See pictures of Kim's inspiring journey to India here!

Imagine the feeling of night and day being as hot as a sauna, the sight of ladies adorned in textiles as pink as the sunset against a desert backdrop. Picture the wide eyes of 6 little children in school uniforms, some with turbans on their heads, crammed into a yellow and green motorized rickshaw built for 3 on their way to school. Contemplate the constant sound of horns tooting around the clock while merchants shout, “Looking is free.” Ponder the smell of strong incense burning and sweets being deep-fried. Visualize the sight of bodies wrapped in cloth being burned in open fires, cows grazing on the grass of the highway’s median, and the taste of freshly baked naan bread, spicy curry, and sweet lassi drinks. India is a country that awakens the senses and stimulates the mind.

It is the largest democracy in the world and one of the most geographically and culturally diverse countries on our planet. It is the place where I spent 5 weeks this past summer visiting 12 schools and learning about how yoga benefits all students, in particular, how it helps students with autism.
The purpose of my first two weeks in India was to get to know the country and explore the roots of yoga, so that I could later share these experiences with the 8 teens in my self-contained, high school class for students with autism. I stopped in several places including Amristar, Dharamasala, Shimla, Rishishesh, Allahbad, Haridwar, and Varanasi. Rishikesh is considered the birthplace of yoga. It was there where I had the opportunity to take my first two yoga classes in India. Talking with the teacher and learning from the exercises we did helped me to start developing a plan for my students, including different postures and breathing exercise.
I also went to Dharamasala, the city where the Dalai Lama resides. Along the road, I saw a sign for Nyingtob Ling, a school and residence for children of Tibetan descent with disabilities. http://nyingtobling.wordpress.com/ I decided to wander in. After a few minutes of explaining that I am a special educator from the United States and would love a tour of the school, I was welcomed with open arms and led around the building to meet students and view the crafts they were making to sell in their school’s craft shop. As I met different students, my guide, the school nurse, explained the class activities and told me about the disabilities the children were labeled as having. One boy was wandering from painting table to painting table, vocalizing and making repetitive movements. The school nurse told me she suspected this boy had autism and asked for my advice for helping him to communicate. I sketched on a piece of scratch paper an example of a low tech communication board that would enable him to point to pictures that would help him express his basic needs, such as needing the bathroom. She was very interested in the teaching techniques that I shared with her and asked me to keep in touch. After purchasing several handicrafts to support the school, I left with a feeling of graciousness for the school’s hospitality during my spontaneous visit and a desire to stay to work with the students.
After spending two weeks in the north of India, I boarded a Spice Jet plane to Bangalore. It was there where Krishnappa met me at the airport in the Academy for Severe Handicaps and Autism (ASHA http://www.ashaforautism.com/index.html) school van. In between picking up and dropping off students from the school at their homes all over the city, Krishnappa kindly served as my private driver for the three days I spent in Bangalore.
My visit to ASHA was like a homecoming! I was immediately welcomed by Jayashree, the school’s director and within minutes of talking with her, I felt a professional connection. I recognized her passion for teaching students with autism and her belief that students come first. That was evident in her interactions with a boy who felt ill and a female student who came up to her during our initial conversation. Despite being in a meeting with me and being the director of the school, she took the time to personally address each of the student’s needs, rather than having them wait for her for too long or asking somebody else to help them.
During my visit to ASHA, I had the opportunity to observe a full 40 minute yoga class, the main reason I came to see the school. I watched students with a wide range of abilities as they sat in a circle on colorful rugs following along with the yoga instructor. The students appeared to be familiar with the yoga poses demonstrated, and I was told that many of them have shown significant improvement in their balance, flexibility, and abilities to relax and to follow along independently.
After yoga class, my tour continued with watching students working on different crafts at independent work stations. I was later presented with a couple of the items they made including a clay Ganesha, elephant god of good luck, and a decorated bag. I saw student schedules that resembled the ones in my classroom hanging near their independent work stations. There were a few computers in the room. Jayashree told me about the computer outsourcing center for people with cognitive disabilities where she is working on setting up vocational experiences for ASHA students in the near future. She ended up arranging for me a visit to the center the following day.
