Pankhudi Foundation Blog

On 8-8-09 we had our first interaction session with the students in Light House School for Blind The students, as expected were not really in to attend another class after their hectic schedule in the first half. Obviously, who has ever liked extra classes?

There were 12 students from the 9th std initially, who were later joined by the 11th std girls making it a class of 18 students in all. There were 15 girls, out of which 4-5 were shy and did not open up while the rest were easy to strike a conversation with. There were only three boys, who were willing to open up but only when approached personally.

We started off by asking each of the students to introduce themselves while mentioning their name, where they come from and their favorite subject(preferably in English) While a few were shying out from speaking those few words of English, there were others who spoke quite confidently.

The class got me nostalgic as I thought of myr own school days. What struck me then was, I realized that there is absolutely nothing that made these kids different or not normal. There were the girls in the back benches who were giggling and making jokes. The front benchers talked but only in whispers and their self made sign language of nudging followed by giggling. The 11th std girls on the left were sitting comfortably and making their own judgments and remarks on what was going on then. The boys quietly sat and were probably thinking when will somebody talk something that actually makes some sense

The students had their own ambitions and had absolutely no problem sharing with us outsiders. Few of them wanted to become subject teachers, one of them a music teacher, one of them an air hostess and one of them even wanted to be a cricketer.

We discussed about what they wanted from us and how we could help them with it. One of the boys placed his concern about how he can improve his efficiency if he could use computers. He remarked that ideally he takes 3-4 minutes to write a sentence on paper. But, using a computer, he could write a sentence in around two minutes. Everyone really wanted to learn computers and were actually looking forward to it which is quite understandable. How do you any of us can survive if we are not allowed to access our lappy or desktop huh?

By the end of almost two hours, we were discussing about how we could adjust our sessions according to their convenience as they had their regular classes, their hobby class and their private tutions that needed their attention. We were relieved that almost everyone wanted to attend our teaching sessions We were thankful for they had very discreetly allowed us to enter their territory and help them meet their goals and ambitions. Now this feeling that we had….that of an accomplishment…was extraordinary

~Contributed by Anjita