Children of Uttarayan perform at their annual function at EZCC. Picture by Sanat Kumar Sinha

Uttarayan, a trust for the rehabilitation of challenged people, celebrated its 22nd annual day at an event at Eastern Zonal Cultural Centre (EZCC), in Salt Lake, last weekend. The show kicked off with a song and dance by the day school students of Uttarayan. But the main attraction was the play The Pied Piper of Hamelin, performed by the students of the trust.

The trust that began in 1986 believes in making children self- sufficient. Uttarayan has a day school in Salt Lake as well as a residential home in Arambagh.

Here, children with various degrees of autism, Down syndrome and attention deficit disorder are not only cared for, but also taught to fend for themselves.

The trust at present has 50 students at the day school and 22 members at their long-stay residential home in Arambagh.

“We teach the children who come in to feed themselves and use the bathroom on their own because these are the basic skills necessary for survival,” said Sunipa Roy, director of Uttarayan.

As the students grow older, they are taught reading, writing and simple arithmetic along with extra curricular activities like yoga, dance and drama.

“We can’t have formal classes because some children have better writing skills while others are good at arithmetic. The children are taught till the age of 18 after which their learning curve slows down. They are then taught functional academics,” said Roy. The students learn to sell and buy and are taken for mock shopping sessions.

“We do not put too much stress on bringing them within the mainstream as it is unfair to push the students into a situation where they remain under-performers and become victims of the rat race,” she said.

The older members of the organisation are given vocational training like making soft toys, bags and handicraft items. After years of training, 30-year-old Joydeep Biswas now runs a photocopy shop and 34 year-old Shubhosree Chatterjee works as an assistant teacher at the day school.

“Our aim is to make them capable of caring for themselves to the extent that they stop being burdens on their parents or the people they live with,” said Roy.

Chandreyee Chatterjee

Maths made fun

Teachers at the math lab. Picture by Anindya Shankar Ray

Maths need not be only about memorising formulae. Teachers and principals of city schools were introduced to innovative techniques of teaching mathematics at a workshop organised by NIIT at Taj Bengal on February 27.

Recently the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has directed its schools to install “math labs” to help students learn by applied reasoning.

“We want to create a set of tools by which every student can visualise and feel maths,” said Mohan Kumar who conducted the NIIT math lab.

He demonstrated how 22 petals can be drawn in seven revolutions, thus demonstrating the value of “pi”, as the ratio of the circumference and the diameter of a circle as 22/7.

Even the furniture used in the workshop were in geometrical shapes to add to the excitement. “We would like to start such a lab in our school too,” said Mitali Guha Sarkar, maths teacher at Ballygunge Siksha Sadan, at the end of the seminar.

Chandreyee Bhaumik
Second year, English Honours,
St Xavier’s College