As a part of the activities for disabilities week; students belonging to the Faculty of Education and Arts at the University of Belize held an exhibition fair today called “Community Outreach Symposium”. Dr. Thomasine Baker, Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Education and Arts, tells us more.
Dr. Thomasine Baker, Assistant Professor
What is happening is that our students from our Introduction to Special Education classes, we have two sections and our other  two sections of Strategies for Working with Children With Special Needs are presenting a combination of What they have learnt this semester about children with special needs to past that information on and work with students. Special needs people affect all of us, not just in the classroom setting, so although some of the information will be from an academic perspective, much of the information that our children are going to be sharing with you are very valid information that you can use in a formal or informal setting. So we ride the bus, we are in the supermarket, we have to send our children to school with other children who have special needs and so to enlighten the general public and the general population on people with exceptionalities is very important, because it’s time now to embrace that and include them in all of our societal activities.
The week is set aside to raise public awareness of persons living with disabilities and of existing barriers that prevent them from full equal participation in all aspects of the community. Sadie Coleman, both a Special Needs Teacher and Student at UB, spoke to us on Dyslexia. That is a learning disability that either hinders a person’s ability to read, write, spell and sometimes speak.
Sadie Coleman, Student
My main focus here is the teaching strategies that teachers should use in the classroom; for example, one of the main things we like to do is to build self-confidence in our students and one of the ways of doing that is by praising them for their strengths. Another thing that we like to do as teachers is to ensure good organizational skills by the use of folders and dividers. By doing that the children will be able to find their papers easily and they will be able to structure them in an organizational way. Another thing for teachers is to break tests down into simple or small pieces of information that the child is able to understand better. These are some of the activities and this is a word booklet that we use and as the child learns each letter, he or she also learns a new set of words on a daily basis. For dyslexic children we try to keep it to a minimum of at least four to five weekly, because the child cannot learn a bulk of information at the same time.
Doreth Pascascio spoke to us on Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) saying that teachers dealing with such students need to work hand in hand with their parents.
Doreth Pascascio, Student
There’s a difference between ADD and ADHD; ADD meaning Attention Deficit Disorder and ADHD meaning Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. The characteristics between ADD and ADHD is that a child with ADD the child does not pay any attention to the details in the classroom so as the teacher you will need to put the child in front of the classroom or in the middle of the classroom so that the child does not get distracted. Another one of the characteristics is that the child may make careless mistakes or get bored easily with a task before it is completed, because they have trouble staying focus and are easily distracted. Now when it comes to ADHD, this is when the child moves around constantly in the classroom; the child may want to run around in the classroom, climb the different cupboards in the classroom, so the teacher needs to have patience and be very enthusiastic and have a lot of energy to keep up with a child who has ADHD because the child is very hyper.
Roque Vellos did presentations on emotional and behavioural disorder which has to do with post traumatic stress and depression. While Julio Barrera spoke on some of the learning strategies.
Roque Vellos, Student
We have some strategies that teachers can use, for example you start praising them and increase opportunities to correct responses. You try to allow them to participate more. Their own friends could be a way of helping them and tutoring them, so they can try to have them talk more with each other. There is also the strategy of moving about the room, assisting and physically and verbally interacting with students during independent activities. You as the teacher have to help them to interact.If you notice I am showing you this letter in this position, which for you it would be a “b” and if I give this to the child, you will see that he can turn it over and it will be a “p” So this can become a lot of concepts. Moreover, to re-enforce, as parents and teachers we can train the students to use their hands. Their left hand would represent the “b” and the right hand will represent the “d”.
While presentations and raising awareness on disabilities are educational and informational, we asked Dr. Baker what the University of Belize is doing to include such persons within their institution.
Dr. Thomasine Baker
In the University, I have had students; as a matter of fact I have three students who are special needs students this semester. One student has a physical disorder and another student is totally blind and another student is what we call quadriplegic, all of her limbs. So those students have the same expectations, I don’t have to adapt the curriculum for those students because they are not intellectually incapacitated; they have physical and other disabilities. So what I see UB doing is that UB is very open. If you notice, on most of our buildings we have ramp access to all of the classrooms and in a classroom situation; there are accommodations in the front of the class and in the back of the class, anywhere in the class for those students to sit. So we don’t isolate them and we don’t segregate them from the general population, they are included.
Sunday November 27th marked the beginning of disabilities week. This year’s disability awareness week is being celebrated under the theme “Together for a better world for all: Including Persons with Disabilities in Development.” The week of activities ends on Saturday December 3rd which is recognized as the International Day of Persons with Disabilities.
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