December 24th 2016 in Mysore, India.
This was my first time working with children with disability at Deaf and Dumb school. During my preparation for the session I had no idea what to expect working with children who cannot see, speak and hear even though I visited them several times.
At around 10 am, I met with the principal of the department of visually impaired children Mr. Satheesh who was also visually impaired.
He told me so much about the school including the visit of Mahatma Gandhi (father of the nation) on 1933.. Now, the school is 116 years old from 1st to 10th standard in the department of 40 visually impaired children. The school curriculum includes almost all subjects such as English, Kannada, Hindi, Mathematics, Science and Social science. Syllabus is same for normal and blind but the only difference is in script discovered by Louis Braille, a French educator and inventor of a system of reading and writing for use by the blind or visually impaired, who was a also blind.
Some of the alumni from this school are musicians, lecturers, PHD holders etc. The students have participated in many sports competitions including the one organized by the Indian Blind Sports Association conducted conducted in Delhi, India and finally won a fourth place. The school also won many trophies and prizes through sports in National Athletics and State Athletics.
And finally it was time to coach. I've done some coaching before but this time was different, less coaching more watching because they played their own games specially for visually impaired children and I'm not an expert on that, so I was learning. They enjoyed the games they played including blind cricket, frog run, long jump (in and out) etc. I was really inspired by these kids in spite of being blind, they are great, ambitious and full of energy.
After the games I had a short nutrition session talking with the children about healthy eating and physical fitness including playing sports. The last thing was demonstrating healthy eating when I shared packets of milk with all the children and our good byes for that day with full of beautiful smiles.
Then, I went to another building of deaf and dumb children and found them bored as it was a Christmas eve holiday. We played few games just for fun as the teachers were not around to help translating in the sign language. It was really fun even though they couldn't hear my voice and I couldn't use their sign language but we spoke the language of humanity. One smile at a time!
The most satisfying part was after the games, the kids expressed how happy they are by showing their dancing skills, how cool when someone is dancing without hearing the music!
www.michaeljohnsonyoungleaders.org
This was my first time working with children with disability at Deaf and Dumb school. During my preparation for the session I had no idea what to expect working with children who cannot see, speak and hear even though I visited them several times.
He told me so much about the school including the visit of Mahatma Gandhi (father of the nation) on 1933.. Now, the school is 116 years old from 1st to 10th standard in the department of 40 visually impaired children. The school curriculum includes almost all subjects such as English, Kannada, Hindi, Mathematics, Science and Social science. Syllabus is same for normal and blind but the only difference is in script discovered by Louis Braille, a French educator and inventor of a system of reading and writing for use by the blind or visually impaired, who was a also blind.
Some of the alumni from this school are musicians, lecturers, PHD holders etc. The students have participated in many sports competitions including the one organized by the Indian Blind Sports Association conducted conducted in Delhi, India and finally won a fourth place. The school also won many trophies and prizes through sports in National Athletics and State Athletics.
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| Humanity Is Life. |
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www.michaeljohnsonyoungleaders.org
Your are a blessing and inspiration to many young people, continue with the good work
ReplyDeleteThank you so much Martin.
DeleteYou are a great and inspirational young leader.