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A Tribal Hamlet to Hyderabad Book Fair

The Stories of Yapalguda Children : A BBC Report

Special Feature for Edusure, SCERT Telangana

Adilabad, Telangana – In the remote tribal
village of Yapalguda, tucked away nine
kilometers from Adilabad town, an extraordinary
educational experiment has turned ordinary
government school children into published
authors. Their teacher, Buka Gangaiah, guided
his Class V students of MPPS Yapalguda to
write, edit, and publish a collection of English
short stories—a feat that has since captured
headlines, won accolades, and even featured on
BBC Telugu and ETV Telangana.

At first glance, Yapalguda is like any
other rural settlement in Telangana, home to
diverse communities including BC, SC, ST, and
OC families, united by cultural traditions such
as the vibrant Gussadi dance, performed with
peacock feathers and traditional drums. Yet, Ashok, PG Headmaster of ZPSS Laxmipur,
inside the modest classrooms of the government decided to take up what most teachers
primary school, something remarkable was considered impossible: getting rural primary
children to write original stories in English. “At
the primary level, teachers focus on descriptions
and conversations,” explains Gangaiah. “Stories
are avoided because they seem too difficult. But
I believed my children could rise to the
challenge.”
He began by selecting students already
comfortable with writing descriptions and
conversations. Their first attempts were filled
with errors in grammar, punctuation, and
structure—some so confusing that even he
struggled to understand them. But instead of
correcting everything for them, he turned to the
unfolding—children, many of whom are first- school library. He asked the children to read
generation learners, were learning not just to English storybooks—from both the school
read English but to create their own literature collection and those donated by the NGO Room
in it. to Read.

The Spark of Inspiration Gradually, the children began to notice
how stories were built: how characters spoke
The story began when Gangaiah, deeply in dialogue, how settings were described, how
influenced by the best practices of Sri Poreddy

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