After months of attending classes online during the COVID pandemic, Manimekalai remembers finally walking back into Pethanayakanur Government High School in Coimbatore district.

The school she returned to looked very different.

Every classroom had been painted to resemble a colourful train coach. Music and celebrations welcomed the students back after months away from their teachers and friends.

“During the COVID pandemic, we had online classes. When we finally returned to school, we were amazed to see all the classrooms painted like train coaches. Sir welcomed us with music and celebration. It was unforgettable,” recalls Manimekalai, now a Class 10 student.

The idea had come from Balamurugan, the school’s Tamil teacher, who wanted children returning after the pandemic to feel excited about coming back to school.

For Manimekalai, the train coaches are part of a school she speaks about with pride. For Balamurugan and his colleagues, they represent one colourful chapter in a transformation that had begun almost a decade earlier.

Long before the classrooms looked like train coaches, Pethanayakanur Government High School was struggling to convince parents to send their children there.

Before the train coaches, there were only 70 students

In 2012, the school had around 70 students.

Its infrastructure and facilities were relatively poor, affecting how parents perceived the school. Families also had other options nearby.

A larger government higher secondary school around 2 km away had more than 400 students, while another higher secondary school about 5 km away had over 900. Many parents chose these better-established schools or private schools for their children.

Then, in 2013, Balamurugan joined Pethanayakanur Government High School as a Tamil teacher.

The change that followed came in stages. He became the primary driving force during its initial years, beginning with the physical environment around the children. As the initiatives grew, other teachers joined him, and the work gradually became a collective effort by the teaching staff.

Between 2013 and 2015, one of Balamurugan’s first priorities was the barren school grounds.

“In one week, we planted 110 saplings. Today, those trees give shade to our children,” he says.

What began with those first saplings would eventually grow into a wider effort to make environmental learning part of school life.

The first changes took root in the school grounds

From 2015 to 2017, environmental activities expanded.

Students began collecting native seeds, making seed balls and participating in programmes around biodiversity and environmental conservation.

Over the years, they have made 45,000 seed balls for reforestation drives and planted more than 960 saplings across the campus and neighbourhood. They have also attended seminars on forests, biodiversity and climate change.

“Climate change will shape their lives. We want our students to grow up respecting nature,” says Balamurugan.

That thinking appears in small practices across the campus too.

The school works towards maintaining a green, clean and plastic-free........

© The Better India