Simple ways to teach a special needs child

One of the children with special needs displays how he makes doormats at Kampala School for the Physically Handicapped recently. Stakeholders say more special needs teachers are needed.
Photo by Phionah Nassanga

Teaching comes with a lot of responsibilities but they become a lot more when it comes to teaching a child with special needs. Persistence, patience and perseverance are at the fingertips of every special needs teacher. Juliet Tumuhairwe first joined Kampala School of the Physically Handicapped in 1991 as a teacher.

Teaching curriculum
As head teacher, Tumuhairwe’s main role is to ensure that the school follows that national teaching curriculum and structure. She says this guarantees that the children are learning the basics for each level commensurate with their peers in the mainstream schools, but with many more activities.
“We conduct six to eight formal lessons each day, interspersed with therapy for children. More classroom learning is done in the morning hours with physical and co-curricular activities in the afternoon,” she says.
She adds that there is low concentration span for many children in the afternoon the reason why it becomes necessary to utilise the morning hours and allow them to do other activities later in the day.
However, Tumuhairwe notes that balancing the curriculum with the special needs of each individual child is not simple. The main hindrance, she notes, is the negative attitude of some parents who show no interest in supporting their children. “For instance some report very late or even bring the children for only one term and because of that the children fall behind in lessons,” she says.
Tumuhairwe explains that some parents consider the needs of their other children first, before spending money on a child with special needs. “If you force them to provide all the necessities and school fees, some will simply withdraw the child from school.”
She says every step of the child’s journey is important and each day at school is purposeful.

Beyond teaching
Joy Mwesigwa, the director Kampala School for the Physically Handicapped, explains that children with disabilities have a range of daily medical and physical needs that are particular to each one of them. “Therefore their schedule involves regular physical and occupational therapy. It is also necessary to have medical personnel on call for quick intervention and regular check-ups,” she says.
Mwesigwa notes that schools that handle children with special needs require a rehabilitation department if the school is not addressing their needs.

Patience
Jackson Twinomucunguzi, a special needs teacher, says for any teacher to impact the lives of special needs children, they first have to change their attitude about the learners. “It is not easy to teach children with disabilities. It calls for a lot of patience because most of them are slow learners,” he says.
However, he adds that as a teacher, one is required to first identify the different disabilities the children have. This helps you know how to manage each of your pupils. At times you find yourself dealing with learners with dyslexia which he says have difficulty in reading, spellings, writing, but when asked a question may give a correct answer.
Twinomucunguzi also adds that at times one has learners who cannot handle academics given their disability but are brought to school to learn social language and social skills. “Then those that have academic potential are taught like any other ordinary learners and compete with pupils in the mainstream,” he reveals.

Class grouping
Twinomucunguzi expresses that special needs education teachers’ classes may have students with various disabilities since each child has a unique case. According to him, the teacher is expected to modify their lessons to suit each disabled learner at times by providing individualised education programmes. “On some occasions children are grouped homogeneously by their developmental ability thus allowing teachers to provide aid and instruction based on the child’s abilities,” he says.

More teachers needed
Juliet Tumuhairwe says more teachers need to be trained to manage children with disabilities. “We have in-house training, workshops and seminars, but there is a huge need to reach more teachers because working with these children is a calling. Handling one special needs child may be equivalent to handling about five normal children,” she says.
Jackson Twinomucunguzi notes that the staffing in schools with special needs children should be high compared to that in the mainstream schools.