It was a privilege to be the first special needs teacher to volunteer to go to India for Hope and Compassion. It was a trip which proved to be exciting, questioning, satisfying, interesting, challenging, stretching, tiring, but above all hugely rewarding. It was a personal achievement after having been retired for 41/2 years, and after spending 20 years as a classroom teacher working with secondary aged pupils who have severe learning difficulties. I had always felt that it would be a shame if all the skills and knowledge I had gained over those years, were never to be used again or shared with others. This was the perfect opportunity.
The first school we visited was Prayaas Rehabilitation Centre for Handicapped Children in Chandigarh, Punjab. My first impressions of the centre were of a building and environment that is very uninspiring and not suited to the needs of the staff, children and their parents who have to use it. The offices are on the ground floor and the school and therapy departments are up several flights of stairs. There are no lifts, ramps or hand rails. There are no disabled toilets. The floor on which the school is situated is a drab, uninspiring space. There is a total lack of colour in the classrooms and corridor apart from some posters and art work. In some cases these are not very appropriate and look tired and worn.
There are 3 classrooms – slow learners, mentally retarded and autism – their titles, not mine! This is one thing that soon became apparent everywhere we went in the Punjab – the terminology used to describe all people with a disability.We heard expressions such as mentally retarded, mentally challenged and mentally limited on a regular basis. All people, irrespective of their disability, are given the same label and of course this can have life limiting and profound consequences. Indeed we met a boy who had a physical disability but clearly little or no learning disability. He isn’t attending school and as he gets older – he is about 10 now - is developing some difficult behaviours through sheer boredom I would suggest. His parents, particularly his mother who has the main care role as dad is not a well man, are increasingly finding it difficult to cope with him. There is very little knowledge and understanding of the terminology we use in the U.K.
By U.K. standards the class numbers are large with a wide range of age and disability in each. Each class has its own teacher and assistant who is an untrained volunteer. The teachers are paid less than one working in mainstream. There are no regular school holidays as we would understand it and they work a 51/2 day week although the school day for pupils is shorter than here.
The classrooms are poorly resourced and what there is, is often not appropriate to the needs of the pupils. The resources are old and worn out but certainly better than nothing. In the main the classroom furniture is also not appropriate to the size and needs of the pupils.
My first job was a familiarisation session in 2 of the classes, slow learners and mentally retarded. The slow learners were making collages of common objects. These were all hand drawn – no photocopier here! The glue pot was a piece of news paper and the brush a finger. This was described as a fine motor activity rather than art. The pupils were all well behaved and achieved the task. I wasn’t quite sure what was going on in the other classroom so I decided to do some simple action songs with them. Soon everyone was joining in and we had great fun despite the language barrier.
I soon realised that pupils here are the same the world over. These Indian children were delightful and in so many cases reminded me of pupils I had taught over the years. They are no different to our pupils back in the U.K. And their needs are just the same. They responded well as I tentatively dipped my toe into some teaching.
A somewhat chaotic lunch break followed. Lunch is eaten altogether in one the classrooms and followed by racing up and down the corridor. I joined in much to everyone’s amusement. Despite the building being set in some quite nice grounds, it seems the pupils rarely get to go outside.
During the afternoon we brought out our piece de resistance – a brightly coloured parachute and arranged for all the children to join us in the activity room so we could show them and the teachers how to use it. It was exhausting but great fun! The colours of the parachute contrasted greatly with the room which was drab and mainly dirty white. We had plans for that room – to turn it into a bright and stimulating environment in which to be, with colour matched resources. It was arranged that the room would be painted in primary colours of red, blue, green, yellow and a touch of orange with a white ceiling. For some reason the ceilings are generally left grey. Our next task was to go shopping and find as many items as possible in the primary colours so it was off to the market with one of the teachers. With imagination it was surprising what we could find.
Someone told us about a shop some miles away from Chandigarh which specialises in resources especially designed for children with special needs, so off we went on the 11/2 hour journey south to find this place. It was indeed a treasure trove and we were able to buy some specialised teaching items. When the room was finished we put all the resources we had bought into boxes and placed them by the appropriately coloured wall and waited to see the pupils’ faces as they came in. It was so lovely and worth all the hard work and long journey to watch their reactions.
On the Saturday morning we held a parent teacher meeting. There was some lively discussion and it soon became apparent that there were a few common issues.
One main problem was communication between the teachers and parents. To help improve things we suggested running a pilot scheme for home-school diaries. This was a completely unheard of concept but we had 3 parents who were willing to give the idea a go and as it happened they represented the 3 classes. We bought suitable books and I composed some sample messages from home to school and school to home. We wrote extensive guidance notes for the teachers and held a short training session with them. Manni arranged to return at the end of her stay to evaluate how things were going and if necessary offer further advice and help.
