Most students with learning disability continue to flounder through the school syllabus with little support from resource rooms. In most cases, it is the support of parents that helps the students cope with their school and home work. The support is important to help them feel equal to their peers in class.
“The resource room teacher is available only once a week,” says Deepthi, the mother of a Class VII student in an aided school. There are about 25-30 students with learning disability in the school and the teacher is able to spend just about half-an-hour with the child. The general teachers are yet to come about accepting learning disability, she says.
Except for very few schools where there is a dedicated trained special educator, a resource room for differently-abled children remains a far cry in most schools. The case remains the same for both government and private institutions.
Psychiatrist and paediatrician Thomas John says half-hearted measures affect the implementation of ideas. A trained special educator in a school for inclusive education demands that the special educator be able to handle children with mental retardation, learning disability, cerebral palsy, hearing and vision impairment. Special educators, however, are mostly be trained to handle only one or maximum of two specialties. Besides, each student’s need is different. They need to adopt different methods to support the children’s progress in academics, says Dr. John.
Nitya Gopalakrishnan, education officer at Bhavan’s Kochi Kendra and director of special school Mridula Sparsam, says that having a just resource room is not inclusive education. Children should get the benefit of the normal school as well as special training to cope with their peers. “They can become near normal if given an opportunity”, she adds.
The special educator at the Girls’ Higher Secondary School, Ernakulam, says there are training sessions for teachers in the general pool to be also oriented to support a child with learning disability. The department conducts regular training for teachers too. The role of the special educator is only supportive and does not take the role of the teacher in a class, she adds.
The department is also constrained with limited special educators. There are only just over 60 special educators for the district. Mostly, a single teacher has to be the resource room expert in two or three schools.
