By Harrison Amaral
“You never really understand a person until
You consider their point of view”
~Harper Lee
On the 1st of September we had the Owl House Visit; they are a community service initiative that provides skill support to individuals and families with neurological differences. It was a warm evening, the sun was cheerful and the library was ready for the Owl House Visit. Wendy and I scurried around the library making last minute preparations while Sushma gave the floor the shine it always deserved. Little did I know how my views would churn into something better; an understanding.
At 3:30 a young lady came to the library and told us that she would bring the students of the Owl House in. Her name was Shauna Nazareth and she was the lead learning facilitator of the Owl House. She set the students onto the rug and along with the special educators, volunteers and interns from Goa University, they all took a book and they started turning the pages for their imagination.
Sanika (Our resource person) set down their mini display of wool, threads, adorable soft toys and most of all books! They put down the current books in favor of the books based upon the broad ocean that Sanika had set for the mini display. Each student was aided by one facilitator and I noticed that their method of understanding was very different from each other. Some took the books and read, some swam through their imagination by just looking at the pictures, some urged their facilitators to read the book for them and sat with deep interest and some were just taken aback by the change of environment. It had been a couple of minutes when Wendy wanted to get everyone to start coloring their imagination with what they had read. So before they started painting we had an ice breaker. We got everyone into a circle and each person said “WHOOSH” channeling their energy into the next person. It was really interesting and cute watching them react to this Bookworm tradition, from the “WHOOOOOSH” to another who said “…woosh?” to one of the cutest boys who just buried his red face in his hand causing all of us to say “Aww” in unison.
The drawing session had them either sitting on the floor or the table and Sanika gave each student a page to pour out their imagination and boy did they drop a Dudhsagar onto that paper. ! Each paper was filled with their imagination, those pages were the most interesting things to understand. From fish to Pumba to Octopi, these students truly dropped their imagination bomb and were really proud of it. When asked what was their favorite drawing they honestly pointed at their own which they had put a lot of hard work into.
As the first batch of students left, Sanika made conversation with them and one of them told us how he would be tuning 18 soon and he could finally drink some wine on his birthday! We continued chatting and that slowly made me understand them a little more.
As they left I thought to myself that in the beginning I did not understand the specially-abled children but this session was a true eye opener, showing me how they are so much like me and how they instantly react to the emotions which I understand, but the most impressive people were the Owl House Team, the amount of patience and understanding these people had was inspiring as they tended to their student’s every question.
This visit showed me that a little understanding goes a long way.
