RDT organises ‘Adaptive Education Training’ workshop for teachers of students with disabilities

Making teachers aware of their students’ needs and supporting them is very important. Rural Development Trust (RDT) organised a workshop that highlighted these needs and trained teachers to ensure their teaching methods become more effective.

RDT is particularly sensitive and pays close attention to supporting and rehabilitating people with impairments through its Community Based Rehabilitation (CBR) sector. Children with impairments of various kinds ranging from visually impaired to those with cerebral palsy, intellectually disabilities, hearing and speech impairments, and those with physical impairments are the prime beneficiaries.

In their most recent effort to support individuals with disability, RDT’s CBR sector organised a workshop on Adaptive Physical Education for children with impairments at RDT’s High School for Inclusive Education, to educate and better equip its teachers for differently abled children.

As many as 19 subject teachers for children with special needs participated along with six physical education (PE) teachers. Presiding over this training workshop was Dr. R. Giridharan, Assistant Professor at Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda University, Coimbatore.

This three day workshop aimed at making these teachers aware of the intricacies needed to train and teach children with impairments using sport for development, the love and care they need to grow and gradually integrate into society. These teachers were also made aware of an attention to detail, attitude and the keen eyes needed to spot the possibility of involving these children in competitive sport, so as to speed up their development and social integration through ‘unified sport’.

Dr. Giridharan used day one to ensure all the teachers were aware of the differences between Deaflympics, Paralympics, Special Olympics and the Olympics. He later moved to educating the teachers on the importance of a proper diet, developing their coordination, motor skills, and their mobility through exercise or fun activities for children with impairments. Day One was centred on mobility and auditory stimulation training for visually impaired and autistic children. Auditory stimulation helps both the teachers and their children with communication whereas mobility training supports social development while avoiding a sedentary lifestyle.

Day Two began with the practice of yoga to mark International Yoga Day 2016. The teachers along with 106 children with various impairments practiced ‘Adapted Yoga’. This entailed the visually impaired children to perform ‘asanas’ with the help of partners. Later, the focus shifted to coordination games for the intellectually disabled and balance and vestibular training for the hearing and speech impaired.

Day Three was dedicated to strengthening activities and adapted games. This used wheelchairs to train children with spinal cord injuries and cerebral palsy. The teachers learnt over 50 adaptive activities and games to more effectively teach and train differently abled students.

Dr. Giridharan was happy to share his knowledge and experience in this workshop and was delighted, saying “I am very impressed with the work of RDT and its focus towards supporting differently abled children. It was my pleasure to conduct this workshop in order to train RDT’s staff and PE teachers.”