During GIS’s Inclusion Week, our students were blessed to have a representative from the Paralympic Council of Malaysia alongside Malaysian Paralympic athletes visit Garden International School to share their unique perspectives on how they challenge the boundaries set by society and their journey to becoming inspiring, successful athletes.
The Paralympic Games are a major international sports competition for athletes with disabilities. Comparable to the Olympics, the Paralympics are split into Winter Games and Summer Games, which alternately occur every two years. The size of the Paralympic Games has increased greatly over the years. The Paralympics in 1960 hosted 400 athletes from 23 countries participating in 8 sports. Just over 50 years later, at the 2012 Summer Paralympics in London, more than 4,200 athletes representing 164 countries participated in 20 sports.
Malaysia has won a total of 16 medals at the Paralympic Games: six gold, four silver and six bronze. In the most recent Tokyo 2020 Paralympics, Malaysia won 3 gold and 2 silver medals.
GIS welcomed table-tennis para-athletes Gloria Gracia Wong Sze and Brady Chin Zi Rong. Both athletes have already achieved huge success in their field with Gloria winning Gold and Bronze and Brady winning Silver in the 2018 Indonesia Para Games. Gloria has also competed in the recent 2022 Commonwealth Games.
During their visit both athletes joined Ms Weeks, the Head of Secondary Learning Support and Ms Carragher, the Assistant Head for KS3 for an inspiring and informative interview, where they shared their journey through sports, including their career highlights so far and the main difficulties they have faced.
Dato’ Subra, the General Secretary of the Paralympic Council, then led a fun session where pupils had the opportunity to try one of the Paralympic sports: Blind Football.
Blind Football is an adaptation of football for athletes with a vision impairment. The ball makes a noise, from a sound system located inside the ball, that helps players orient themselves. As a result, spectators must remain silent whilst watching the game until a goal is scored.
Pupils had a lot of fun trying this out, and it helped pupils to understand how sports are adapted for athletes with disabilities, and the skill involved in these sports.
Our commitment to inclusion at GIS means we endeavour to meet the individual needs of all students in our care. We do this by providing a supportive environment which recognises and respects students’ different talents, learning differences, backgrounds and cultures.
Also, our highly qualified team of dedicated Learning Support teachers provide specialised in-class and additional support across all year groups at GIS, depending on the individual student’s needs. We recognise that we are a mainstream school and therefore we are responsibly inclusive, supporting the social, emotional, academic and physical needs of our students.
By Rebecca Weeks, Head of Secondary Learning Support at GIS
Interested to learn more about GIS? Book your personal tour now or call our friendly admissions team on +(603) 6209 6888 for more information.
