What is Towner Gardens School (TGS) like as a school for children with special needs from Autism Spectrum Disorder to Intellectual Disability?

I would like to share a story.

Once a visitor to an African tribe proposed a game to the kids in the tribe. He put a basket full of fruits near a tree and told the kids that whoever who got there first will win the basket of sweet fruits.

He counted to three and shouted 'Ready go!’ Instead of each running the fastest as he or she could, the children took each other hands and ran together. All of them won  together and each enjoyed a fruit under the big shady tree.

When he asked them why they had run in this way, as one could have had all the fruits for himself they said: ”UBUNTU, how can one of us be happy if all the other ones are sad?”

How can one of us be happy if all the other ones are sad? That is the spirit of Ubuntu in Africa. It is a spirit of putting others first before oneself, and achieving goals together.

This is an apt description of how my colleagues and I in TGS always remind ourselves to strive for in our strategies, structures, programmes and everyday lessons. We put the child in the centre of the things we do and we strive to understand each of them and their unique ways more than anyone else. From that, as a team, we customise the learning to meet their needs, through curriculum, designing the environment and working with our Allied Health Professionals for various therapy and intervention strategies.

Hence you will find that TGS has many unique programmes and infrastructure. We have a full cycling track where our students learn cycling that build confidence, better muscle coordination and response time. We have a Immersive Media Reality lab, a form of virtual reality, where children are immersed in 3-dimensional environments such as a forest, underwater world or a fairy tale land that help them acquire language and interact with their environments and others.

We see the fruits of our approach when our students become more independent, finding employment in various sectors such as food and beverages and speaking up as self-advocates at conferences to improve the lives of others.

We hope you will learn more about us through this website, but do feel free to contact us and perhaps pay us a visit to experience for yourself the kind of school where a child with special needs will be understood, grow and fulfil his or her potential.