4 state teachers selected for National Teachers Awards

Four teachers from Maharashtra have been selected for the National Teachers Award for their commitment and novel educational methods

MUMBAI: Four teachers from Maharashtra have been selected for the National Teachers Award for their commitment and novel educational methods: Kunda Bachhav from Nashik, Kavita Narsingrao Gitte from Beed, Shivprasad Tingre from Satara and Vaibhav Kulkarni from Latur.

4 state teachers selected for National Teachers Awards

Bachhav, a teacher at Nashik Municipal Corporation School No 18, introduced several new ideas to liven up learning: for instance the Dnyan Bhinti (Walls of Knowledge) programme, under which 30-odd walls in Anandvalli village were painted with maps, mathematics shortcuts and English words. She has also opened a public library with 2,000 books at a temple in Anandvalli and a community centre in the Sant Kabir settlement.

Apart from introducing RFID identity cards, through which parents receive messages when their children enter or leave school, Bachhav also started skill labs, STEM classes and other activities to help students learn beyond textbooks. To prevent child marriage, she raised funds for girls to continue their studies till Class 10. Community funding also enabled her to take students to the Indian Space Research Organisation in Bangalore by air. “Education should not be confined to the four walls of a classroom,” she said. “The entire village can become a place of learning.”

Kavita Gitte has been working for the last 29 years at Sane Guruji Residential School in Kaij, Beed, which provides education mainly to sugarcane workers’ children. She has worked with parents to convince them to send their children to school and helped families get benefits under government schemes. She has an array of degrees: an MA, MCom, BEd and DLitt as well as a PhD on the economic problems of sugarcane workers. Around 2,500 of her nearly 10,000 students now have good government jobs while many have become doctors and police officers. “This award is the result of the hard work of these students and our teachers,” she said.

Shivprasad Tingre, a science teacher at a military school in Satara since 2015, uses projects and examples from daily life in his teaching. Projects by him and his students have won national awards and in competitions abroad. Over 100 of his students have cleared the National Defence Academy examination.

Vaibhav Kulkarni, a mathematics teacher at Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya in Latur, developed simple methods to teach maths and created more than 800 educational videos. His methods have helped students prepare for competitive examinations. “Mathematics can be made simple when students understand the idea instead of only remembering formulas,” he said.