School Life: The Experience in Mainstream Schools
There are four criteria children must meet in order to be admitted into a mainstream school, according to Sriram.
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The first is that the children must be able to understand what is happening in their environment. The second is that they must be able to read a few basic words and communicate in some way that they understand those words. The third criteria Sriram said is that the child must have at least 15 minutes of sitting tolerance. And lastly, the child must be able to communicate basic needs such as, “I want to use the restroom,” “I want to drink water,” and “Can I get a break?”
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The Curriculum
Once they get into the school, the child’s curriculum will be modified to meet their needs. Sriram said this includes two components: a school-based curriculum component, and a remedial component.
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The school curriculum component consists of two things, Sriram explained.
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“One is curriculum modification, and other is curriculum accommodation,” she said. “When it comes to modification, the curriculum content is made lesser, or for gifted children it is made more. When it comes to accommodation, the content remains the same. The teaching methodology, the presenting as to how the child is being taught, as well as the evaluation methodology of the child, varies.”
The remedial component includes lessons and training the children in whatever area they are lacking in. This includes therapy and social skills training.
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Some schools have introduced occupational therapy in their curriculum for differently abled children, according to Anbumani. If a child has a learning difficulty or is unable to sit still in one place, a therapist in the school works with the child.
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Previously, this was not there, Anbumani said. Parents had to search outside the school for a therapist to help the child.
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“All these things have come out, but the stigma is still there,” Anbumani said.
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Shadow Teachers
In a class of about 55 kids, the teacher will not be able to give special attention to a differently abled child, Anand said. This is why the differently abled children at Montfort Matriculation Higher Secondary School have a shadow teacher accompany them.
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The shadow teacher’s job is to help the child participate in class and understand the material.
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“And some shadow teachers are not that literate that they would be able to teach the whole curriculum,” Sriram said.
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So when the child comes to the resource room, the shadow teacher also accompanies them and special educators like Sriram teach them to fill in the gaps.
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Shadow teacher at Montfort School in Chennai
The Resource Room
The children also have access to a resource room in their school. Within this resource room, the child receives special education and language and communication classes, Anand said.
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“We help the kids to talk and to express,” Anand explained. “It's more to do with expressive language either by saying or by expressing on the face just by saying yes or no. The yes or no concept itself gets so difficult for them. So the shadow teacher sometimes find it very difficult when they're not verbal.”
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Anand works with the child to get them to be more expressive, using yes or no flashcards and getting them to nod their head or produce some kind of action. This in turn helps the shadow teacher understand the child better so that they can communicate with them.
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The shadow teachers also receive training in the resource room. Anand and her colleagues work with them to make sure they are able to teach the child in the classroom.
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Resources Available
Besides scribes, who are people who write the exam for the differently abled if they are unable to write the answers on their own, the children also have access to various resources the special educators use to communicate with and teach the children.
“For academic purposes we use something called alternative augmentative communication, which is called AAC,” Sriram said.
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AAC’s are available in two forms. They can be word charts, picture charts, or simply a board and marker that the special educators and shadow teachers make, or they can be in the form of software like Hope, Slate and Avaz, according to Sriram.
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However, the software is not usually already available in the schools, so the parents have to buy it, Sriram said.
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Sriram and her colleagues also prepare activities for the children to improve their fine motor skills. They use simple resources that can be easily obtained, like straws, beads and vegetable baskets, and ask the children to do things like inserting the straws into the holes in the basket. Kannan uses similar techniques at D.K.’s Learning Centre.
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Resource box at Montfort School in Chennai
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“It's not like high-funda resources,” Sriram said, “it's basically flashcards, and we use straws, we use paper plates - whatever basic things are available, we just convert it into some skill sets.”
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Exam Time
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During exam time, children can have a scribe to help them read or write the answers.
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The shadow teachers are swapped for scribes, according to Anand.
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“We swap it with the other shadow teachers so that it's not that the same shadow teacher,” Anand said. “If she's going to take the exam, of course the child is going to get full marks.”
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In this way, they make sure they are really testing the child’s mastery of the material and it’s not the shadow teacher writing the child’s exam for them.
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In addition to the provision of a scribe, the exam itself can be modified according to the child’s abilities.
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Anand said that sometimes it is the special educators like her who create the exam question papers for the child because they are the ones who know what the child knows and doesn’t know.
“It may not be exactly the syllabus,” Anand said. “It could be a little lower than the syllabus, wherein the child the child can do it, the child can perform.”
