Name of the project: Strengthening Inclusive Education System and Services in Nepal (Inclusive education)

Job Background

Itinerant Teacher for Inclusive Education Project has overall responsibility of providing technical support for the access to, participation and achievement in, education of children with disabilities and the children with learning support needs. The post holder will be stationed in the office of implementing partner organizations in Bharatpur metropolitan and Kalika Municipality, to carry out day to day functions. However, frequent visit to the assigned schools and communities (household) to be done in a regular basis.

Job Summary of Itinerant teacher 

Itinerant teachers are qualified mobile teachers who travel around households, communities, concerned schools, to provide technical support/guidance to targeted children with disabilities in their assigned and their teachers, caretakers, and parents. 

The Itinerant Teacher profile covers a wide range of roles. The Itinerant Teacher role in this project covers in a part of social worker’s responsibilities (working with families) and the more typical responsibility of an itinerant teacher is in schools (working with teachers and children). Typical tasks include:

Support in linking identified children having a functional limitation to the health Camp and other required support.

Conducting needs analysis of the targeted children (teaching, learning & management needs), planning, teaching, and learning material collection and development, and provision of materials to schools in conjunction with work with the mainstream teachers. 

• Support the class teachers in achieving objectives of Individual Education plan  through regular coordination and support focusing children with disabilities and learning needs.t 
• Developing a consistent bridging role between school and families 
• Supporting children with disabilities in the classroom and home with practical activities relevant to their specific needs.
• Providing consultation and support to teachers
• Providing teacher and community trainings and awareness events 
• Working with children of different ages and grades with various disabilities and supporting them directly in the classroom with their work  
• Support the families of children with disabilities to connect with other services such as socio-economic, physiotherapy/rehab or health services
• S/He is a key resource person regarding all the questions related to disability and children with disabilities at Municipality level. 

Reports to: Project Coordinator of IE Project.

Responsibility 1: Support children with disabilities and the children with learning support needs in school 

• Inform school system on the individual learning needs of the children on timely basis.
• Lobby to incorporate different learning needs of diverse learners in the different layers of planning (SIP, Instructional planning/annual planning) and technical support to implement the plan addressing the individual learning needs. 
• Capture the expectation of school system and share with Parents, and service providers for their possible contribution.  
• Assist the schoolteachers to prepare and implement the Individual Education plan (IEP)
• Assist peers' orientation, assist school system & teachers (to create accessible environment, manage materials and their use, reasonable accommodation in teaching methodology, evaluation)
• Assist in the assessment and acquisition of assistive devices alongside relevant rehabilitation professionals.

Responsibility 2: Support children with disabilities at home

• Interact with parents at home to assess their attitudes towards their children with disabilities
• Find practical solutions for parents to change their negative attitudes towards their children with disabilities.
• Provide assessments to find out the strengths and limitations of children and put plans in place with relevant targets (IEPS) 
• Visit homes and provide parental education for the parents of children with disabilities
• Monitor, supervise the learning environment at home and provide necessary support to parents on how to improve this. 
• Observe how the children are learning and playing, assess the barriers they are facing and explore the solutions to overcome the barriers. 
• Sensitize the parents to enroll children with disabilities in schools during the home visit and during school enrollment campaigns. 
• Counselling to parents, joint planning, provides technical support by linking to therapists, follow up, material provision, and link families with different services.
• Orient the parents/caregivers and Children with Disabilities on basic life skills  
• Facilitation in protection issues (health, education, livelihood, security) 
• Provide assistive devices as provided by the project, under direction from health professionals, or link with other service providers in consultation with the project team
• Support reasonable accommodation, home modification, and other necessary arrangements under guidance from project staff. 

Responsibility 3: Support  Early detection team for the screening of children with disabilities and functional limitations during the school enrollment period and do regular follow up (including  Medical screening Camp and referral mechanism) 

• Support in early detection process
• Provide necessary support to the project team during early detection including Medical Screening Camp.
• Provide Data base of identified children with functional limitation to the schools and facilitate teachers in IEP process
• Coordinate with school to manage proper database of the children identified with functional limitations 
• Keep the information of the identified children up to date.
• Do regular follow up of children those who are identified as functional limitation/impairments from the screening and provide necessary support.

Responsibility 4: Reporting and documentation

• Keep records of even small achievements of the children, share with parents so that parents will feel the importance of such small achievements which they were neglecting before.
• Share the success stories from other areas to encourage the parents as well as document those success stories
• Make updates on the achievements of the students as the outcomes against the baseline information (E.g. 6 areas as per the curriculum of developmental disability) 
• Collect information for the case studies, and document best practices 

Responsibility 5: Coordination & Linkage 

• Maintain cordial relationship and clear communication within the project team and other consortium partners 
• Coordinate regularly with schools 
• Coordinate with municipality, other likeminded organizations, DPOs specifically with the thematic DPOs working for the education of children with disabilities at Municipality level. 
• Coordinate and linkage between school and parents/caretakers to support children with disabilities and their learning.

Academic Qualification 

• Minimum bachelor's in education with minimum of two years’ teaching experience.
• Past experience on Inclusive Education, working with children with disabilities, Early Grade Reading will be considered as preference
• Training on Nepali Sign Language, Braille script and other trainings related to inclusive pedagogy will be taken as preference  

Other skills:

• Able to attend trainings and willing to continue professional development 
• Willing to travel between several schools, community, and homes of children with disabilities.
• Having driving license