Sergiy Sydoriv from IF college attended educational forum “Learning for All” supported by the Public Affairs Section of the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine held in Kharkiv on May 27-28. The event was organized and conducted by the members of Ukraine “USG Exchange Alumni small grants program” Olha Telna, Nadia Datso, Valentyna Malanchii, Nadia Vesnina and Segiy Sydoriv; Inclusion without Borders community, Kharkiv Academy for Humanitarian and Pedagogical Studies and Global Resource Center on Inclusive Education, Institute on Community Integration, University of Minnesota.
The US and Ukraine representatives signed the memorandum on cooperation that now unites eight Ukrainian and one American universities. The aim of the established university Consortium is to set the collaboration among the Ukrainian universities in inclusive education and increase the capacity of teachers to create an inclusive learning environment.
More than 250 school teachers, psychologists, teacher’s assistants and other specialists had the opportunity to learn from the American colleagues (Brian Abery and Renata Ticha), the representatives of the UNICEF (Bohdan Yarema), the Social Synergy Fund (Marianna Onufryk), the members of the project of the international cooperation «Without Borders: Developing and Sustaining Inclusive Educational Community» and the teacher of Kharkiv Academy for Humanitarian and Pedagogical Studies (Natalia Ivashura) who talked about the best teaching strategies in the inclusive class, the ICF usage for the primary school teachers, the multidisciplinary team work on meeting the individual educational needs of a child with disability, the effective tools for tackling behavioral issues in an inclusive classroom. The audience and presenters had a productive discussion in which Vira Maksymova from the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine took part.
The text-book Stairs to Inclusion co-written by Olha Telna, Valentyna Malanchii, Nadia Datso, Segiy Sydoriv, Oksana Selepiy, Nadia Vesnina, Natalia Priymak and Lidia Sydoriv was presented at the forum. The book will be used in the universities of the Consortium to train pre-service and in-service teachers.