The backbone of any educational institution is its teaching staff.

We at the Haji Amina Trust look to recruit young, sincere and hard-working personnel, who share our ideology of teaching and imparting education – not for any other end than the benefit of students.

We prefer hiring permanent teachers from a localised area, more or less. This is simply because the difficult terrain, local culture and language are serious practical points that cannot be ignored. Newcomers to the area will find it nigh impossible to work in conditions they are so unfamiliar with, not to mention the physical difficulty of living in our mountain villages.

I look after the recruitment and training of teachers of the HPS chain. Over the intervening winter between 2009 and 2010, I organised a rigorous training programme for old and new teachers of HPS in Jammu. The recruits were shortlisted after several rounds of interviews and meetings.  They were called to Jammu, provided accommodation, a training stipend and all the tools needed to prepare them for their new careers.

The Winter Training comprised of:

-Daily School Routine Drills (Assembly, Dispersal, Classes, Breaks, Hygiene Checks etc)

-Etiquette Training

-Personality Development & Confidence Building

-Primary Teaching Skills

-Child Management

-Pronunciation and English Conversation Classes

-Professional English Speaking Course

-Song and Nursery Rhyme Drills

-Chart Preparation and Craft Training

-Teachers Training at two established schools in Jammu (Mayur Public School, Jhidi & Alexader Memorial School, Residency Road, Jammu)

While we had only two teachers in 2009, this year the HPS chain has 8 teaching staff on its rolls and we are continually looking for and training new teachers.

The new batch of teachers has been assigned to various branches and the 2010 academic session kicked off on Feb 15, 2010 in all three villages, with the teachers taking on administrative and teaching roles as trained.

HPS motto: TERRAS IRRADIENT – ‘Let Them Illumine the Earth’

To give you a quick recap of ‘The Story So Far,’ Haji Public School (HPS) was set up under the Amina Trust in 2008 and started actual functioning on the morning of Monday, May 4, 2009 in the village of Breswana - a very remote mountain village in the Doda District of Jammu and Kashmir. Two classes (LKG and UKG), two blackboards, two teachers, one helper, and a fun collection of books and toys made up the entire school and its possessions. That, and a lot of hard work and good intentions.

We concluded a very successful Year 1 of HPS in Dec 2009. This being the first private English medium school in the entire region, we had good enrolment in inaugural session itself. HPS Breswana had 39 students on its rolls and this was a very healthy and encouraging start to our dream of spreading good quality education through the area.

The kids in the village show great promise and potential and we hope with constant and regular application, they can soon come on par with their city counterparts. Our young teachers – Mr Mohd Din Naik and Mr Neel Rath Bhagat - have been a great help in this regard. They have really brought out the best in the students, have a great rapport with their young friends, and have just the right attitude we were looking for when we started out on our endeavor. Congratulations on a job well done!

Based on the success of Year 1, the management of HPS decided we could open two more schools in adjoining and similarly remote villages. In the year 2010 therefore, HPS has expanded to three branches: the main branch at Breswana, plus two new branches in the villages Shadiwan and Parsholla.