INCLUSIVE EDUCATION - I – 422401

Q1) Conduct a interview of one special educator and write a report. (20
Marks)

I visited Sai Aashray Special School, a school for physically disabled and
mentally challenged. As I entered the big green gate of the school, I felt excited
and delightful to see the pleasant green environment.

Shalini Mam received me and enlightened me about the special school. She took
me around the school and showed different departments and classrooms. She
explained the different departments.

The school had physiotherapy department where treatment was given to the
children to empower their muscular strengths using ultrasound machines. They
had variety of equipments to help students to stand, walk on steps, balance their
feet, co-ordinate their mind and hand. After that we headed to her classroom.

Ms.Shalini, a creative special education teacher, stands at the door to her

classroom and shakes hands with the student walking in. Each of her students
gets a non-school related question each morning. And each one knows that,
tomorrow, their special education teacher will remember his or her answer

A Very Special (Education) Teacher

The mood is usually light in her class. It can’t help but be with Crazy routinely
standing on her desk, sitting on the floor, singing at the top of her lungs or
waving a magic wand in front of the class to keep the atmosphere exciting and
the students on their toes.

Breaking the Mold

Her students are not your typical 3rd and 4th grade students. As a special
education teacher, she works with children who live with learning disabilities,

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emotional disruptions, vision impairment and traumatic brain injuries that affect
their ability to function in a regular classroom.

These kids are all too used to the pressures of trying to meet a status quo that
wasn’t built for them. So, in a classroom where their teacher, mentor and
confidante is routinely more counter-culture than they are, they learn in the
depths of their hearts that everyone is acceptable exactly the way they are, no
matter how they break the mold.

If At First You Don’t Succeed…

Her years of special education teaching experience certainly helped shape her
successful methods.

“I love what I do! It would be hard to go back to doing anything else,” she says
with a warm smile. “For these kids, success is simply trying. Sometimes simply
trying can take a huge leap of faith for them, but usually, once they start, they can
move mountains.”

She does set high standards, especially compared to other special education
teachers, but her years of witnessing remarkable results and building life-
changing confidence has taught her, more than anything, to believe in her
students.

Focus on Education

Teaching for more than a dozen years in one of the last remaining schools that
serves preschoolers through 12th graders, she has witnessed many of her students
matriculate into mainstream classes and even go on to college.

Not long ago, she ran into one of them while he was buying a comforter for his
college dorm room. “I was so happy for him,” she said. “He had to work so hard
to get where he was now.”

In class, students learn basics like social interactions, self-care and societal
norms, but each day also brings classes in English, reading, writing, math and

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computers. Capable special ed students can join the regular student body in
classes as varied as music, library, science and social studies, but spend most of
their day in the tight-knit environment of her classroom.

A Fresh Start Every Day

To be a good special education teacher, she says, you have to have patience and
not measure everything by the fast-paced standards of the day. “If you don’t have
a sense of humor, don’t even bother trying to become a special ed teacher,” she
warns. “It helps to be a little wacky. Think outside the box!”

Days with her special students bring plenty of opportunities to laugh and enjoy
life the way it is. “Special education teachers benefit from a sort of short term
memory loss,” she explains with a gleam in her eye. “Every day is new for the
kids. You have to be able to start new too, sometimes in a matter of minutes.”

After the interview, we visited the play area where we had a nice time with the
kids, after which I returned home. I felt so blessed that god has given me a sound
body and mind.

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Q2) Read a Policy documents for person with disability – Prepare a
report. (10 Marks)

According to UNICEF, about 95% of children with disabilities in developing

countries are out of school and 90% of them may never gain access to basic
education in their lifetime. In actual terms, UNESCO report indicates that there
are over 10.5 million out of school children in Nigeria. It will not be out of place
to estimate that 5 to 7 million of them are children with disabilities. This
projection is in line with World Bank and WHO projections that persons with
disabilities constitute about 15% of populations in developing countries and that
between 80 to 90% of them don’t gain access to basic needs of life especially
basic education. The primary underlying causes of this situation are the exclusive
and inaccessible nature, structure and system of virtually all primary and
secondary schools in Nigeria; the confinement of the education of children with
disabilities to very few, poorly staffed, poorly equipped and outdated special
schools; very low public awareness on issues of inclusive education; inadequate
institutional and human capacities required to implement inclusive education; and
inadequate, poor implementation or non-availability of appropriate legal and
policy frameworks required for the implementation of inclusive education for
children with disabilities.

It is important that the Government and its relevant education agencies urgently
make all primary and secondary public and private schools inclusive of, and
accessible to all children including those with disabilities because this will
drastically reduce the number of out of school children; reduce the social burden
of unproductive and unskilled population and increase the actual human resource
capacity.

