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PRE VOCATIONAL Training
The school’s Functional Academic Curriculum is designed to teach skills that contribute to each student's ability to function in real-life situations at home, school, and work and in the community. Travel training" has been added to the definition of "special education," and defined to mean: "Providing instruction, as appropriate, to children with significant cognitive disabilities to enable them to (i) develop an awareness of the environment in which they live; and (ii) learn the skills necessary to move effectively and safely from place to place within that environment (e.g., in school, in the home, at work, and in the community)." |
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Students are also taught reading and development and application of numerical skills, recognition of important traffic and safety signs etc. Community Based Instruction activities like visiting the bank, post office, railway reservation counters etc. helps generalize the skills taught in the home and classroom.
VOCATIONAL TRAINING
Training in vocational skills prepares students to be mainstreamed into society and this training enables the “young adults” to be contributive members of their family to the extent possible.
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The vocational skills include
Photo copying – the concept of photocopying is taught to enable the students to be able to operate the machine on their own. They help by photocopying the necessary learning materials in line with the school curriculum. This helps the students to function efficiently as office assistants.
Paper cup making – The students are trained to operate the four operational manual type paper cup making machine. At present the students have been trained to make 700 cups per day.
Arts and crafts – The students display their creativity by making gift articles like colorfully painted dias, pen stands, flower vases, portraits and paintings, paper bags, note pads, coasters etc.
Kitchen craft - On an average, 15 students will be trained in basic cooking activities like cutting/chopping of vegetables and fruits, making of sandwiches, preparation of rice items in pressure cooker and electric cooker, preparation of salads etc. Different food items are prepared everyday by this batch of students as per the time table laid out at the beginning of each month. These food items are consumed by the students, staff and the parents of children who wait at the school to drop and pick up their children. |
A new enterprise of making “teaching and learning materials” has also been initiated in this unit.
The cost effective products of this unit have been well received by the parents of our school and of other schools. Some of the students of this unit, after having completed their training, have been absorbed as Trainee assistants at school or have started their unit with their parents.
The Vocational Training Unit (VTU) apart from imparting training in activities such as cup making, posters, greeting cards, art/craft items etc is trying to concentrate on achieving practical learning concepts in children in the form of ‘shopping skills’. VTU at present trains 16 children in the age group of 15 and above. Through this education of shopping skills the children are taught to read and identify products required for activities in daily life such as cosmetics, groceries, detergents, beverages etc. Every Friday a shop is set up in school and children are trained as shopkeepers to identify products and sell them to the buyers (who are mostly parents, teachers, support staff etc). Through this system of teaching children learn money concepts as to tender change, calculate cost of group items etc.
Such training is also encouraged by the parents who sincerely feel that this can help the child in future to join a super market/ departmental stores etc and even become an entrepreneur! Moreover confidence level of the children also increases enabling them to handle real life situations on their own.
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