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Dingy school in Pune turned into a dream school!
This dingy school in Pune, about to tumble down, lacking teachers, students, infrastructure, everything that a school needs, was brought back to life by one person who took charge bringing several changes, turning it into the most desirable ones
You can do anything as long as you have the passion, the drive, the focus, and the support, said someone.
Dattatreya Ware, headmaster of a municipal school in Pune, lived by this and proved it true as he gradually achieved what he dreamt for. Ever since he has taken over this school as the headmaster, it has gone through a sea of changes with several students willing to take admissions, which otherwise was left barren.
A government school in small village Wablewadi, in Pune, which had only 30 students, was a place children didn’t want to be at. Reasons here were the same as they are at any other government school, lack of good education and other much-required facilities.
Ware, taking over as headmaster in 2012 and getting concerned about the falling rate of admissions, took charge and discussed the issue with the villagers, saying that the children of the village need proper and high-quality education and thus need to develop a proper school, to which the entire village did agree; however, what they did not agree to was accepting help from external factors. With the will to revamp the school on their own and as per their wills, they together gathered as much as Rs 17 lakh, utilising which for over a year under the supervision of Ware, the school was renewed, with a new face, with a new look. As they had limited funds to support the revamping of the school, they didn’t even employ any labourers, parents, headmaster Ware and two other teachers together accomplished the task beautifully.
Now to give you a gist of what all makes the school feel proud and makes the children fall in love with their school.
Air conditioning, solar power, Wi-Fi enabled, labs for computer, science, crafts, language, sportsground, botanical garden.
Teachers don’t only use books, but also activities and e-learning to make things easy for the students. The students are free to consult library books and also online libraries or simply browse web for the concepts they don’t understand, giving them space to learn on their own, an idea that builds a new tradition of schooling. The school focuses on children’s learning and just schooling, a child is free to learn something new in sports one day and next day opt for language lessons.
What more! The students don’t have to appear for exams the whole year other than the final examinations conducted by Maharshtra State Board, thus giving students space for a holistic learning and not just earn good grades. Ware said, “Since the school is under the Maharashtra State Board, the children take examinations at the end of the year. But, all of us strongly feel there is no need to tell the students they have a problem by giving them marks. This is why we don’t have exams during the year. In fact, we should be able to teach them well and the test should be for us”
Amid all this, a school that had only 30 unwilling students today has 90 students who look forward to every school-day, and the school is sure of an increasing rate of admissions.
Ware’s vision brought this small school to this level, though he has higher aims still, as he said, “All we want is for learning to be a joyful process. And we wish other schools in Maharashtra would emulate us so that many more children can enjoy going to school.”
With the way Ware pursued his passion since 2012 for this one school and achieving success, we at Team ScooNews, we are sure he’d successfully achieve this one too!
Credits: BetterIndia