Solapur’s global teacher prize winner off on fulbright fellowship to upskill

Now, he’s headed to the US on a fellowship, the Fulbright Distinguished Awards in Teaching Program for international teachers.

Ranjitsinh Disale, 34, a primary school teacher from Solapur, made headlines in 2020 when he received the UK-based Varkey Foundation’s Global Teacher Prize, which comes with an award of $1 million. Then he made news again, when he decided to share 50% of the prize money with the nine other finalists.

Microsoft came onboard to support LCTB by connecting Disale with teachers from around the world.

Now, he’s headed to the US on a fellowship, the Fulbright Distinguished Awards in Teaching Program for international teachers. From August to December, he will focus on researching the goal of peace through education. “Today, the world is always at war. Yet, there’s no solution. War is not the solution. We need to nurture peaceful mindsets, as Mahatma Gandhi did. Peace should be part of education,” Disale says.

This idea took shape in his mind years before the Global Teacher Prize. Disale conceptualised Let’s Cross the Borders (LCTB), a Skype-based collaborative project to connect students from countries in conflict, around 2017.

War is causing an education crisis, he says. Millions of students live in refugee camps due to war, and millions more are forced to discontinue school and college. Students offer a great opportunity for the world to work towards peace.

Microsoft came onboard to support LCTB by connecting Disale with teachers from around the world. Even before LCTB, Microsoft had recognised Disale’s QR codes for textbooks initiative, which allowed students free access to classroom sessions and video content with just a smartphone.

The QR codes initiative is one of many innovative efforts by Disale in his 13 years as a teacher in Solapur’s Paritewadi village. Others include engaging students with edutainment videos and crafting peer-to-peer learning programmes, and using SMS and other tools to empower rural parents to participate in their children’s education.

His QR codes idea was first adopted at the local level, then by the Bal Bharti state bureau of textbook production, and eventually by the National Council of Educational Research and Training or NCERT. In 2016, the government of India named him Innovative Researcher of the Year for these efforts.

Back to LCTB, today, it’s an annual program that runs over six weeks and involves over 6,000 students aged 14 to 20, from across over 60 schools in six countries — India, Pakistan, Israel, Palestine, Iran and Iraq. Each participating student is matched with a “peace buddy”. Over six weeks, these buddies spend time learning about each other’s country and culture, they meet guest speakers from war-free nations such as Finland, read about empathy, and finally discuss what could be next for their own two nations and peoples.

Disale is persistent in his optimism. “The idea is to help students build friendships and through them, empathy. Tomorrow, if their peace buddy is in trouble, they’re likely to think ‘I have to help’. This empathy will make also make them good citizens,” he says.

He might be on to something. Hema Malini, 50, a computer science teacher at Chinmaya Vidyalaya, Anna Nagar in Chennai, says about 20 students from that school first participated in LCTB in 2017-18. “We saw a definite shift in their outlook. For example, earlier if there was an India-Pakistan cricket match, they would go like ‘We have to defeat them’, while if India was playing against Australia, the same angst would not be there. But after the Let’s Cross the Borders programme, they see it just as a game and two sets of people playing. After the programme I am also inspired to give students individual counseling and guide them not to bear hatred and instead to look at people from everywhere with love.”

The fourth edition of LCTB begins in 2023. Disale plans to redesign the program to accommodate interested people from countries not currently on his list of six. The Fulbright programme will further his mission, he adds. “I was trying so many things, looking for guidance. Now the Fulbright program will give me that,” he says.