The Gati Initiative

Gati was a consortium of organizations and schools driving inclusion. Together we were helping educators serve students effectively and allowing more students to access school.

Problem

There are an estimated three million children with disabilities in India, many of whom are marginalized by poverty, gender, disability, and caste. Of the identified CWD in India, 34% are out of school, that’s nearly a million children between ages 6-14.
The need to support CWD in classrooms has been overlooked, and under-funded. Students with disabilities, or marked deficits, represent a growing population in any classroom due to the failures in early intervention support, especially in low-income communities. Failure to respond to this need will continue to have negative consequences on CWD’s academic and life outcomes.

Model of Support

1. INCREASE AWARENESS

We leverage our network to increase and spread the awareness level of inclusive education and the need for it. Our Gati team works across the year to engage with principals, school owners, and school leaders across the country to increase awareness about what inclusion is, and why is it important. Further, we share an easy to adopt inclusion plan to help schools commit and work towards being more inclusive.

We create awareness through:

• Awareness Campaigns
• Activation Workshops for Schools

2. CONDUCT SCHOOL NEEDS ASSESSMENTS

The Gati team offers a Needs Assessment tool to schools to review the school’s level and quality of inclusion practice. Gati programme team members conduct this Needs Assessment through data collection, stakeholder interviews, and school leadership meetings. Schools that undergo the Gati Assessment will have a better understanding of their inclusive needs against national benchmarks of performance.

3. PROVIDE IN-SCHOOL SUPPORT

Gati works in collaboration with its core group members to provide support schools towards becoming inclusive. We are working towards providing support across the following key areas:

• Curriculum & Pedagogy
• Professional Development of Teachers
• Classroom Infrastructure
• Classroom Behaviour Management

We have identified resources that can directly work for school stakeholders: teachers, school leaders, parents, students. Atma's goal is to facilitate an ecosystem where more schools can access high-quality resources.

Inclusive School Competition

A three workshop programme and competition to build awareness among teachers and school leaders to understand inclusion and how to address the needs of Children with Special Education Needs (CwSEND). 25 schools registered for the competition.

Workshop 1 (13th December 2019) - 55 teachers/principals attended

Sensitisation Workshop: Participants experienced what it feels like to be different in the classroom. The workshop consists of activities designed to make participants experience challenges faced by children with varied needs.

Growth Mindset: Participants understood what is a growth mindset and explored two mindsets - Fixed and Growth, and how they affect our own and our children's development. The workshop also provides strategies to help students develop a growth mindset.

Workshop 2 (16th January 2020) - 53 teachers/principals attended

Sensory Integration by Inspirium Holistic Care: Participants learnt what sensory processing is. How is sensory processing related to in-class behaviour?
Participants were taken through training on in-class activities that can be done with the whole class to improve academic outcomes.

Inclusive Pedagogy by Sol’s ARC: Sol's ARC took the teachers through different strategies and interventions to support an inclusive classroom learning environment. This included a focus on instruction, intervention, use of different teaching-learning materials, and assistive materials that make learning for a child with any disability easier.

Workshop 3 + Awards Ceremony (12th Feb 2020) - 43 teachers/principals attended

Atma Session: This session was a discussion and introspection session on learning and gaps within the education system. We summarised this year's Inclusive school competition.

Burnout: This workshop addressed a basic understanding of what burnout is, how and why it happens and what it looks like in the context of schools. It focuses on how participants have experienced burnout and explore other relevant and practical ways to deal with burnout. This workshop helps teachers to introspect into their own feelings and emotions as they experience them in their role of a teacher, and beyond.