Wazzup Pilipinas!?
On the morning of July 30, 2024, the hillsides of Wayanad collapsed. Under the weight of relentless monsoon rains, a catastrophic landslide tore through Chooralmala and Mundakkai, wiping entire neighborhoods off the map and claiming 298 lives. Among the victims were 33 students from the Vellarmala Government Vocational Higher Secondary School (VHSS).
The school campus itself vanished beneath a suffocating sea of mud and boulders—taking classrooms, the library, the playground, and years of irreplaceable childhood memories with it.
When classes eventually resumed months later, the surviving children returned to a school, but not the one they knew. Friends were gone. Familiar corridors were silent. The laughter that once echoed through the hallways was buried alongside classmates who never returned.
The teachers at Vellarmala quickly realized an overwhelming truth: they weren't just reopening an educational facility. They were tasked with helping children rebuild a childhood shattered by disaster.
When Learning Had to Wait
In the immediate aftermath, the numbers painted a grim picture. Ninety-seven students from Classes 1 to 10 had been directly affected—injured, displaced, or bereaved. For the first month, the school building functioned as a relief camp, and displaced students were squeezed into the kitchen and dining hall of a neighboring campus.
Academics were immediately put on hold. For two months, teachers focused on a single imperative: keeping the children together and establishing a stable routine. Students arrived in the morning, received breakfast and lunch, engaged in structured activities, and stayed through evening snacks.
“We did not give the students a chance to overthink anything,” Unnikrishnan, a teacher with 20 years of experience at the school, told EdPublica.
Yet, an heavy silence hung over the classrooms. Headmistress Jesna Jose noted, “Both children and teachers have a sense of sadness regarding the disaster. Even though they don’t show it often, we can feel it.”
The Turning Point: Finding What Each Child Could Do
The breakthrough came from an unexpected source. Two teachers from Pathanamthitta—Manoj Sini and K.S. Binu—arrived at Vellarmala dressed as clowns. Walking into a Class 1 room, they played music and performed comic routines. The children laughed, and suddenly, the teachers laughed too.
“That’s when we understood that art was the medicine,” Unnikrishnan recalls.
Rather than diving straight into textbooks, the faculty looked at what the children still possessed. They mapped the individual interests of all 97 affected students—crafts, computers, art, sports, and science. Through personal networks, the teachers brought in outside experts who trained the children pro bono.
The school transformed into a vibrant studio of drama, oppana (traditional wedding dances), nadan pattu (folk songs), and vanjippattu (boat songs). The culmination of this creative recovery reached public stages when survivors performed Vellapokkathil (In the Flood)—a play based on a story by Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai—at the Kerala State School Youth Festival. For these children, acting out a catastrophic flood wasn't fiction; it was an echo of their lived survival.
When Research Meets the Ground
The instincts of Vellarmala’s teachers are mirrored in academic literature. A 2025 study published in Development in Practice by researcher V. Akhila and colleagues documented the profound emotional toll on landslide survivors, noting acute survivor guilt, disrupted identities, and persistent anxiety. The study highlighted that mental health impacts hit children, older residents, and marginalized populations hardest, while long-term psychological support remains sparse.
Furthermore, international comparisons reveal both shared struggles and missed institutional frameworks:
The Philippines (2013): After Typhoon Haiyan, the Department of Education partnered with agencies to deploy storytelling and "bibliotherapy" in evacuation centers as an immediate frontline response.
Nepal (2015): Following the massive earthquake, organizations built a structured, peer-support network across 61 schools, training "psychosocial focal teachers" to identify severe trauma and coordinate care.
By contrast, Vellarmala’s robust support system was forged through sheer grit, personal favors, and relentless educator dedication—exposing a glaring systemic gap. While India boasts national guidelines for disaster mental health and school safety, translating those policies into active, immediate support on the ground in Meppadi panchayat remains an uphill battle.
Rebuilding Beyond Concrete
As the Grade 10 board examinations approached, seven students initially refused to sit for the tests, overwhelmed by the absence of friends who should have been beside them. Teachers visited every single home, persuading them one by one. The students took the exams, resulting in a 100% pass rate for the school.
As climate change accelerates extreme weather events globally—disrupting the education of over 242 million students across 85 countries in 2024 alone—Wayanad's experience offers a stark lesson.
As independent climate expert Harjeet Singh noted, “For children, a school is a sanctuary, a site of identity, and an ecosystem of emotional safety... Recovery cannot just be about pouring concrete. It must be about restoring the social fabric.”
The teachers of Vellarmala proved that resilience isn't an innate trait that magically appears after a tragedy; it must be built, patient fragment by patient fragment, with music, art, purpose, and unwavering human presence. But the ultimate challenge remains ensuring that the mental health and emotional recovery of children facing climate disasters never again depends on extraordinary improvisation by local heroes alone.
Ross is known as the Pambansang Blogger ng Pilipinas - An Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Professional by profession and a Social Media Evangelist by heart.
Post a Comment