 |
| Children and teachers marching. Ms Zedira Singh did a great job making the banner. |
At the beginning of every school year the Guyanese Ministry
of Education designates September to be National Education month in order to
kick off the back-to-school effort. This year my department decided to host a
rally and march under the theme "Transforming the Nation Through Inclusive
Education." We had about 100 participants march in a little parade then we
had a ceremony with addresses from the district education officers, the
president of the Special Education Needs (SEN) teacher association, and yours truly.
At previous rallies, activities have focused more on
lectures expounding on the theme for that year. But since I was in charge of
planning the event I wanted to design a program that would be fun for the kids.
This year they got to decorate a banner with finger paint and play games
designed for all ability levels. Their favorite activity was definitely the water-balloon
toss which was a first and it straight up blew their minds. Teachers even got
into the action. It was a TON of work, but we had a blast!
 |
| Love the faces of the students and teacher as they throw the balloons and wait to see if their partner catches it. |
 |
| School children helping each other decorate the banner. |
In Guyana the SEN movement is still in its infancy. There
are only 3 "special" schools in the country and those schools, which
are well over capacity, only cater to children with sensory-motor disabilities.
One of Ilana and my goals since coming
to Region 1 has been to increase awareness of people with disabilities, many of
whom are hidden away, and also improve their access to education services.
The good news is that in our region this movement has been
steadily growing legs of its own. The SEN teachers divided up all the children
with disabilities that we're aware of into caseloads and have started designing
individual education plans for each one... a big step in the right direction.
Our SEN group has even been getting the attention of outside funding sources
like UNICEF who are likely to contribute generous sums to helping our schools
better serve all children.
 |
| Helping Leron decorate the banner. |
The icing on top was when a little press release that I
wrote got picked up by 2 national Guyanese papers (see links below)! Special thanks to Ilana for all her help behind the scenes,
in front of the scenes, on the sides of the scenes, under, over, around,
between the scenes... thanks!
No comments:
Post a Comment