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NIOS
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Math was really hard for Samuel, as well as drawing and handwriting, so he had a modified syllabus for math and science until 9th standard. After that, he switched to NIOS.
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NIOS is a central government-recognized board that is not only for differently abled children, but also for children who travel a lot for sports and extracurricular performances who do not have the time to attend regular school classes. According to Sriram, the minimum age to enter NIOS is 14. Until students reach that age, they must go to a regular school.
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Kannan, who uses the NIOS curriculum at D.K.’s Learning Centre, explained how NIOS works.
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In NIOS syllabus, students have the opportunity to choose whichever subjects they want to take.
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“Like we do not have to give them math, we do not have to give them science, we do not have to give them social science,” Kannan said. “Instead we give them painting, data entry operations, so which the child will be able to perform. So we take up those courses. And we can also get them to pass in 2-3 years. So every 6 months, they take an exam. And they clear their 10th.”
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Students who are unable to study five subjects at once can take two or three subjects at a time in NIOS, and study those subjects over a period of six months. In this way, students are able to pass 10th and 12th standard.
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Obtaining Disability Certificates
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Samuel used a computer to type his school work at school. However, CBSE didn’t allow the usage of computers in the exam hall at the time, so Boaz said she had to go get a disability certificate for Samuel.
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When differently abled children reach 9th standard in India, they need to go to the government medical board for a full, formalized psychiatric evaluation, according to Sriram. In order to go to the psychiatric evaluation, the student needs three letters: a letter from the parent; a letter from the school authority stating how long the child has been studying in that school; and a letter from the special educator or a professional who’s intervening with a child talking about the current performance level and recommending what accommodations the child would need for the board exams.
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“The different kind of accommodations the child would need on the board are extra time, making him sit in a separate room when he gets too disturbed by the distractions, provision of a scribe, usage of a calculator, language exemption,” Sriram said. “Of late, taking exams on the computer has also been added.”
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The examination takes three to five days, during which the psychiatry ward of the medical board of the government hospitals will decide whether the child can be given these things. At the end of this, a disability certificate is issued for the child.
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“Once they do the evaluation they would give a GO order, which is a government order saying that this child can sit for the board with XYZ accommodations,” Sriram said.
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Peer Sensitization Workshops
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Sriram also conducts peer sensitization workshops for the other classmates to make sure the differently abled child doesn’t face any bullying.
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“Whenever we put in such kids who have behavior issues, or who look different, we do peer sensitization workshops for the children,” she said.
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She said that they don’t go into the technical details, but she explains why the child is different. She tells the children that their new classmate might do things that seem funny or silly, but that that’s just the way they were born. Sriram also tells the children how they, as friends, can help the differently abled child out and what they can do.
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Insecurities, Bullying and Making Friends
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Many differently abled children are not insecure about their disability when they’re young, according to Anand. She said that around fourth grade, some children become aware that they are different and feel insecure, but there are many who don’t even know what is happening.
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“Beyond fourth grade there are many kids,” she said. “They know that they have a problem. They do get bullied in the school. And then we have to go and intervene.”
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That’s when Anand has to go tell the bullies that what they are doing is wrong.
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However, when I visited Montfort School, I observed children playing during their physical education class. I watched with awe as a group of young girls playing with a ball went out of their way to make their differently abled classmate play with them when they felt sorry seeing her standing alone.
A neurotypical student plays ball with a differently abled student at Montfort School in Chennai
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This is what most differently abled children are lacking, Anand said. They often don’t have friends. Fortunately, she said she’s noticed that the children at Montfort are very understanding and make friends with their classmate. She’s seen children take them to the washroom, make sure they sit next to them during lunch and play with them.
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“Nobody hung out with him,” Boaz said as she described Samuel’s interaction with classmates at school. “One of the challenges of autism, Asperger's, is the inability to make friends. It's like nobody wants to hang out with them.”
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Despite the challenge with making friends, Boaz said Samuel didn’t face too much trouble in school because he studied in the school she ran.
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Problems with Inclusion in Mainstream Schools
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“We feel they are included in the society - actually they're not,” Kannan said.
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In all her years of being a special educator, Kannan said despite hearing a lot of talk about inclusion, she has seen that the children really suffer in mainstream schools.
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Jayanthi Kannan
The differently abled children who go to mainstream schools are unable to perform in the field during physical education classes or understand general instructions if they have autism or mental retardation, according to Kannan.
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“So maybe physically they're present in the school, but not taking part in anything,” she said.
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