St Judes Public School & Junior College

Up here in the Nilgiris, the weather is always changing. Kotagiri is often covered in mist, and our school at Nithung Montfort is right in the heart of that. It gets quite chilly in the mornings, so you see everyone wrapped up in sweaters and scarves. We have both the school and the junior college students here, so it’s a wide range of ages walking through the gates. The views are nice when the fog clears, looking out over the hills and the tea estates. Our buildings are old and have that mountain character to them. We spend a lot of our time making sure the boarding students are settled and the day scholars arrive on time despite the winding roads. It’s a bit of a walk for some people to get here. The classrooms are simple, with wooden desks that have seen many years of use. We don't have the luxury of a big city mall nearby, so life revolves around the school and the town. Teachers here are used to the quiet life of the hills. We deal with the usual stuff like making sure the firewood is ready for the water heaters or keeping the garden from being taken over by the wild plants. It’s a steady kind of life, teaching the kids while the clouds roll in over the mountainside.