A teacher in letter, spirit

Forget the new toilets and drinking water facility, the headmistress believes in holistic development of her students.
A teacher in letter, spirit

The best school award in state in 2016-17. In just seven years, Seethalakshmi transformed a completely-neglected government school and it bagged the best school award in state in 2016-17

ears of joy fill S Seethalakshmi’s eyes as she picks up the phone that has been ringing for a while. A quick lively chat with one of her students sends the headmistress of the Government Middle School in Nehru Nagar down the memory lane.

Seven years. That’s all she took to transform a completely-neglected government school, having no basic facility, into the numero uno in the state, bagging the coveted best school award in the academic year 2016-17. From a mere 194 students in 2009, the strength swelled over the years, crossing 650 at present, with many a parent from middle-class families, now, making beeline for enrolling their wards in the school.

And, her winning formula is nothing - an ounce of love mixed with two to three ounces of dedication. Even after diagnosing with cancer some five years ago, her routine never changed. She comes to school at 8.05 am and leaves the premises only at 7 pm, daily.

The initial picture of the school having no compound wall, toilets for students and teachers, nor treated drinking-water facility, and not even a tree on the ‘so-called’ campus, is still fresh in the mind of the 51-year-old Seethalakshmi. Every day, it was a struggle for the headmistress, as the compound would turn into a den for anti-social activities in the night. “Strangers used to sleep on the school premises during night. Empty liquor bottles and human excreta on the compound were a common sight in the morning,” she says, adding she used to spend Rs 1,500 a month from her pocket to employ a person to clean the premises, and it continued for nearly five years until the authorities deployed a staff for the purpose.
Now, the situation is a picture in contrast, as she says, seeing the children playing under the lush green tree on the campus itself is giving her a sense of satisfaction.

Forget the new toilets and drinking water facility, the headmistress believes in holistic development of her students. The school started Junior IAS Academy, and is providing training to a group of students to crack civil service examination and National Merit-Cum-Mean Scholarship (NMMS) that helps them get Rs 12,000 annual scholarship from Class 8 to Class 11. What’s more, many students are involved in extra-curricular activities such as silambam, chess, and robotic classes, making seed balls and making programmes for All India Radio and the like.

Seethalakshmi has the school alumni and a few volunteers to thank to. “The Junior IAS Academy is being conducted by a volunteer - Ganesh Subramaniam, a retired Air Force officer, who takes classes every Tuesday and Thursday. The father of a student is providing free coaching for chess. A silambam master is providing training for our students,” she says.

Now, the school publishes a monthly e-journal, featuring articles from students of all classes, including children from class 1, and teachers. “During the pandemic and the subsequent lockdown, we thought of encouraging the students to focus on studies, and the publicatin of the e-journal was halted for two years. We resumed it only last month,” Seethalakshmi says.Studies and extracurricular activities apart, Seethalakshmi also provides counselling for students as well as parents, if needed.

After coming to know the plight of a class V student, whose father walked out on her mother some two years ago taking her elder brother with him, the headmistress invited both the parents and helped them bury the hatchet.

The youth, affected with autism, at the other end of the phone is in an ecstatic mood, and goes on sharing each and every minute development in his life. It seems, he is aware that his life would have been plunged into darkness without his ‘teacher’ around. It’s not without reason that Seethalakshmi’s eyes fill with tears of joy whenever the youth, who has just completed his diploma course, calls. She believes he is her ‘biggest achievement’.

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The New Indian Express
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