16th January: Workshop on Identifying Children with Learning Differences

Global Indian International School believes that every child has unique needs and as responsible educators it is our duty to create and upgrade the classroom environment to make learning conducive. A comprehensive workshop on identifying children with special needs was held at the GIIS Noida campus and was attended by other GIIS India campuses through video conference. The workshop was conducted by Parwarish Institute Of Parenting.

As a common habit, we tend to form opinions about others by observing their external behaviour and place them in ‘ character-buckets’. Similar pattern may be often seen in teachers when they label students as ‘restless’, ‘shy’, ‘slow writer’, ‘hyperactive’, ‘odd’ or ‘destructive’ etc. in order to understand the drawback of the child and to determine their own role as educators.

In an interactive session at the workshop, the facilitator explained the reason behind this tendency of labelling. He asked the teachers to pen down how they perceived their own selves in detail. Next step was to write down how their parents, their best friends and those who do not like them would describe them. The findings showed that every individual had been described differently in context to the relationship they shared with the person concerned. It is ironical that our personalities are mapped to the relationships that we share with others and the roles that we perform in others’ lives. The facilitator raised a fundamental question, ‘WHO ARE WE?’ He asked the teachers to introspect.

Going further the facilitator stressed on the ‘Potential of a Child@aps@. Citing examples on the same he shared that a 2.5 years old child irrespective of his caste, creed, religion, environment and financial status is self-expressive, fearless, confident, independent, has high self-esteem, is creative, inquisitive, ingenious, loving, caring, stubborn and independent! Children are born with all the power in this world, there is no limit to their potential and talent. In this context he asked the teachers that in spite of having limitless potential, why do we label children as slow learner, hyperactive, suffering from dyscalculia or dyslexic? As a test case, he showed a small video clipping from a German movie and asked the teachers to explain the content. The teachers were not able to interpret the language and hence were not able to comprehend or explain what they saw or heard. The facilitator explained to the teachers that a kinaesthetic learner in the class also faces the same problem in normal classroom teaching that involves reading and writing. It was indeed an eye opening experience for the teachers to understand the complexities of such learners.  (delete this line) He focused on the philosophy of Visual, Aural, Read/write, and Kinesthetic (VARK) sensory modalities and urged the teachers to follow the same in classroom teaching.

The workshop on the whole was an eye-opener for teachers and helped them to understand the complexities of learning better. The perception of stereotype was completely out of their minds and they realized that every child has limitless potential and it is the art of teaching that would provide the right platform for the child to blossom his or her true potential by using these principles of learning.