A Herald of Change

A circle of eight children sit in a classroom watching their teacher write the lesson brief on the blackboard. Classes for these students, who are hearing and speech impaired, usually meant reading the whole lesson off the blackboard or watching the teacher converse in sign language. But on last Thursday, a new dimension was added for the first time. Wearing large yellow headphones that were connected to amplifiers they sat in a soundproof room, each tuned into what the teacher explained at a decibel range they could hear.

"Most people think that a basic classroom and a teacher who knows sign language are all that children with hearing and speech challenges need. But technology can completely change the classroom and the world for these children," says Shivlal Jadhav, the founder of the charitable organisation, Bhatkya Vimukt Jati Shikshan Sanstha (BVJSS). On Thursday, Jadhav's Wagholi-based organisation that educates orphans or destitute children, received a brand new school with new technological facilities to help their hearing and speech impaired students.

Talking about the group hearing aids, Jadhav says, the teacher speaks into a microphone and students who are partially deaf can use the headphones and accompanying amplifiers to adjust the volume and sound quality of the lesson as per their individual requirement. "This is to help students focus their hearing ability on what the teacher is saying, instead of being distracted by louder noises from outside," he says.

For those suffering complete loss of hearing, there are special class rooms for lip and body language lessons. The teacher and student stand before a two-by-two feet mirror, practising lip movements for different sounds.

Jadhav says the school has been constructed and presented by the Pune Round Table 15, in collaboration with other partners. The brightly-lit rooms and wide, airy passages are a result of the dream that Pune Round Table chairman Shishir Gupta and project head for the school Hitesh Kerring had. "These children were picked off the street. They are used to open spaces and greenery. It would be wrong to put them in dingy little classrooms. We tried to build a school that they would want to study in," says Kerring.

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