"“A spoon cannot taste of the food it carries. Likewise, a foolish man cannot understand the wise man´s wisdom even if he associates with a sage.”"
...Dalai Lama
V-Excel News
V-Excel is an active partner in organizing the IPMT Conference this year (The International Postgraduate Medical Training), a residential program from November 19 - 26, 2011 at the TTDC Resort (Beach side), Mahabalipuram. Hosted by The Anthroposophical Medical Society - Chennai Chapter, the Conference has many internationally renowned speakers who will spearhead various groups such as -
Teachers and Special Educators (Rs. 7,000)
Medical Doctors from different streams (Rs. 10,000)
Counselors and Psychotherapists (Rs. 10,000)
Occupational and Physio-Therapists (Rs. 10,000)
Persons in Community Development (Rs. 10,000)
Parents (can be a part of teachers group or community group)
The IPMT Conference is a seven day journey into yourself, into your field of passion, and a space where your gather insights and carry questions for life. The fields of medicine, education, architecture, arts, sciences, biodynamic agriculture, and banking have potential for application of the concepts of anthroposophy. Anthroposophy is a modern path of knowledge and spiritual science founded by the Austrian scientist, philosopher, and educationist, Dr Rudolf Steiner. For registrations and payment details, you may visit www.amsindiachapter.com. We welcome sponsors and advertisers for this mega event and request you to write to contact.ipmt2011@gmail.com with all your details.
September is the month of celebration of our teachers and other professionals such as therapists, counselors, helpers. These are people who passionately work round the year with our children with special needs with a lot of love and compassion. Their genuine interest and perseverance in ensuring the child's holistic development is simply remarkable. This is one time of the year when we like to salute and felicitate them. This year, we presented gifts to our geographically dispersed rural special educators. For our urban team, we had organized an outing to Mahabalipuram on 5th September. They all had a great time together enjoying the sea, the food and the fun.
We are extremely happy to share with you the news of an Award of Recognition conferred on Mrs. Usha Rajagopal, our Head of Vocational Training Unit. Anna University has launched its Girls' Forum - Aakriti - and identified women from the social sector who have done commendable work and made a difference to society. We are very proud of her and her contribution to our Vocational Unit.
Our satellite centers in Nashik and Tirunelveli are making inroads in the remedial intervention for children with special needs and those with learning problems. Dr. Vasudha Prakash and Mrs. Lalitha Sridhar respectively made visits to these two centers, spoke with the parents, assessed the progress of the children and evaluated the operations. While we need to build our resources, we are glad to have made a beginning and be of assistance to these children.
As a part of the Kuruvilla Jacob Initiative in furthering resource development in the education sector, a Principals' Meet was organized on the 21st of September 2011. Dr. Vasudha Prakash spoke about the challenges facing schools, Principals as well as children today and the acute need for sustained training inputs to the teachers who shape the life of our future generation. The talk was highly appreciated and many of them came forth and expressed their interest in taking this issue forward.
Music brings joy and peace to our children. Recognizing this fact, we have been conducting monthly music programs in our Institution for the past one year. This month we had Sandeep Narayan, a young and upcoming Carnatic Vocalist, sing for our audience comprising of children from our school and two other special schools, parents, guests and our staff. We are really thankful to him for this kind gesture.
Kaleisdoscope Learning Centre
It's been a colourful month, filled with song, dance, festivity, and of course lots and lots of learning. In our ongoing attempt to give children a basic flavour of every culture, the month of September saw a graceful white and gold day around the traditional 'pookolam'. Teachers performed a dance around the lamp placed in the centre of the flower filled design and children watched and some participated in the artistic activity.
Quick on its heels, was the celebration of Ramzan, and Zainabu, mother of Zubair from class 3B, was the coordinator as well as the executor of the event. All the boys covered their heads in the traditional caps and all children sat on their knees to sing out the holy chants recited by Zainabu. She explained the significance of Ramzan and later fed the children with payasam and vadas much to the delight of the whole centre. A very big thank you to Zainabu for being so generous and single handedly organizing this event!
The last week of the first term saw the Navratri season come alive. This year for the first time, Grade 4 was introduced to a second language Hindi on the students own request and Hindi was woven well with the movement part of the curriculum where the children learnt folk songs and dances. This was finally presented on the 26th of September by grades 3 and 4 with the teachers. The children have actually learnt to speak a few sentences and recognize a few words in Hindi in this block!
Another noteworthy event of this month has been the poetry writing which suddenly burst out of the children of Grade 4, when they were asked a simple question, "What makes you happy?" This was for the bulletin board and some children surprised us by writing beautiful thoughts in poetry form. People who are interested could visit our website and read these poems. It's exciting to know that a treasure lies beneath the facade of disability in many of our children, and we hope to unearth this as a part of our continued work at KLC. The first term concluded with the teachers sending home a baseline report of each child. The current status and goals were enumerated in the report which will be a road map for parents and teachers in the coming months.
Academy for Teacher Excellence
The eight week course on Specific Learning Disabilities has been successfully completed. The trainees were presented theoretical aspects related to dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, and other allied learning problems. The key focus was on equipping them with informal assessment techniques to identify the children early on and train them on techniques to teach children reading, writing, math using various suitable strategies. The trainees also did hands-on practical work with children from our Learning Academy and Remedial Intervention Units, giving them the confidence of working independently.
The Rehabilitation Council of India has intensified the Diploma in Special Education (Autism) course and taken up the duration from one year to two years. This has impacted enrolments and potential students who are typically parents of special children have been apprehensive of giving that kind of time to the program. We shall be considering running this and few other courses in the year to come.
