Clickety-clack! Clickety-clack! The corridors that had remained silent for one-and-a-half months due to the summer holiday now resonate with laughter and excitement.
Squeals and giggles of little ones resound in the classrooms as the teachers greet them, using their voices. In another area of the school, children are wished in the customary sign language, both tactile and visual.
We are at the Sadhana Unit for the Deafblind and Multiple Handicapped at Clarke School.
Here’s where the children are like Helen Keller, whose birthday falls on June 27, and the teachers are the modern Ann Sullivans.
It was founded in April 1970 as a school for children with hearing impairment by founder-director Leelavathy Patrick. Later, a section for children with intellectual challenges was added to the facility.
Earlier, Leelavathy Patrick was assisted by her late mother Rita Partick and her brother late Patrick Rajamani along with a close friend and founder-secretary late S.K.Nagarajan in running the school.
The director’s long-cherished dream of starting a facility for children with deafblindness bore fruit in 1995, which was the school’s silver jubilee year; and this unit was aptly named “Sadhana”.
This is the first unit for children and young adults with deafblindness and multisensory impairments in South India and serves as a model school for the Rehabilitation Council of India’s Diploma in Special Education in Deafblindness.
The unit follows a functional theme-based curriculum and children are given need-based education with emphasis on total communication, activities based on skills required for everyday living, orientation and mobility as well as opportunities for socialisation. The school is indebted to Sense International India and Rangoonwala Foundation (India) Trust for their unflinching support to the Sadhana Unit.
Success stories are aplenty. Three young adults with deafblindness are doing their secondary class at the National Institute of Open Schooling.
“Madam,” says a mother with great excitement as she brings little Hari to school. She pulls out the holiday assignment from her bag and says, “Hari cooperated with me and did all the activities that you had suggested, especially those that involved the use of glue. It was unbelievable,” she says.
Jayanthi, Hari’s teacher glows with pride as she realises that her efforts have borne fruit. He is a child who hates touching anything sticky.
Come join the band of Ann Sullivans like Jayanthi, Vanaja, Magie, Vijaya Lakshmi and Dipti to make the lives of these children happy and fruitful.
The Clarke School for the Deaf, the Mentally Retarded and Sadhana Unit for the Deafblind is located at Third Street, Dr. Radhakrishnan Road, Mylapore. For more details, call 044-28475422
(Dipti Karnad has been associated with the school for the last four decades and is now, its principal)