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What is to be done is to provide all existing and newly established primary and
secondary schools with inclusive and accessible infrastructures like classrooms,
playgrounds, toilets, etc; adaptive teaching/instructional aid and technologies;
well trained teaching and non-teaching staff; initiate public awareness
programmes and create relevant legal and policy frameworks on inclusive
education.

Key Points:

1. Territories: Under the Act, each state is required to constitute a State

Mental Health Authority (SMHA) to ensure effective and equitable
enforcement of the provisions of the Act. (WHO 2006).
2. The Rehabilitation Council of India Act 1992: This Act sets out to regulate
the training of professionals in rehabilitation and sets out a framework for a
Central Rehabilitation Register. Specifically it sets out: 1. Training policies
and programmes; 2. Standardise the training courses for professionals
dealing with persons with disabilities; 3. Grant recognition to the
institutions running these training courses; 4. Maintain a Central
Rehabilitation Register of the rehabilitation professionals; 5. Promote
research in Rehabilitation and Special Education. 6. The major functions of
the council include the recognition of qualifications granted by
Universities in India for Rehabilitation Professionals and also the
recognition of qualification by Institutions outside India.
3. The Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, protection Of Rights
And Full Participation) Act 1995 This act provides 3% reservations for
disabled people in poverty alleviation programmes, government posts, and
in state educational facilities, as well as other rights and entitlement.

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 Objectives : 1. Prevention and Early Detection of Disabilities 2. Education
3. Affirmative Action 4. Research And Manpower Development 5.
Recognition of Institutions for Persons with Disabilities 6. Institution for
Persons with Severe Disabilities 7. The Chief Commissioner and
Commissioners for Persons with Disabilities 8. Social Security 9.
Employment 10. Non-Discrimination
4. The National Trust for Welfare of Persons with Autism, Cerebral Palsy,
Mental Retardation and Multiple Disabilities Act 1999 This Act provides
for the constitution of a national body for the Welfare of Persons with
Autism, Cerebral Palsy, Mental Retardation and Multiple Disabilities.
Objectives: • Enable and empower PWD to live independently and as fully
as possible from within and close to the community to which they belong; •
to strengthen facilities & to provide support to persons with disability to
live within their own families; • to extend support to registered
organization to provide need based Services during the period of crises in
the family of persons with disability; • to deal with problems of persons
with disability who do not have family support.
5. National Policy for Persons with Disabilities Act 2005 The National
Policy, released in February 2006 seeks to create an environment that
provides them equal opportunities, protection of their rights and full
participation in society. Its aim is to ensure better coordination between
various wings of the State and Central Governments . The focus of the
policy is on the following: • Prevention of Disabilities • Rehabilitation
Measures • Physical Rehabilitation Strategies • Early Detection and
Intervention • Counselling & Medical Rehabilitation

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6. National Policy for Persons with Disabilities Act 2005 In addition to the
legal framework, extensive infrastructure has been developed in India for
disabled persons under this Act and includes the establishment of the
following institutions: • Institute for the Physically Handicapped, New
Delhi. • National Institute of Visually Handicapped, Dehradun • National
Institute for Orthopedically Handicapped, Kolkata • National Institute for
Mentally Handicapped, Secunderabad. • National Institute for Hearing
Handicapped, Mumbai • National Institute of Rehabilitation Training &
Research, Cuttack. • National Institute for Empowerment of Persons with
Multiple Disabilities, Chennai
7. The Disability and Rehabilitation WHO Action Plan 2006-2011 The
document provides the overview of WHO's future plan of activities, which
will be carried out or coordinated by the Disability and Rehabilitation team
located in the Department of Injuries and Violence Prevention, in the NCD
and Mental Health. VISION: All persons with disabilities live in dignity,
with equal rights and opportunities MISSION: To enhance the quality of
life for persons with disabilities through national, regional and global
efforts to: • Raise awareness about the magnitude and consequences of
disability • Facilitate data collection and analyse or disseminate disability-
related data and information
8. The Disability and Rehabilitation WHO Action Plan 2006-2011 • Support,
promote and strengthen health and rehabilitation services for persons with
disabilities and their families • Promote community based rehabilitation
(CBR) • Promote development, production, distribution and servicing of
assistive technology • Support the development, implementation,
measuring and monitoring of policies to improve the rights and

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opportunities for people with disabilities. • Build capacity among health
and rehabilitation policy makers and service providers • Foster multi-
sectoral networks and partnerships

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Q3) Visit to special/ Integrated / Inclusive classrooms and write a report
with reflections.

The second grade classroom in which I observed the students was rectangular.
The entry door to the classroom was located in the middle of one of the long
sides. The wall directly opposite had white bookcases located under the windows.
Four computers were place in front of the bookcases with small student chairs in
front of each computer. The bookcases housed textbooks, however they were not
filled to capacity and were inaccessible due to the placement of the computers.

