STATE LEVEL CONFERENCE FOR TEACHERS OF THE DEAF on “EMPOWERING TEACHING LEARNING PROCESS” Organized by HASHU ADVANI COLLEGE OF SPECIAL EDUCATION (11TH &12TH June, 2012)

The value of experienced teachers in the overall school system and education is second to none. Special education is no exception to this. Most of the classroom teachers in special education - whether they are currently working in a special or a mainstream school, are qualified and experienced. Although their integrity and commitment is beyond doubt, some questions do arise while reviewing delivering modern, student cantered and life skill oriented education. Having more experience means mature teaching, but it also means fading memories of theory and pedagogy. It also means unawareness about recent developments in the field and lack of newer skills required to teach new generation students. With each year passing the number of years of experience increases but at the same time there is a risk of losing freshness and zest for teaching. As a classroom teacher gets experienced, her teaching may get lifeless, monotonous and patternized.

One of the most tried and tested ways of striking the balance between experience and freshness or maturity and modernity of the in-service teachers is to strengthen avenues of in service training for working teachers. Such training could have objectives of updating not only theoretical knowledge but also skills and attitudes. One of the agencies which can be made accountable to impart newer knowledge, skills and attitude to the in service teachers are teacher education programs (B Ed colleges). With this philosophical base HASHU ADVANI COLLEGE OF SPECIAL EDUCATION holds various short term training programs. Holding state level conference for special teachers of children with D/deafness is one of the activities of this mission. The uniqueness of this conference is that it is held in Marathi and is held every year in the month of June – particularly on the first two days of reopening of the schools. It is almost the only regularly held educational event for a big number of special teachers in Maharashtra.

Keeping with its trend, this year, the college had organized this Sate Level Conference on 11^th and 12^th June. Every year this conference is held with one of the special schools as a strategic partner. This year the collaborative partner in this effort was Rochiram Thadani High School for Children with Hearing Impairment. The conference with its central theme “Empowering teaching learning process” covered multi-disciplinary topics like teaching learning process and Yog (Resporce person: Kalpana Hudkarli), concept of concept formation in children with D/deafness (Resource person: Anusha Venugopal), communication options for children with D/deafness (Resource person: Asmita Huddar), matching learning style with teaching style (Resource person, Sudha Pingle) and roping in parents for better teaching learning (Resource person: Shama Sawant). It is challenging to keep all the participants alert and involved for 6 to 7 hours at a stretch, particularly when the number of teachers is over 300. The sessions of the conference therefore, were highly interactive and all the resource persons tried to go beyond the conventional lecture method. Power point presentations, role play, open forum, audio visuals were used extensively. Moreover, participants were involved in tasks like checklists and team presentations so that each participant is kept in a loop of conference activities.

321 teachers of the students with deafness from all over Maharashtra registered for the conference. All the teachers were qualified and belonged to various types of educational programs like special schools, mainstream schools, Infant programs, special preschools, resource programs etc. The conference gave the teachers an ample opportunity to gear up for the coming academic year. It also facilitated direct link between theory and practice. Teachers were exposed to new trends and classroom applications during the conference and hence they are made ready to carry out small experiments in their classrooms.

As per the disability related acts in India, teaching children with disability is a licensed activity which requires renewal of registration every five years. Rehabilitation council of India (Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, Government of India) is accountable for registration and renewal of the registration of all the teachers of the children with disabilities. This renewal of registration is carried out on the basis of credit points whereby, each registered teacher needs to collect 100 credit points every five years. Attending training programmes, workshops or conferences is one of the ways to collect credit points. Considering the usefulness of this conference, the Rehabilitation Council of India approved to give 10 credit points to teachers for attending this conference. The Social welfare dept, Mumbai Vibhag and Upnagar (Govt of Maharashtra) who is accountable for quality of special schools in Maharashtra also announced these two days to be considered as ‘on duty’ working days for the participating teachers.

The feedback of the participants was overwhelming. The program ended with Rashtrageet presented by B Ed (HI) students of the college in Indian Sign Language. Empowered and stimulated teachers are now expected to be in a better position to face the challenges of new academic year.