TIRUNELVELI: Visitors at the Porunai Nellai Book Fair were in for a surprise when they saw stalls displaying poetry, art, paintings, and essays, all done by government school students from the district. This year, as a part of a new initiative, newsletters of 92 government school students in Tirunelveli showcasing their skills were placed.
Newsletters are usually published to showcase the student's talent in a booklet and are published in many private schools. However, to showcase the talents of government school students, Collector V Vishnu had earlier held a discussion with the education department regarding the initiative.
Speaking to TNIE, Tamil Nadu Progressive Writers Association Head and one of the coordinators of the initiative R Narumpunathan said, "We suggested this newsletter initiative to the Collector and based on it, we informed the students to create newsletters, to design a booklet with topics on specialties of their region, Porunai River, women poets, Sahitya Akademi Award winners of Tirunelveli and a few other topics. Many students surprised us by writing the history of Karukurichi pottery works, Mats of Pattamadai, and women poets.”
He added, “They designed and wrote for the newsletters by learning the process of making one. We expect new writers to emerge in the upcoming days. We plan to implement the idea of creating newsletters every three months."
Chief Educational Officer MKC Subhashini expressed happiness and said this is the first time newsletters were released from the government schools with the student's essays, art, and poems as booklets. "We began to initiate the process during early March and conducted a meeting with the respective school principals in the district. As many as 43 high schools and 49 higher secondary schools took part. Despite this being the first time, the student's confidence was high and they contributed well,” she added.
Meanwhile, the students said they learned many new skills while creating the newsletter booklet as they had the opportunity to design, write, draw, paint, and attach pictures.