Introduction
Most of the parents nowadays are mostly concerned with guiding their children towards the attainment of meaningful education. In order to achieve this, the parents have opted to ensure that there is an impact created in the educational life of the children as early as during the early education, helping to shape up the child to be productive members of the society in future. This can only be achieved through an effective early education process, which is offered by the kindergarten schools. It is the desire of every parent that the child gets to grow under care and safety, and that their early childhood education is characterized by a lot of exploration and character building. Many parents are usually eager to enroll their children in the kindergarten to achieve this. However, there are other children who have special needs and who do not get equal chance to maximize their childhood in terms of education. Some countries like Saudi Arabia lack the experienced people to take care of those children with the special needs.
There have been opinions of alienating the students with special needs in their own schools. This is however improper for such students will be secluded from the other normal children and they will not be able to have equal experience like the normal children. There are those that feel that the children with special needs should not be separated from the rest of the children. I think this is the right way to go. However, the children with special needs should not be completely joined in the classes with the other children but there should be other lessons where the special children are attended to separately. (James, 2008)
Engaging the special needs children
The special needs children can be engaged in regular classes and they can equally benefit for they have the same abilities as their counterparts. It is imperative to note that most of the children with special needs are attending regular pre- primary schools despite coming from backgrounds that are deprived. All the children have a right to be educated and have a right to learn together with their peers regardless of whether they have special needs or not. Taking children with special needs to special schools does not solve anything, but keeps the children away from their peers.
Identifying the needs
The teacher plays a pivotal role in engaging the students with special needs in the classroom and ensuring that they too gain from the teaching and learning process. This may not be easy especially in cases where the teacher has to handle a large group of children. However, the teacher can ensure that the children with special needs interests are met. The teacher should ensure that he or she is enfranchised with the weaknesses and tee strengths of all the children in the classroom. This will come handy in the manner in which the children are to be handled. It is also important to identify the various effects that disabilities can have on the general learning process of the children with special needs. Having identified this, the teacher should device ways through which these deprivations are to be overcome during the teaching and learning process. The best way of overcoming these challenges for a teacher is to have a good lesson plan that stipulates what is to be done during the lesson. The teacher can program the lesson in such a way that whatever happens in the classroom benefits all the students including the ones with special needs. (Klein, Cook and Gibbs, 2001)
Planning for individual children
Having confidence is yet another important aspect. Throughout the lesson planning, the teacher should ensure that there are plans for individual children to avoid those disadvantaging those with special needs. This therefore calls for confidence on the part of the teacher. Throughout the implementation of the plan which the teacher had earlier made, the teacher should view himself or herself as a facilitator and be of help to the children with the special needs. In seeking to engage the children with special needs, the teacher must be close to them and let the children feel free to share whatever difficulties and challenges they face in the learning process. For this to happen, the teacher needs to first identify the various difficulties that are faced by the children with special needs. After the identification of the difficulties, the teacher should than seek to get to the root cause of the difficulty to enhance more understanding. At this point, the teacher then devices ways of helping the children overcome the difficulties and challenges that they experience in the learning process.
Conclusion
For effective engagement of the children with special needs in regular classes, the teacher must take into consideration the fact that every child in the classroom learns as an individual hence the need to assess each and every one’s needs in the classroom, which may vary to hearing, visual or the intellectual needs. The teacher must also be flexible in responding to the diverse needs of the children. The support from the parents, the community and various organizations is also vital in helping in the engagement process of children with special needs.
