Nirmala Concept School

The school is located right on the Main Road in Ongole, so there is always some noise from the traffic outside. Most mornings start with the sound of shutters opening and parents dropping off their kids on motorbikes. It gets quite busy around 8:30. We’ve been here for a good while now, and the building has seen a lot of students pass through. Inside, the hallways are usually filled with the smell of floor cleaner in the morning, which quickly changes once the lunch boxes start opening up. The teachers have their own little routines in the staff room, mostly involving a lot of grading and complaining about the heat when the fans are slow. Ongole summers are no joke, so we try to keep the classrooms as airy as possible. We have a small playground area, but it’s mostly just dirt and a few benches where the older kids hang out. It isn't a fancy place with high-tech gadgets in every corner. It's just a regular school where we follow the lessons and try to keep things organized. Sometimes the chalk breaks or the whiteboard markers run dry right in the middle of a class, and we just have to make do. We know most of the families in the neighborhood by name. It’s a steady kind of life here, just doing the work day in and day out without much fuss or drama.