Persons with Disabilities (PWD) will have a chance to benefit from the National Sports Commission and the Special Olympics Committee of Guyana Swimming Instructors Course that commenced yesterday at Colgrain Swimming Pool on Camp Street.
Teachers from special needs schools and interested parents will benefit from a six-week training course, the second of its kind by the National Sports Commission (NSC) and the Special Olympics Committee (SOC) of Guyana.
Director for Special Olympics in Guyana and Sports Organiser for Disabled Persons within the NSC, Wilton Spencer will coordinate the stint and national swimming coach Stephanie Fraser will be the trainer.
“The purpose for the training instructors swimming course is mainly to beef up our aquatic programme for our athletes. What we propose to do is to train teachers from the special schools and institutions so that we (NSC/SOC) will have the adequate resources to train our athletes.
“Most of the institutions and organizations where we get our Special Olympics athletes, we try to get as many teachers as well as parents on board for the training,” Spencer explained.
Fraser said that new participants in this year’s programme will learn the basic freestyle and backstrokes while continuing participants will learn the more advanced breaststroke, butterfly and other life-saving strokes.
Further, she said that at this level teachers will be covering all aspects of the breaststroke and the butterfly and their legal requirements for international competitions which will in turn be taught to students at the various schools.
“Teachers who will be continuing from last year will be going on to level two and they will be learning the breaststroke, butterfly and other life-saving strokes. The level one participants did some basic life-saving techniques so we will be moving on to more advanced techniques where they will be dealing with persons with spinal injuries, all aspects of breaststroke and butterfly and the legal requirements for international competitions,” Fraser elaborated.
She reiterated that she wants parents to participate in the course to boost the confidence level of the children and not leave them with the teachers.
She declared that from her knowledge, children with autism (a disorder of neural development characterized by impaired social interaction and communication, and by restricted and repetitive behaviour) are better taught with their parents around while the trainer gives the parent the instructions on what the child should do.
On the other hand, Fraser said that all the participants are swimmers but it will not be possible to ascertain their level until tomorrow since the participants did not walk with their swim wear. Then she will have a better indication of what work must be done with the teachers, as Stabroek Sport enquired about the proficiency of the teachers.
Meanwhile, Fraser disclosed that the participants will have an opportunity to work with some staff of the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) since the organisation has expressed a need to have itsr staff learn basic swimming skills.
She said that the coordinators of the programme will be looking to combine the two groups so that the teachers who participated in last year’s course will gain some experience teaching the GRA staff.
Participants for the programme were chosen from nine special needs schools in Georgetown and New Amsterdam.
Some of the schools from which the teachers came are St. Barnabas, East Bank Special Needs School, David Rose Special School and Ptolemy Reid Rehabilitation Centre.
