Training on inclusive education

In the past two weeks, we had six days of training of volunteers. We travelled out of Ilorin to train NYSC corper volunteers. And we had two days of training with our National Volunteers.

It is always very inspirational to work with the volunteers. They are the ones on the ground, they are teaching and they get confronted with many challenges. I hope we managed to give them some tools to deal with all the challenges they experience.

One of the sessions we did in each training was on inclusive education. We discussed with our volunteers how you can make sure every child in your classroom gets the opportunity to learn. We discussed about differences between equality (treating everyone the same) and equity (creating the same result for everyone).

After some theory, we discussed some examples. Children can be disadvantaged in so many ways, there are slow learners who are seen as a burden by the teacher, girls who are ignored by the teacher, poor children with no money to buy whatever needed to go to school (sometimes including breakfast), children in a wheelchair or children who moved from another state to Kwara and can’t speak Yoruba.

One example was about a 15 year old girl who lost both her parents from AIDS. She has to care for two younger sisters and a younger brother, what is not easy to combine with going to school every day. Besides this, her classmates don’t want to sit next to her because they know her parents died from AIDS.

I found it interesting to see what suggestions people give to deal with this situation. Every group was saying you as a teacher have to sensitise the classmates (and maybe also their parents) about HIV and the fact that even if she would be HIV positive you will not get infected by sitting next to her in class. Many groups also said they will try to support her, council her, help her in planning her days or seek help from family or NGOs.
So far, so good. But, how about the suggestion: we have to test the four children and if they are HIV negative we have to share their status with the entire community. Maybe my idea of privacy about this kind of things is very European, but I am not convinced this is the best thing to do. By testing them, and only them, I think you stigmatise them again. Especially if you are fifteen years old, you are very likely to have classmates who are sexually active and might have gotten infected as well. So, even though we said in the beginning you don’t have to treat everyone in the same way to reach the same result for everyone, I think in this kind of cases you have to treat them all the same.

Looking at the very positive reactions we get from the school principals, it seems like our volunteers are learning a lot during all our trainings. I hope also this time they learned a bit about how to deal with all the different individuals in their classes. And no, it is not always easy. If you teach eighty or even more than hundred students at the same time, it is of course difficult to make sure everyone is carried along. But I am sure they will at least do their best to teach in a child centred way and to be aware of problems children might have and how to deal with it.