For nearly ten years teaching inclusion to children with disabilities, especially children with intellectual developmental delays and weak pupils, Ms Truong Thi Thu Thuy (teacher at Vo Thi Sau Primary School – Hai Chau District – Da Nang City) said: “The hardest thing for teachers standing before a class with these pupils is how to make them enjoy coming to school. To do that, you must be persistent and patient, starting from the teacher’s heart”.
A mother to the children at school…
Even now, Ms Truong Thi Thu Thuy cannot forget pupil V – a student with an intellectual developmental delay. In grade 3, V. was much older than his classmates; had he gone to school at the right age, he would then have been in grade 7. During lessons, he sometimes shouted, learned or played as he pleased, and very often hit and bit his classmates.
Once, when the teacher entered the classroom, the whole class stood up to greet her, except V., who crawled under the desk to play with a spinning top. “I acted as if I had not seen him, casually asking where our classmate V. had gone, then told the whole class to sit down. I went down to V.’s place, picked up the spinning top and put it on the desk. Suddenly V. burst into tears. At that moment, if the teacher had only lost her calm or become angry, the situation would have been very bad. I sat down with him and gently told V. that if he was good today and studied well, at break time I would play spinning tops with V. The spinning top was still V.’s, but if it stayed on V.’s desk it would be too cramped, with no room for books, so I would keep it on my desk for now. V. stopped crying and sat down to study” – Ms Thuy said.
Keeping her promise, at break time Ms Thuy really did play spinning tops with V., and “she lost every time”, so the pupil was very excited. She also took the chance to “talk” with her pupil about when to play and what to do during lessons. And every break time Ms Thuy played with V. regularly, sometimes playing jigsaw puzzles, marbles… games that limited his agitation. On days when V. behaved badly, the teacher would call him aside to remind him privately and punish him by not playing with him any more. V. gradually improved, hit his classmates less, and concentrated more in lessons. Now V. is a grade 7 pupil, still in touch with his teacher, and whenever he has any new achievement, however small, he calls to tell her proudly.
Originally a literature teacher at lower secondary level, after ten years in the profession, in about 1990, Ms Truong Thi Thu Thuy asked to move to teach at a primary school near her home to make it easier to look after her young child. “At first I was very discouraged. I was used to the teaching style of lower secondary level, where teachers do not spend much time settling classroom discipline and mainly provide knowledge to pupils. Now teaching primary school, everything was completely different. Besides subject knowledge, teachers also have to educate in every respect, especially discipline. Pupils ask about everything and report everything to the teacher. Knowledge and methods can be sought and learned through books and lesson observations, so I worried little about that, but maintaining pupils’ discipline… I decided I had to be a real mother to the pupils, teaching them little by little, from how to speak, how to walk, how to address people politely, how to keep clean… Without love, persistence, patience and attention to detail, it cannot be done” – Ms Thuy said very sincerely.
Teaching by target group
Also in the 2009 – 2010 school year, besides V., Ms Truong Thi Thu Thuy’s class 3/1 had another pupil who was very weak academically. In the Vietnamese test at the start of the school year, both pupils made more than 15 spelling mistakes, did not capitalise proper names, and could not present a paragraph, with sentences so jumbled that the teacher could not understand what they wanted to say. Their maths was no better: slow and often wrong calculation skills, even with simple addition and subtraction, unable to solve word problems, and weak at recognising shapes.
By grasping and analysing the previous school year’s learning results, combined with meeting the families and learning about each child’s psychological characteristics, Ms Truong Thi Thu Thuy set up files and built individual plans to support and help these two pupils.
In lessons, the teacher began to adjust, building separate knowledge content and exercise systems for these two pupils, increasing in difficulty step by step, suited to each child’s ability. Ms Thuy also focused on exercises to develop intellect, motor skills and communication skills for the pupil with a disability. These pupils often forget, so lessons had to be regularly reinforced and pupils asked to repeat what they had learned many times.
According to Ms Thuy, if work beyond the children’s ability is assigned, it will make them bored and afraid to accept tasks next time. To encourage these two pupils, the teacher often gave them priority in answering relatively easy questions or exercises in front of the class, and always praised and commended them in front of the class for each bit of progress. Every day, outside official school hours, Ms Thuy spent about 30 minutes after school giving extra tuition to these two pupils. As a result, by the end of the school year, both pupils’ academic performance had risen to average, and they could do their homework more confidently on their own.
Ms Truong Thi Thu Thuy said: “The weaker the pupil, the more I love them, because they are disadvantaged compared with their classmates. So throughout my teaching years, I have always believed in teaching so that pupils understand, not just teaching to finish the lesson”.
Ha Nguyen – http://www.gdtd.vn