From April to June 2018, SKILD held four workshops in Beirut, North of Lebanon, and Bekaa for community leaders. This implementation period was chosen to coincide with the National Day for Students with Learning Difficulties (April 22), which SKILD had launched with the British Council and the Ministry of Education and Higher Education (MEHE) in 2013.
Workshop topics were also diverse and targeted all prerequisites for understanding and promoting social inclusion of children with special needs. SKILD developed the workshop content and learning outcomes to shed light on the importance of inclusion and the effective methods for achieving it. Topics included the importance of psychomotor development in preschool, strategies for managing behavioral disorders, understanding emotions, prerequisites of learning, and diversity and inclusion which was the main element of every workshop as it taught the leaders how to accept, love, and reach out to all children. The therapists broke down the topics into categories that they saw essential for community leaders.
The speech therapist narrowed down her material to detecting alarming signs for difficulties children might face and the impact of oral language on written assessments. In addition, she provided the audience with tips in dealing with kids who stutter or who face difficulties in their expressive language.
The psychomotor topic was divided into two sessions, one included the executive functioning skills required for learning which helps educators in their lesson planning, and the other session addressed fine and gross motor skills and the practical activities that help children develop these skills. Moreover, the sessions on “understanding emotions” included the different stages of emotions children pass through and how they are expressed. However, the session which grabbed most attention was the one that addressed behavioral difficulties as the participants listened to practical interventions that will help minimize unwanted tantrums.
It is noteworthy to mention that all workshops included testimonies and live examples from parents of special needs kids, in addition to videos prepared about the parents and their children. Parents were present in the workshops to encourage the audience to reach out more to support children with special needs.
