Derby special ed director assesses Kenyan students' needs

Training teachers, parents to work together 

By Lois Knapton
Director, Special Education
Derby Public Schools

 

Well, I have been here for 31 days and I have 57 more to go. 

Whew…so what have I accomplished in just four weeks?  Let's see, first I gathered data, talked to staff, and observed their current state of education. 

Then I proceeded to write a referral and assessment process that included holding one or two team meetings. They do lots of teacher training on various topics but they do not often talk about the children.  

So, I said it will be a 15-20 minute meeting with all the right people at the table, including the parent. This is also a foreign concept to them. 

 If the child requires assessment, I developed an informal assessment protocol and taught this protocol to five Kenyan teachers, all of whom have attended some Special Education courses at the nearby Kenyan Institute of Special Education. 

We are using simple tools from the classroom that visiting schools have left for the classroom teachers in Kenya.
Our new assessment team tirelessly assessed 122 children in the last week, applying labels where necessary.

Students with whom Knapton has been working.

Knapton, right, does an assessment with a Kenyan child. 

        The process ends with eight categories of identification: autism, developmental delay, hearing impairment, visual impairment, deaf and/or blind, physical disabilities (includes epileptic, asthma, crutches, etc), learning difficulty, and mentally challenged.
       Missing from the list is the category of emotional disability and ADHD.  

       These two categories will be too difficult to discern due to the culture these people live in. At the end of the referral process, if the student gets identified, the team will write a Student Success Plan (this is the substitute for an Individualized Education Plan) which includes two to three goals for this individual child. 

        No other school in Kenya is implementing a continuous process like this.
        American educators might be saying how can you do this without the use of standardized assessments.
      And I say, we have to start somewhere. There is no such thing as a standardized assessment in Africa.

Assessment team works with young children.

            My next steps include sharing our findings with school leadership, and discussing opening up a Resource Room so these children can be helped and the teachers can be supported. 

         July will be dedicated to parent training, administrative training and training of the teachers. All the stakeholders need to understand the system and why it is being put in place. 

           Then the head teachers can assure fidelity of implementation of the system. 

            It is surely archaic, but where there was nothing, there is something. 

            Now if we only had a Resource Room teacher ... and on I go ...


Editor's note: Knapton is on a three-month mission trip to Kenya. She is sharing her experiences here in weekly posts.