A shadow teacher is an educational assistant who works directly with children with special needs during their early school years. These assistant understands a variety of learning disabilities and how to support them accordingly. A child who has difficulties to understand his daily routine activities and cannot control his emotions, needs a ‘SHADOW TEACHER’. It means that the teacher has to be like a shadow with the child for all his needs in his school timings. Duties of a shadow teacher depend upon how a particular child is.
Sometimes a child is so hyper that we cannot control him or her . Hence we need to observe that Childs likes and dislikes to control him or her.
My experience as a shadow teacher:
My first child was in grade 1. He was having speech problem and his fine motor skills were also not well developed. For speech I would spell words as per Jolly phonics and ask him to repeat after him. I started taking two words then three words every day. I would take him on the ground, library ,music class, computer room and show him things and ask him to repeat after him. For writing, I would give him tracing. Initially I would hold his hand for training him but later he started writing independently.
My second child was a girl of Sr.KG . She was very hyper girl. She would cry and laugh anytime. She was not having any control on her emotions. Anytime she would roll down on the floor and start crying.
So I would take her on my lap and would start singing because she would love songs very much. She was good in writing, she would love cursive writing very much but with my help. She also loves dancing , rhymes sessions very much.
This was really a good experience for me and it really gave a different knowledge of how to handle children on different levels.
Hemlata Nawale
