Teaching at BVSN Murthy Centre for Special Children

        Since the beginning of the month, my classmates and I frequented a special needs school nearby to teach the children their basics on numeracy and literacy. Many will say that after interacting with these kids that they became a changed person; they're not wrong, but a more precise observation is that you start to incorporate the things you learn from those kids in your day to day life.

       
        From the onset itself, it was obvious that traditional board and chalk teaching was not going to suffice. It was then, one of my friends suggested we play with a football, which all kids are fond of, whilst incorporating Mathematics into the game itself. However when we reached their for the first time, we found out that some of the kids were actually grown adults, or at least a few years older than us. This came as a shock to me as I could not understand why they were attending this school, when they could get a job and earn a salary of some sort. However it soon became clear that such an option was not possible for them.
        Nonetheless, we proceeded with what we had planned in mind, and this continued for another week. Over those two hours we learnt more about them and who they were. Now and again we would alternate to the classroom, teaching them the basics about money and how to handle it, which is a life skill in today's world. Realising this would soon grow stale, I decided to make a board game (with a little help from my sister) to switch things up a bit.

      

The rules are simple:

1. Roll the dice
2. Move your piece the number of times on your dice and substitute that number into the dash written on the square, upon which a mathematical sum will be complete
3. Solve the sum in order to keep your piece on that square, and note down the answer. If incorrect your piece will move back to it's original position
4. Special squares will specify the player to move a number of steps backwards or forwards
5. After a specified time, the player with the greatest sum of answers wins.

        It was initially hard to teach the players what exactly to do, but once everyone got the hang of it, it was smooth sailing. The board remains at the school, in case they ever want to play it again without us some other time.

     
        We still go to the school every week, making sure we rectify every mistake made each time. The students clearly remember us, if not our names, and it shows that they too are trying to correct every mistake they make. Violent kicks of the ball almost never occurs and shouting in class reduced to normal speech for example. 

        Perhaps the biggest thing I learnt from these sessions, is that patience truly is a virtue. Be it bawling infants, a noisy crowd, or a group of special children, patience is a life skill that is needed in all those scenarios. This visits have definitely helped me in developing and refining these skills. Perhaps what I would have done differently with them is to just act normally around them from the start. Unaware of what they would be like, I would try to appear unwelcoming and more reserved, in hopes that they would take my words more seriously. However I soon realised that, to put it simply, being kind works wonders with them. Now I truly look forward to visiting the school, not because it's a chance to skip school, or because we get to walk outside, but because I genuinely enjoy seeing their faces and interacting with them.