Special focus on special education
As the BVI recognises Special Education Awareness Week, they are placing a greater emphasis on discovering and helping students who have learning challenges in the territory’s education system.
According to Special Needs Education Officer, Afiya Smith, the Ministry of Education and Youth Affairs is using the week to spread more awareness on special education offerings in school and also help to assist students who may have challenges with learning.
“There are students, based on the process we currently have in our schools, who are referred by their teacher to the supporting staff in the school whether it is a counsellor or the special education teacher. Then they go through the process of identifying the challenges the students face whether it is reading-based or whether it is cognitive or memory,” Smith said.
“Then if there are any more challenges, we will take it further to determine if the student has any disability or not. There are students who don’t make it to that level that only require some finite services that we can provide within our school to meet their needs,” the Special Needs Education Officer added.
How to determine special needs
Smith said special education is a service provided to students with disabilities and is not necessarily a new curriculum or subject offered in schools. She said in determining whether students require these services, they usually do a ‘pull-in’ or a ‘push-out’ based on the information garnered.
“This is where we either take the students out of their general education classes and provide some level of support or we go into the classroom and provide support for those students in the form of accommodations where they will get extra time once we find them needing that requirement,” Smith said.
“It could also be in the form of a resource class where at our secondary level we have a support unit where those students go for their English, their math, and their science subjects. So basically, special-ed is a service and we don’t lock it into one area where it’s math or English but we provide that service and meet the need of that student in our system,” she further said.
Special Education Awareness Week
Special Education Awareness Week is being acknowledged from November 29 to December 3 and it highlights the areas of special education currently in the Virgin Islands.
There are a number of students in the school system from kindergarten to Grade 12 who require special education services. The theme for the week is ‘Don’t See Their Disability, See Their Possibilities’.
Smith said as an educator, she noticed people always focus on the disabilities of students instead of what they can offer to society and that is why they decided on the theme.
“I found it fit that we highlight this, the possibility. We are trying to get our community, our schools, our jobs to understand this. They have possibilities, there are areas of strength that we need to harness, to capitalise on so we can see the full potential of these students,” she said
The week kicked off with their virtual opening ceremony on November 29; then they had a Word Recognition Bee which was aired live on the government’s Facebook page on December 1. On Friday, they will be having ‘Rock the Colour of An Ability”, where residents are being asked to wear colours supporting any disability.
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Much needed — we are not sufficiently helping our children. Investing in education for all children, including our special needs children is critically important and woefully lacking.
Some of our differently abled politicians need to attend this class
the bad talking you all had to say about walking only now you all coming with that , what a set of HYPOCRITES
If you want to help special needs kids, how about not shutting down their schools for one Covid case? Many of these students aren’t able to learn effectively online and need in-person services in order to thrive. They are suffering the most from these draconian shutdown policies .
Special ed ? how about starting with proper english and grammer, begin with HOA
Not all children that are classified as special needs are actually special needs.
Some just lack discipline and others have serious behavioral issues. Those things need fixing.
It’s good to look out for the disabled but some of the students I see being classified as special needs are much smarter than the average child. The only reason they are not doing well is because some of them are just plain rude and unwilling to follow instructions.
There is no special focus on anything, this is just a PR stunt. The VIP totally dismantled the systems put in place by the previous Minister and Government, just in the name of politics. They will blame COVID for everything and say these are not normal times, all as excuses for their failures. The previous Government had so many initiatives in place for special needs and technically oriented students, all of which were cast to the side. The BVI IS NOTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT equipped to deal with the special needs students. They stopped the scholarship program for the special needs students and no support has been put in place since, leaving many of our young people to be cramped at home doing nothing because there’s nowhere for them to learn, socialize and develop as a result of their issues.