Rainbow Primary School

HOW MUCH FUN can we have? Today was Teacher's Day, a day when students in schools all across India celebrate teachers. Students dress up as their teachers and take charge of the classes, all the while suffering from some particularly naughty new students. These new students (the teachers in disguise) sit in the first row, pulling pranks and cracking jokes. The new "teachers" scold them with wild theatrics and earnest faces. Then all have cake! The "teachers" cut the cake and feed the "students" with lots of messy, messy results. At the Rainbow School, we had fantastic, beautiful sarees on our little student/teachers. In the middle, sitting, in a coral saree is Swapna who was in a past blog post "Politics." Her hair is finally growing out, and she moved up to 2nd standard. Smart girl! The boys dressed up as the government officials rather than teachers. We have had unusually frequent contact with the government officials so the stu...

Here are two spunky little 5th standard boys who are great student leaders. They organize their other classmates to get to school on time, they help the teachers and are on hand to decorate for holidays, they study outside their huts until the sun is no more in the sky. I wish all students in the world could see these two, they are wonderful!

Vara Prasad was almost a Cinderella Story. Here are some of his baby pictures. To recap, the grand strategy of the Rainbow School is "Education for All." Even special needs children are asked to come and the staff will work to find the proper doctors, proper physiotherapy, or even a special school for them. I first saw little Vara Prasad in April. He was severely afflicted by cerebral palsy, but sharp-eyed. He lived about half a mile from the school. He would look around and fix right on whoever was talking to him. The teachers and I asked him to come with his mother once a week to school, and definitely come see the government hospital doctors for assessment and physiotherapy. Vara Prasad comes from an unusual family. All of his siblings have slight mental retardation, his oldest sister is particularly slow. It turns out his parents had their own problems, as well. While they had seen doctors for Vara Prasad again and again, they were looking for a “cure.” In Apri...