Supporting children with disabilities
Wildlife and conservation education with children with disabilities
Today we had a meeting at Letaba special needs school, where we did a presentation with the 23 teachers working at the school to tell them our ideas, and to see if they would be interested in working with us to achieve many of the 
activities that they need support with.
They have currently 201 children with special needs at the school and also a special classroom for children who are blind. They have 23 teachers and no classroom assistants in the week. The teachers explained that they would like some training in working with children with disabilities, as this is something they have never had any support with.
We were invited back to the school to enable us to work together with them in the future. Supporting them in their individual requests and needs.
Several of the issues they asked for help on were;
• That they needed a great amount of support in how to encourage children to express their feelings about things that were making them happy or sad. They gave us examples of children who had been through severe traumas, who never spoke about these experiences. Some may go unnoticed, and others will talk to the teachers briefly about these times. The teachers expressed a need for support to allow them to communicate more with the children themselves.
• The teachers asked for help on sensory stimulation guidelines when working with children with disabilities. They say as they have had no formal training with working with children with special needs that this would be of great benefit to them. Again this is something that our volunteers will support them with through the use of sensory activities using touch, smell, sound and visual activities, which can incorporate the use of conservation activities to help educate the children about nature and wildlife conservation, which is one of Yebo’s main aims.
• Nature and conservation education is something the teachers are extremely keen for us to help them achieve. At present they have none, and the children at the school have little or no awareness of the wildlife that live around them, how to act around them when they do see them and how they need to care for them to benefit their environment. Many of the children do not go out of the school and have never seen animals such as giraffes, monkeys and reptiles that live around them. When they are at home in the holidays then they may never go out of their village to have the opportunity to see the animals. Our volunteers will begin to support the teachers with educational programmes and activities such as visiting wildlife conservation organisations and sanctuaries in the area, and by also encouraging the sanctuaries to start working with the school.
• Classroom assistants are something that the teachers are also really keen to have working with them at the school. At present they have none, and with class sizes reaching above 20 to one teacher, many of the children with high learning needs are missing out on education and attention that they deserve and need.