The walls in this area are covered with student artwork, a calendar and assorted
teacher memos. There are several large bookcases and file cabinets in this area
filled with resource materials for the teacher.

The fourteen student desks are arranged in rows facing the front of the classroom;
Teacher’s desks are to the side of the room facing the student desks and the
Teacher Aide’s desk is situated behind the student desks. A blackboard and pull
down overhead screen faces thestudents and a table is located in front of the
student desks, as well.The walls are simply adorned with typical educational post
ersuch as the writing process and other factual information, as well as a few ins-
pirational posters. Large bulletin boards are placed around the classroom. Current
classroom themes and student work is displayed on these boards. Computer
generated math graphs were placed on one board, denoting the use of computers
as well as math benchmarks that are being explored. The class has 8 boys and 6
girls, for a total of 14 students.

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The observation experience in the classroom offered a visible example of much
of what has been taught in this Special Education course. Most
obviously, the discussion about inclusion classrooms is particularly relevant. This
Classroom was not inclusionary by any means; it is in stark contrast to what we
haddiscussed as potentially an ideal classroom environment for Special Education
students.

The class is composed of students who would not succeed in an inclusion

classroom. For them, the least restrictive environment is in a 12:1:1 class.
Additionally, the experience in the classroom illustrated the methods of
teaching Special Education students that we learned in class. The
teacher exhibitedthe importance of not only teaching the material, but teaching th
e students how to learnthe material. Several Social Studies classes were spent la-
beling maps, which the studentswere then responsible for labeling in a quiz.

The lesson for the day was to identify andlabel the Southern/Eastern half of Euro
pe, a total of approximately 20 countries. Ethnic
and national tensions in the region have led to shifting borders and countries over
the pastdecade . In order to teach the most up-to
date material,we thus had to locate accurate maps online (the classroom atlases w
ere outdated) large
enough for the students to read and understand. I began with the website which
offers Factbook about every country and a subsequent variety of maps, working
torestructure and update the assignment. Several Google searches later I had
found twoaccurate maps, a blank one and a resource map the students could use
to locate thecountries. I also updated the list of countries the students were respon
sible for that day.

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Theteacher had me read the word bank of countries out loud so thestudents could
hear pronunciations and then encouraged them to work in small groups to
identify the different countries. We then floated amongst the ten students, offering
helpwhere needed. Some worked consistently and independently, completing the
map beforemost of other classmates. In the meantime, some collaborated. They
were oftendistracted and took the independent work atmosphere as an
opportunity to carry on a
social conversation; however they did manage to finish the work by the end of
the class period. They also asked for help frequently, as they had trouble locating
some of the smaller nations on the reference map. Upon locating a country in
question,they would then continue their conversation, often inviting other student
and teacher and myself into the conversation as well.

He and I continued to float around the room, helping students with their maps.
Many couldn’t understand why the nations were so small or why borders had
moved, I briefly explained nationalist tensions by illustrating
the subsequent violence. They were able to attach to that answer and better under
standthe lesson.

After helping the students label their maps for approximately 20 minutes, it was
nearly the end of the session. Most of the students had finished or were only
missing a fewcountries. I walked past one desk, though, and he was significantly
behind the others.My presence, though, only seemed to fluster him more. He had
asked a few questionsthroughout the work period, though not nearly as many as
the rest of the students. As aresult, his map was far less complete.

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Reflections

The observation experience in this class was an incredible experience. It is

difficult to sum up all of the conclusions I have drawn from it, however, two of
the mostimportant ones are as follows: the classroom atmosphere is crucial to a
successful classroom and dedication to the students and the job is absolutely
necessary as well.

Teacher did a truly excellent job at fostering a very positive atmosphere. Almost
unknowingly, the classroom seems to operate on the basis of respect alone.
Certainly there were conflicts, however these were short
lived. Additionally, the entire classbecame very intertwined and concerned with
the welfare of one another. The support for one another is present and it is a huge
boon to the classroom setting.

The second conclusion is that the role of the Special Education teacher is multi-
faceted.

My vastly impactful realization is that the ability of the students is not limited by
a learning disability. The students might be slower at math skills or take longer to
understand historical trends, but many are still extremely articulate on subjects of
interestto them. Students, for example, could talk about engines and hunting for
hours,emphasizing the most salient points of recent debate on the topics. It is thus
necessary tofind ways to engage these students who might otherwise tune out
very easily. Relatingthe material to their passions can be highly successful. On the
converse side, it isimportant not to limit these students. It is highly probable that
students are beingunderestimated simply because he lacks confidence in himself.

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Toallow him to achievehis full potential, he needs to be drawn out and
encouraged. It is important to strike that balance between the two extremes.

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