Greater calls are be­ing made for there to be more na­tion­al sup­port and in­clu­sive­ness for gift­ed peo­ple and those with dis­abil­i­ties.

Last Thurs­day, the UWI School of Ed­u­ca­tion host­ed an Ex­cep­tion­al­i­ties Aware­ness Open Day, where stu­dents and lo­cal NGOs part­nered to­geth­er to ed­u­cate the pub­lic about iden­ti­fy­ing, aid­ing and un­der­stand­ing per­sons with ex­cep­tion­al­i­ties.

The stu­dents of the post-grad­u­ate course, Na­ture and Needs of Ex­cep­tion­al­i­ties, did not hold back from pro­vid­ing de­tailed in­for­ma­tion on var­i­ous cat­e­gories of ex­cep­tion­al­i­ties such as autism, phys­i­cal and learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties and those that are gift­ed.

Co-co­or­di­na­tor and lec­tur­er, Dr El­na Car­ring­ton-Blaides said peo­ple who are con­sid­ered ‘dif­fer­ent’ is part of UWI’s phi­los­o­phy and the event is one that stu­dents re­mem­ber and love the most.

Guardian Me­dia Ltd spoke with ed­u­ca­tion spe­cial­ist, Dr Joan Bobb-Ward, who spoke open­ly on the needs which still need­ed to be ad­dressed on a na­tion­al lev­el.

“My re­search in­di­cates that enough is not be­ing done. In fact, very lit­tle is be­ing done be­cause spe­cial needs ed­u­ca­tion and in­clu­sive ed­u­ca­tion and in­clu­sion in­volve the whole so­ci­ety. It’s not just for stu­dents who are study­ing this in a uni­ver­si­ty class­room. The whole so­ci­ety needs to un­der­stand about dis­abil­i­ties, needs to un­der­stand what in­clu­sion is and needs to re­spect per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties more,” Bobb-Ward said.

At the event, founder of the Caribbean Gift­ed and Tal­ent­ed Foun­da­tion, Nu­bia Williams, spoke fond­ly of her broth­er, At­i­ba, who is gift­ed, which she said mo­ti­vat­ed her choice to study and bring aware­ness of gift­ed peo­ple to more peo­ple.

“He start­ed play­ing the steel pan when he was 18 months old and he had per­fect pitch. Call the notes that he heard, from the hum­ming of an AC unit or if he heard a ve­hi­cle pass­ing, the car horn or even if there were notes that were in dis­cord, not in har­mo­ny with each oth­er. He will be able to call the notes of an en­gine in the se­quence, from the loud­est to the notes that are very very silent to the av­er­age per­son,” Williams said.

Williams said while there have been op­por­tu­ni­ties to have meet­ings with those on the ex­ec­u­tive lev­el such as the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, she be­lieves that it is still not enough.

“We re­al­ly want to make some strides in­to re­al­ly en­sur­ing that all chil­dren are catered to re­gard­less of their abil­i­ty in a re­al mean­ing­ful type of way,” Williams added.

For post-grad­u­ate stu­dent Kam­la Mo­hammed, her choice to spe­cialise in the field of spe­cial ed­u­ca­tion was al­so per­son­al.

Mo­hammed has two young sons with autism and knows first-hand that it is not some­thing that they can “just grow out of.”

“My ex­pe­ri­ence with autism was one that was a bit frus­trat­ing at times, but I would al­so say it has been my great­est teacher, my chil­dren are my great­est teach­ers,” Mo­hammed said.