Early Intervention Unit
Some of our children are ready to start play school and will join school on Vijayadasami, an auspicious day for Indians, especially for starting any good educational activity. We wish them the very best in the school setup.
Review of Individual Education programs for every child was completed, which formed the basis of identifying school-ready children. Parent meetings were scheduled to discuss the progress of the child and make a plan ahead.
Formulation of individual diet plan for each child is in progress. The diet program is scheduled based on the child's condition, needs of the body and age of the child.
Focus for the last month has been on independence in eating. Centre-based feeding session was conducted for some children. Children are at different levels of the eating program; the goal is to enable every child to eat independently and use the muscles of the mouth appropriately. We held an orientation session for parents on the process of eating, importance of biting and chewing, and its relation to speech, and importance of functional independence.
Bridges Learning Academy
School visits were done in the first week to ensure that the children who left us last year were comfortably settled, and coping well both academically and emotionally.
Bulletin board was prepared by BLA this month. To enhance their expression and to give a valid forum for venting their feelings, the theme was - "What makes you angry?" The children really made the most of this opportunity, painted well with myriad colours and freely expressed their emotions. This exercise was extremely healing for them and helped us understand them at a much deeper level.
Onam was celebrated in the traditional way and the children and teachers came in traditional Kerala costume. The songs and dance followed, creating a lively festive spirit!
Trainees from our course on Learning Disabilities came over to observe the children and conduct their 15 hours of internship. Given the goals of each student, they worked on various strategies beneficial for children with dyslexia and other learning problems. BLA staff made them comfortable and supported them in their work.
Exams began on 21st of September and open day was fixed for 26th of September. Parents were briefed about their child's progress and we discussed areas of further work.
V-Excel Remedial Centre
This has been a crucial month for all the children in our Remedial Unit who also attend the regular school. They wrote their quarterly exams in school and we were all busy gearing them for their tests.
Teachers had a great opportunity to spell out their doubts. The regular in-service was organized in the form of question and answer session. John conducted the session and answered everyone's doubts and questions about anthroposophy, diet, children's issues, parental concerns etc. It was a very interactive meeting and the participants also expressed their opinions and views on the different queries raised.
Three remedial children who came to us with minimal independence skills have now completed their school readiness program. They will be moving to KLC, our special school, from the next month for availing of the full day program.
Rural Outreach Program
In a major restructuring exercise of the rural Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan Program (Education for All), the newly elected government is involving local NGOs in the work. With this, V-Excel will now service nine blocks of Villipuram district, as against the earlier ten. We were happy to receive a very good rating for our work. A fresh MoU has been signed.
Typically medical camps are held in the months of August and September, but given the restructuring, the camps are to be now conducted in October and November 2011.
We would like to thank Naidu Hall and Sugun for giving us dress material, shirting and trouser material for the disadvantaged children on occasion of Deepavali. They have also given 25 sarees and shirts for some volunteers. We have made arrangements for distributing sweets for our staff and for the children too.
Vocational Training Unit
A demo workshop was conducted by the department of fire fighting of the State. It was really interesting to watch our trainees pay rapt attention to their instructions and be willing to see the entire demonstration of safety measures in case of an outbreak. We had invited some parents and guests to join us for this event.
September brought in two new volunteers, one for the kitchen activities and the other for calendar work for 2012, which is well underway. We have always found support of Volunteers invaluable as they give us their time whole-heartedly.
The screen printing unit executed an order for IPMT, a Conference being co-hosted by us. We are happy that a part of the material requirement is taken care of by VTU.
Trainees are working on the paper cup making machine and the photocopier as a part of their program. Their skill level is slowly improving due to the regular practice sessions.
Our Unit Coordinator who was on a three-week workshop at Camphill Bangalore, is back. The training received there goes a long way in bringing about a very human perspective, which is particularly of great value while working with persons having special needs
As a part of the empowerment program, trainees are being taught to use the washing machine, besides other independence activities such as cooking and grooming.
VTU celebrated the doll festival Golu at this time of the year.
Counseling and Assessment Unit
This month was full of workshops and training modules. We conducted a three day module on basic counselling skills for a group of HR managers from the corporate sector. Each day was a three hour module and comprised of many group activities. It was very well received and appreciated by the participants. These sessions will help equip the HR team to identify the signs of depressions, anxiety, stress etc. among their employees and take timely measures. We look forward to sharing this knowledge with other companies too.
We have been asked to repeat the workshop series for other branches (Coimbatore and Kolkata). The demand for corporate training, especially for HR managers, has been overwhelming. There has been a request to conduct group counselling sessions for associates facing difficulties and pressures in dealing with off-site clients.
Our routine counselling work with parents, children and adults continues in full swing. Many positive changes are seen in the children and the adults we are working with.
One of our consulting psychologists received a fellowship from the British Psychological Association for neuropsychological research work. She will be going to UK for two months for the same. Our best wishes for her project!
Contact Information
V-Excel Educational Trust
#1 Norton 2nd Street
Mandaveli Chennai 600 028
Tel: 91 - 44 - 24620243
91 - 44 - 24956373 E-mail us or visit us at www.v-excel.org
V-Excel Center for Research and Rehabilitation
(In assocation with S.V. Sarada Foundation)
50 Sreyes, M.G. Road
Shastri Nagar, Chennai 600 041
Tel: 91 - 44 - 24522061
91 - 44 - 24521986 E-mail us
Academic Concepts, Inc.
1403 Merrywood Drive
Edison New Jersey 08817
Tel: (732) 572-3748
Tax ID: 22-3632715 E-mail us
