Thanks to the sustained dedication of its principal Shyamashree Bhosale, Jiddh — a school for physically and mentally challenged children run by the Thane Municipal Corporation — has acquired showpiece status among Maharashtra’s municipal schools.
Housed in an airy two-storey structure, Jiddh imparts free of charge education and skills training to children of daily wage earners and slum dwellers, while also providing transport, uniforms and a mid-day meal. In sharp contrast with the average municipal school, Jiddh has a cheerful and enabling ambience on a 33,000 sq.ft garden campus, blooming with champa, jasmine and bakul trees, known for their aromatherapy value. A team of 11 teachers tutor and mentor 140 children from classes I-IV, after which they are mainstreamed into regular schools.
Jiddh is the embodiment of Bhosale’s life work. Fresh out of Mumbai’s all-women SNDT University with a B.Ed degree in special education and a diploma in education management, she joined Jiddh in 1985, when this municipal school was a makeshift facility of four rooms. Appointed principal in 1992, Bhosale has transformed it into a model government school for physically and mentally handicapped children.
One of her first challenges was to change entrenched parental mindsets and attitudes. “Too often parents of challenged children are in denial about their condition, and express frustration that they don’t keep up with other children. Our first initiative was to get them to accept the special needs of their children, and provide them moral support,” she recalls. To this end Bhosale arranged the sponsorship of a 20-minute video film on special education, which explained how fine and gross motor skills can be honed, and how autistic children are drawn out of their shells with the aid of special pedagogies. This video film is aired in counselling and sensitisation sessions that Jiddh regularly holds for parents.
And though it is de rigueur for state and local government schools to bemoan lack of government support, Bhosale acknowledges that the erstwhile commissioner of Thane, T. Chandshekhar, allotted the school generous funds and a plot in Vasant Vihar (a housing complex in Thane), to build the present structure, into which Jiddh moved in 2000. “The credit for our success is not mine alone,” says Bhosale. “Our teachers and staff must also be given their due, and the municipal corporation has been very supportive.”
With her mandatory retirement age three years away, Bhosale plans to promote an early intervention centre to help identify children’s disabilities in the initial stages. The infrastructure is almost ready, and currently Bhosale is lobbying hard with the corporation to sanction the posts of physiotherapist and other medical staff. “I will leave with the satisfaction of a job done well. I hope my successors will take Jiddh to even greater heights,” she says modestly.
Smita Deodhar (Mumbai)