Here are my experiences as a Special Educator and as an Individual with my very special students and their parents. Here, 'WE' work together in a special way for a very 'Special Cause'.
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EDventure Academy
EDventure Academy is a Special Education & Remedial Centre founded with a vision to provide equal opportunity to all children with diverse level of abilities. Our learning group is composed of 1-3 students to ensure that every child receives individual attention. At EDventure Academy we offer two models of Programs: A) Morning School Program for kids who are rejected admissions in mainstream schools. This program is an amalgam of a special education and a regular school curriculum in a nut shell. Currently children with Autism, Intellectual disability, Down Syndrome, Global Learning Disability, etc are benefiting from this model. B) Evening Remedial Program for kids who attend regular schools and need support in specific areas like reading, writing, spelling, memory, attention, sitting tolerance, behaviour modification etc. Currently children with ADHD, Learning Disabilities, Cerebral Palsy, Slow learners etc attend this program.
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Sunday, March 5, 2017

2016-2017.. THE YEAR that was.


As we draw towards the end of yet another academic year, it is time to sit back and take stock.To think of the various activities, milestones, achievements and tasks of the year that has been.

We have indeed come a long way. From a humble beginning, EDventure Academy is now a registered trust.  

Our morning school reaches new heights. We have an eclectic mix of 29 kids grouped into 5 classrooms – Sprouts, Buds, Flowers, Fruits and Harvest. We have 2 resource rooms (Twigs & Garden) for 1:1 coaching. Our team of 15 dedicated special educators ensure that each child is nurtured to his/her full potential. Our teacher student ratio of 1:3 takes care of the varying needs of each student. 
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We are proud to share that our “Fruits” class children are preparing for their NIOS exams and that we have been successful in mainstreaming 3 of our younger children namely Aniruddh, Harish and Kali, for the Academic year 2016-2017.

 Five of our kids from the Academic Year 2016-2017 have got admissions confirmed in the mainstream school for the academic year 2017-2018. 

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sensitization of mainstream kids to accommodate special needs kids in their classroom. 


Two of our young Turks, Nikitha and Lizaba, are budding teachers.They have also forayed into the bakery business making us very proud of their achievements.

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Through our Evening Remedials program we are able to reach out to another 30 children whereby we provide after school Special Education support. Some of these children attend mainstream schools while others go to special schools. We assess the gaps in their education and try to fill them. We start with 1:1 coaching and later move onto 1:3 as and when the child is ready. The uniqueness of this program is that we open the available slots for this program on a monthly basis and parents can choose as per their requirement and schedule on a first come first served basis.
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We have warmly welcomed many newcomers to our EDventure family who share our philosophy of providing opportunities and training to every child irrespective of the capability. So, we now have Ms. Achuta Nadapana who conducts Art Based Therapy, Brain Gym by Ms. Anita E Abraham and Speech therapy by Ms. Jiji Mathew. In addition, we have yoga sessions for our teachers, a small play area for our kids to unwind, HR and PR consultants for better management and an ever growing parent community who provide support to different initiatives. The most loved of all is our little pup ”Cookie” - the stress buster therapist.
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To enable our parents to understand the specific needs of their child and to empower them to better support their child, we organize a wide variety of workshops in house where we invite various experts to speak or train on the respective topics.This year we have successfully conducted workshops on Avaz, Nutrition, Photography, Storytelling, Mendability, Dance & Movement, Biomedical Treatment, Play Therapy for parents & Kids, ABA - Applied Behaviour Analysis and Financial Planning.
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We believe in holistic growth and experience based learning. It was with this view that we organised various field trips for our students. This year they were taken to aquarium, a nursery, a corporate office to experience the corporate culture and also to a neighboring Dominos outlet.
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In the month of November 2016 (like every year), we have participated in Kalaangana. Kalaangana is an inter school cultural festival organized by Information and Resource Centre (IRC), Bangalore with a focus on Special children. Kalaangana was conceived with the objective of bringing out talents and hidden abilities of special children through painting, dancing and singing competitions. Our students participated in group and solo dances, instrumental music, singing, painting and art based competitions. They won many accolades and it greatly helped in motivating them  to develop their potential in social and learning activities. But most importantly, it helped address many non academic issues like stage fright, stranger anxiety and adjustment to unpredictable schedules.
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We have inclusive Saturday competitions twice a month for children. This brings in confidence, team spirit, friendship and fun in the children. It also provides a platform to discover parallel talents. We had competitions on cookery, flower arrangement, rangoli, fashion show, fancy dress, drawing, music, singing  to name a few.