A first for me was to take part in a press conference at Prayaas. Somehow the local press heard about our work and wanted to come and meet us.
During our stay in Chandigarh I was able to arrange a visit to Renewal School which turned out to be on the other side of the city on the road to Shimla and in sight of the distant mountains. I had a fantastic welcome complete with garlands of marigolds and petals thrown over me. This little school held in a house caters for mainstream primary aged children from poor families living in the area and is supported by the church I attend, Renewal Christian Centre in Solihull. They looked so beautiful and well turned out in their uniforms of blue trousers and jumpers and red checked shirts. I was entertained by their songs and dancing and proudly shown around the school. It is rare for them to have visitors form the U.K.
Whilst travelling to and from our accommodation and the school in Chandigarh, we made an amazing contact. One evening we stopped at a village to do some shopping and met a mum and her son, Mukul who has a physical disability but has been assessed as having ‘mental retardation’. We promised to return on our way through the next morning and find out more. The next day mum was agreeable to taking part in an interview on camera and showed us the paperwork relating to Mukul. We were taken to a ’school’ the local mums had started as there are several children in the village with learning disabilities. Again it was up 2 flights of steps and we saw a mum carry her 14 year old son on her back up these stairs to get him to school! It was just one room with a few well-worn resources and furnished with old fashioned desks with the seats attached. Mukul’s paperwork put us in touch with a school in Chandigarh, Government Institute for Mentally Retarded. A visit was duly arranged. The least we could do for Mukul’s School as we called it was to buy some new and more appropriate resources.
The visit to the Government Institute for Mental Retardation proved to be very interesting. We met with the principal and shown round by his deputy. I think this institution is the closest to anything to be found in the U.K. It is a big building, with several floors but at least here work is being done to put in lifts. By what we had seen thus far, the classes seemed to be fairly well resourced and pupils appropriately engaged. Young people from this school are trained go on to work in the local market and therefore have a level of independence and feel valued.
We also visited various other mainstream schools to offer advice and support in their bids to provide stimulating environments and resources for their pupils with learning disabilities.
We extended our stay at Prayaas so that the work could be completed in a more satisfying way but all to soon it really was time to move to Amritsar and to spend time at the All India Pingalwara Charitable Society, where ‘almost all the inmates are destitute and most of them are going to spend their entire life in Pingalwara’ – I quote from their leaflet. I found this place the most challenging and emotional although again the pupils in the special school are absolutely delightful and reminded me of pupils back at home. It was hard to realise that children here don’t start in the school until they are 8 years old, and therefore all the early years when intervention is so important are missed. It was brought home to me very starkly when on my first visit to the children’s ward, I thought of my 6 year old disabled granddaughter and realised this is where she would be. The children in the ward are well cared for, clean and fed but they have no stimulation, little interaction with people or toys to play with. They seemed to spend most of their time either lying two or three to bed or sitting in buggies. It was pointed out that if they weren’t in Pingalwara they would probably be dead. It was a truth hard to take in.
On Saturday morning I was supposed to be meeting with the teachers in the special school but they were very busy preparing for the ‘Special Olympics’ to held the next day in the army ground in Amritsar. Instead an impromptu disco took place with most of the pupils. I was immediately taken back to all those end of term discos at Fox Hollies! Some things never change.
It was a bit of a surprise to be welcomed as honoured guests at the Special Olympics and to be asked to sit in the VIP seats. There were a reasonable number of pupils there but I’m sure it was only the tip of the iceberg in reality when you consider how big a city Amritsar is. It was great to see the Pingalwara pupils so well turned out in their black track suits and winning lots of medals. It was a privilege to be asked to present medals to the winners at one of the ceremonies.
My last day and how quickly time had gone. We went to Amritsar University to hold a teacher’s seminar. The discussions revealed that these special needs teachers were expected to work very hard and were trying to fulfil what we would consider to be 3 roles – that of teacher, outreach worker and special educational needs coordinator. They hadn’t had contact with their classes for several weeks as they were working in the outlying villages identifying children with disabilities. Their classes were being taken care of by untrained volunteers – not ideal.
The last person I met before returning back to the U.K. was the principal of the university. He was very interested in the work of Hope and Compassion and it is hoped that in the future further links will be made with that institution. It will be by students coming through the educational system that attitudes to people with a disability can and will be changed in the Punjab.
Now I am at home and have had time to recover and reflect on my experiences, I am so glad that I decided to go. It was without doubt a very rich and rewarding experience. I trust that in some small way we have changed things, moved things on and influenced attitudes. If it has been just for one person it will have been worth it.
