To bring confidence among children with different disabilities, a group of professional teachers pull out various techniques from their repertoire to teach such students at Shafaqat Special School (SSS), near Haj House in the Bemina area of Srinagar. One of its kind, this school not only aims to connect these special children commonly relegated as “maet’ with the mainstream, but also provides them an appropriate learning environment.
Nadia generously teaches her disabled pupil in a classroom here in downtown Srinagar.
Operational since 2000, SSS – managed by Voluntary Medicare Society (VMS) – has currently enrolled more than 70 students with varying disabilities ranging from mental illness to physical disabilities.
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“Our enrolment is subject to the donation received from the people. Apart from that, a small group is better in terms of productivity as it is really a tough job to handle many students with different disabilities at the same time. So, we divide our time and teach them separately most of the time,”
says Syed Nadia Mushtaq, a teacher at SSS
Nadia teaches them academics which includes fruit concept, money concept, vegetable concept and time concept.
Some handmade visual representations drawn by specially-abed students.
Nadia calls her students a special lot with inborn qualities which mostly remain hidden and need exposure.
She further asserts that their promotion to another level is subject to their memory.
“We have an Individual Care Plan. Under this plan after every three months, we check whether the child remembers everything or not. If the child is able to retain everything, we move forward to next step accordingly,”
she added.
Zakir, a specially abed pupil pays attention towards his books.
Gulal Bhat working as a special educator here starts off with Aerials Session.
“Aerials Session includes the activities of daily living like buttoning, unbuttoning, toileting. We teach them through framing, drawing different frames on boards and white charts. We use their body as frame and teach them the basic things, in case they fail to understand it through other methods,”
she said.
She was of the opinion that such schools should be present at every nook and corner of the state so that all the specially-abled kids could get the basic training of their life.
Giving further details about the students’ training, the school principal, Dr Ayub says,
“If the child is not able to speak, we provide him speech therapy. If he doesn’t walk, we provide physiotherapy. If he has behaviour problem we provide developmental therapy,” he says, adding that the school charts out Individual Educational Programme (IEP) to assist each student individually.
Children taking their lunch during lunch break at Shafaqat Special School.
VMS operates two schools: Shafaqat Special School and Shafaqat Inclusive School. The schools admit the new wards after taking into consideration the level of disability and their IQ.
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“There are four types of disabilities: Mild, moderate, severe and profound. On the basis of the level of their disability we assign them the schools of their need. This school is basically an NGO running on the charity of people, that is the reason we have only 70 students enrolled here though we charge a measly sum from some parents as per their financial position,”
he added.
The Kashmir Blog 