenges he faced while starting DRAG was the acceptability of inclusive education by the specially abled themselves. The special educators then play the role of not only being teachers, but also mentors who reinforce the idea of equal rights in the mind of their students. They help the students deal with their personal issues, thus taking on the role of a counsellor as well.
These teachers can play the role of a motivator as well. A case in point is of the noted poet, Frederika Menezes. Dealing with cerebral palsy herself, she was bolstered into writing a poem for a class project by her teacher. She then found her passion in writing poems.
There is a dearth of special educators in regular schools now. Getting a NOC from the government involves a lot of red tape. Special schools provide the special educators with incentives such as higher pay and better benefits. Then it comes as a little surprise that special schools are more popular, thus making it more difficult to enforce inclusive education.
Leaving the weight of making inclusive education a reality must not be left on the shoulders of the few teachers and the few people who care. We must all make our contributions. A simple new idea can make a huge difference. Raising our awareness and raising our voices can make a huge difference to this left out part of the society. It’s high time we start caring. We must make an active effort to make these kids a part of regular schools with resource rooms and make inclusion a reality.
Nimisha Agrawal is a first year student of the PGDM batch at Goa Institute of Management (GIM). She along with a team of students worked on Inclusive Education along with Nirmala Institute of Education (NIE) as part of GIM’s Give Goa Project.