Priceless School Learning Experiences – At the Fire- Station

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.