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In the summer we had also organised an inclusive summer camp where 30% of the children were either siblings of our children or had been invited from Kranti Organization in Mumbai. It was heartening to see all these children having fun together in a relaxed environment and working on various subjects like science experiments, art & craft, cooking and gardening .
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Fun, festivities and celebrations should be a part of day to day life and our children should have wholesome exposure to the different colours of life. So we celebrated Friendship Day, Rakshabandhan, Krishna Janmashtami, Onam, Teacher's Day, Children's Day, Christmas, Pongal, Ramzan and many more occasions.

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Our parents and teachers are our extended family and their continuous involvement, support and encouragement helps us achieve better synergy in working with the children. To foster this family spirit we organised various interactions during the year - breakfast meet, Mommies Day Out, Teacher's Day Out and the EDventure family picnic.
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We held our annual carnival in the month of January to groom our young entrepreneurs. This was a medley of food, fun, games, shopping that was conceived, organised and managed by the children. The children held their forte with great confidence. They raised Rs.10,000/- last year which was donated to Kranti Organisation in Mumbai. This year, they raised Rs. 19,000/- and the children themselves will decide as to who would be the beneficiary of their hard work.


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click on the link for more picture.

https://www.facebook.com/pg/edventure.academy/photos/?tab=album&album_id=834719253334416 

In February, we had our Sports Day which was much bigger than the previous years and was conducted in association with Stepping Stones School. The children performed a drill and many indoor and outdoor games were organised. To step up the social and emotional quotient, we had games like relay race, passing the ball,  musical chairs. We celebrated the participation of  Every child and hence everyone was declared a winner. The children were happy to receive medals on the podium.
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As part of our bigger vision to have a more inclusive, responsible and empathetic society, we initiated different social awareness campaigns. In the month of October, our parent volunteers started a Neighbourhood Awareness Drive whereby we sensitised the neighbours to the functioning of our school. We were pleasantly surprised by the warm responses. Awareness workshops about understanding special children and accepting them were conducted at Ravindra Bharathi Global School HSR Layout, Jubilee School, Mahatma Vidhyalaya, Goverment school, Prafull Oorja Organization, at Infosys Campus in Electronics City, etc to name few. 

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The hallmark of our efforts was the awareness Walkathon on World Disability Day and the launch of the #Supporticon campaign. The #Supporticon campaign is an initiative by EDventure Academy​ along with Spastics Society of Karnataka​ in sensitizing the society towards children with special needs. One of our set of parents, Mr Rathish P Subramaniam and Ms Geetha VM, were instrumental in launching the campaign. The #Supporticon, a universal icon to show support to a special friend, is a symbolic representation of any person standing or sitting with a special needs child, leaning on each other's back to show their support. So if you want to :)(: this cause, all you have to do is befriend a special needs child in your locality, bond with him/her, then take a picture back to back with your special friend and post it with the #supporticon on facebook, twitter etc. to show your :)(:



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Recognition of honest efforts is always a great motivation. We experienced that satisfaction when EDventure Academy was a finalist at the Indian Didactics Awards, 2016. The IDA are the only internationally acclaimed awards for facilitating excellence in Education products, resources and services.



More soon!
Team EDventure.