Next I went to see the classrooms, cafeteria, and main computer room. Students in one class did a fantastic dance for me that they had been practicing for an upcoming festival with other special schools. Teachers showed me examples of themed activities they did with their students. One class was working on an apple theme. Each day they filled in a picture of a blank apple with different textured items such as ripped paper and string. They also worked on communication and food preparation as they asked for and ate apples each afternoon. It was interesting to see the students eating in the cafeteria, as they all had homemade South Indian style lunches in silver tiffin boxes. Everything looked so delicious.
After the school visit, Jayashree had arranged for me to go to a pre-school for students with disabilities, which was affiliated with ASHA, as well as a couple temples in the area. On the following day, I went to the Vega Devi center, which was started by a speech therapist. It is a school for kids with autism, students who are deaf, and students with other disabilities that impact communication. The director was away in California, but the school’s staff was very gracious. They gave me a tour. I spent some time talking to students in one of the classrooms. I told them I was there to study yoga in schools, and a girl with Down syndrome got up and demonstrated some yoga poses. They study yoga at their school, but I wasn’t there to see it.
Despite only having three short days before heading back to Delhi, I gained a wealth of information from my school visits in Bangalore. The most exciting thing was the fantastic example I had of the yoga class for students with autism at ASHA, because I knew then that it was possible and beneficial to try to incorporate yoga into my own classroom.
Once back in Delhi, I visited several more schools in Delhi and throughout Rajasthan. Most of them were for typical students, except for two. One school was the Deepalaya School, http://www.deepalaya.org/, which educates children from slums. They had a class for “differently abled” students at their main school building, and a center for differently abled students nearby. I visited only the main school on a Saturday, so there weren’t any of the differently abled students there. I did, however, see the room where they learn computer skills and spoke with the director of the special center. I learned that one goal of Deepalaya for these students is to mainstream them into regular classrooms.
In Delhi, I also visited the Open Door School, run by Action for Autism. The director of the school, Merry, wasn’t able to be there the day of my visit, but she graciously arranged a tour for me of her school and other schools in the area. I arrived at the Open Door School early in the morning and sat for a little while watching the students come into the building. Once again, just like at ASHA, I felt at home, as many of the students reminded me so much of the teens in my class back in Chicago. Some of them walked in very quickly and confidently, while others needed a little coercing. I also noticed many parents in the building and later learned about Action for Autism’s Mother Child Program. For three months, parents come to school with their children every day to learn how to work with them and to gain support amongst themselves and school staff. There was also a similar program at the Vega Devi Center in Bangalore. I was impressed by the amount of collaboration with parents and the support offered to parents in the special schools in India.
After waiting for several minutes, I was taken on a tour of the school by a man who was both an occupational therapist and administrative staff member. As I stepped into each of the classrooms, I immediately recognized that the TEACCH method was widely being used. Many of the teachers’ faces lit up when I introduced myself as being from Chicago, because they had visited Chicago for training. The school was large with a sensory room, speech therapy room, lunch room, computer room, and small swimming pool.
The area I found most interesting was the vocational training center, where high school aged students were working on different craft projects to sell. The room was large with sewing machines, looms, and big tables. The teacher, who was also a parent of a student at the school, took me into a back room to show me everything her students had created. I ended up purchasing a beautiful scarf and a small wallet, hoping to use them as sample project ideas in my classroom. Not only was I planning to incorporate yoga, but after seeing students making crafts at several schools, I thought it would be beneficial to teach some of my students to sew and design other products as the Indian students were doing. We could sell them for a fundraiser, and making crafts could end up being a vocation or hobby for some teens. After a couple hours, I left the Open Door School inspired and with a desire to return.
The opportunity I had to visit India, which was through Fund for Teachers, fundforteachers.org, enabled me to understand how to incorporate yoga into my classroom for students with autism. I also was inspired to start teaching crafts such as sewing, to my students and to think about more ways to involve parents. It was exciting to see how easily I could relate to educators who live half way across the world in a place that awakens the senses and stimulates the mind. The teachers I met in India and I are all on the same mission to improve the education and quality of life for people with autism. I look forward to keeping in touch with the wonderful educators I met and hope to return to spend more time at the schools who so graciously opened their doors to me.