This is a guest post by Pooja Srivastava
We, the teachers of a primary
school section of a famous Hyderabad based residential school were given
permission to go on a field trip to the planetarium. However the planetarium
was closed. But instead of taking the students back to the school, I decided to
try getting permission for a demonstration at a nearby fire-station. This was
against the instructions of the school principal who had asked us to bring the
school kids back if the planetarium was not open. But I thought it better not
to waste the time and resources and decided to worry about the school principal
later.
We met the person in charge and he was more than happy to
give our students a demonstration of their emergency fire drill.
A senior fireman collected all the students in a group at a
little distance from him and showed the kids how he operated the water hose
pipe to put out the fire. The children were all very excited, they got splashed
with water on a hot summer day and were observing and admiring the force of the
waterjet. They asked the fireman for repeating the Hose pipe drill and he
happily obliged, urged by their whoops of joy, loud clapping and jumping.
Next, the fireman took all the children for a tour of the
premises showing them all the fire extinguishing equipment and the space where
a huge, bright red fire engine was parked. There were unanimous requests from
the children to see the fire engine in action and hear the loud siren. The
fireman complied with their request immediately, moving the fire engine back
and forth with the siren wailing loudly.
Some of the kids wanted to sit in the seat beside him. He
agreed, not finding the request unusual.
He accommodated the two lucky kids as he could not let everybody have a
go. But the kids were glad enough to see
their classmates get a chance.
At the end of the demonstration, the fireman was beaming
with pride and satisfaction, he felt really appreciated by the kids and all of
them shook hands with him thanking him profusely for the memorable experience.
We left after thanking the Commander of the Fire Station on
behalf of all the kids and he said that he felt really glad that he could be of
use in enhancing the awareness of the children and that we were welcome to
bring other groups of children at any time we wanted.
The most difficult part was getting the children to line up
and sit in the bus for the ride back, they were all gazing longingly at the
fire engine and some of them were mimicking the siren all the way back!
This was a little field trip. But it had a big impact. The
school kids got a free, fun experience, akin to a paid theme park.
They learnt about fire safety and fire hazards.
But the biggest impression was made on the underpaid and
under-appreciated firemen, who felt that their services are as useful to
education as they are for saving lives.
I guess, the firemen had tears of joy in their eyes. I had!
Certain experiences are truly priceless.
Pooja Srivastava is a Special Education
& School Teaching Expert based in India.
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