M Awanti Bai Inter College

Out in Shyamo, on the outskirts of Agra, you will find M Awanti Bai Inter College. It’s a place that has seen many generations of local kids pass through its doors. We are located right in the community, so everyone knows the building. It’s a sturdy brick structure, and we’ve added rooms over the years as more students started coming. The morning assembly is usually the most organized part of the day, after that, it’s just the usual chaos of a school. We have a lot of girls and boys from the nearby farming families. The classrooms are simple with wooden benches that have been repaired many times. We don’t have a huge staff, so everyone ends up doing a bit of everything, from teaching math to fixing a broken gate. The playground isn’t much, just a flat patch of ground where they play kabaddi or cricket. In the winter, the sun feels nice in the courtyard, and in the summer, we try to keep the rooms as cool as possible with old ceiling fans. We don’t have a website or anything like that; news travels by word of mouth in Shyamo. People trust us because we’ve been here for so long. We just want the kids to learn enough to have a good future, whether they stay in Agra or move away. It’s a lot of responsibility, but we just take it one day at a time without any grand plans.