"WE ARE RAISING THE FUTURE"

The education system may not only miss a child’s genius…. It may crush it. Protect and nurture the genius in every child. Their dreams depend on it. Come On” WE ARE RAISING THE FUTURE”.

The educational needs of children are a priority for parents, teachers and society at large. However, more and more students have been facing learning problems in recent years thus the role of school teachers has also been stretched in order to meet the needs of students with learning difficulties in their classes. With inclusive education being the present day norm, the need of the hour is to train teachers to manage learning difficulties.

Training special education staff is a tedious task, and so if classroom teachers become aware of learning difficulties, they can- to a great extent reach out to many more students who need help. To be an understanding teacher to the students who are struggling to learn, you need to understand that these kids are not necessarily less intelligent or less capable than the ‘successful’ students. Many are simply less fortunate because successful students can process information effectively while students with processing deficits struggle.

We all learn differently, and once this is understood it will be easy for anyone to pick up strategies and apply them. It is first important to realize that we need to use different methods to help different people, and then have the conviction to do so.

We really don’t know for certain how many students whom we’ve labeled ‘slow’ or ‘retarded’ or ‘remedial’ have actually been experiencing some type of learning difference. We don’t know if we have ‘under diagnosed’ or ‘over diagnosed our kids.

Learning difficulties affect 30-45% of the school going population. Awareness of the difficulty along with a philosophy that believes in guidance and support is the answer to tackling this problem in the school setup. Setting up infrastructure to handle the special needs of students is not a difficult preposition - if schools understand its importance and need.

When supported and recognized these students develop self-esteem, confidence and are able to sail through school and later colleges. It is only a matter of policy decisions in schools. Mainstream help and support helps students integrate into schools and avail of proper schooling.

Schools are conditioned to go on for years with set systems of work and assessments. No one researches innovative, newer methods of evaluation. The system goes on for years, and in no way is there any valuable assessment. Feedback is vital for progress and growth, so it is important that the right evaluations be done.

Remarks like ‘work harder’, ‘pay more attention’, ‘your son is not meeting his full potential’, ‘she could do better if only she applied herself’ are comments that mean nothing to parents and children. These are phrases used by conditioned teachers who don’t care to understand or explore their assessments. For grades to be significant and meaningful, they must mean the same to all who see them. It almost seems as if teachers just want to get over with their task of writing reports.

Struggling students hate report cards more than anyone. They are apprehensive of remarks that are more about what they can’t do rather than what they can. Low grades only reinforce that they can’t achieve what others can.

The grading and evaluation methods should enable students to work on plans for improved outcomes on the next attempt. Assessments should not compare students to each other, especially in the case of struggling students. Methods that compare student’s performance to specific criteria are more fair and effective.

Struggling students can be watched at ‘work’ and ‘play’ with the observations recorded, which soon becomes a “process of observation evaluation”. Students know you are watching them and after initial adjustments they get used to being watched.

In simple way : My goal is to reach out to teachers, parents, counselors and students to create the awareness and sensitivity that each child is individually capable and wonderful.

So when we teach our kids ways in which they can learn, we create positive, secure, stable human beings, who can face challenges in their lives.