Saturday, July 7, 2007

Celebrating motherhood

It was an incident that I cannot forget which was during the time when I was doing my Masters in Human Development. We had a paper on Exceptional Children and as part of the syllabus we had to visit different schools which caters to the educational needs and before that the basics of life that is required for them to go through their day to day routine.

So we went to this school for the Hearing and Speech impaired children. We were first told about how the organization was started and how they use different methods to teach these children and what future plans they had to realize the goals that they had set and so on.

Then it was the moment that we all had been waiting, that is to meet the children and to interact with them. We went to different sections and got to see how the teachers were interacting and at the same time we were observing the children.

That was when a little child caught my attention. He had a very mischievous glint in his eyes and had a very cute impish look on his face. He was the first to always respond to anything that was asked, and very active. He rapidly was using sign language and actions to communicate his thoughts. He sure was very intelligent. I found that his name was Rahul.

The teacher had an assistant teacher with her and I saw that she was very much interested and was very keen in giving them various activities and working along with the children in showing them the pictures and then asking the children to discuss about it. Infact more than the teacher I was quite struck with the way the assistant teacher was handling the group of children. She seemed to me to be one of those rare teachers who was meant to be one. All of us interacted and tried to talk to the children and the teacher and of course we all wanted to interact more with Rahul who turned out to be the Star of the day. Finally the sessions were over and we all left with solemn thoughts of how much we need to learn from other people’s life.

As we were walking towards the bus stop we were thrilled to see Rahul and the assistant teacher waiting at the bus stop! We struck a conversation with her and it was then that we got to know that they were Mother and Son!!!!! That was a very revealing moment for me to see how a mother decided to fight against all odds to see that her son should get the best of education for which the only way was to be empowered herself if she were to help her son.

That was sure an eye opener to me and at that moment the bus arrived and both Mother and Son boarded the bus hand in hand all the while talking and laughing.

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