Amritsar, February 21, 2012 : Dr. Karen Guldberg, Senior Lecturer and Therapist at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom (UK) today said that the teachers have a great role to play in empowering the autistic children. She said these children are special and need special attention and treatment and unless we train our teachers to be sensitive to their needs and requirements, we will not be able to address autism.
She was addressing a seminar on Autism, organized at Khalsa College of Education by Hope and Compassion, a UK based NGO in collaboration of Sarav Sikhaya Abhiyan, Amritsar in which teachers from various neighbouring districts including Tarn Taran, Kapurthala and Hoshiarpur also participated. Dr. Karen said autism is a major challenge throughout the world and we being a civilized and compassionate societies must adopt ways to deal with the special children.
Another Physiotherapist from UK, Dr. Shabdam also emphasized on government and private school and college teachers’ special training to teach the special children. She said world over there is a growing concern about autism amongst the children and how to teach them. College Principal, Dr. JS Dhillon said there is a rising consciousness and commitment to serve the special children suffering with the autism and the aim of the seminar today was apprise the budding teachers about the new techniques and research going on to teach the autistic students.
Dr. Karnail Singh, Pediatrics at Government College, Amritsar, Jaspal Singh, District Education Officer Elementary, Sukhpal Singh, District Project Coordinator, Sarav Sikhaya Abhiyan, Dharminder Singh, District Coordinator, IED, Vinod, Assistant Coodinator, Parho Punjab and representatives from Inclusive Education Resource Teachers (IERT) programme were present at the seminar.