Teacher's day with students

Inspite of having a teacher at home, (my wife is a teacher at Army school, Bombay sappers, Khadki) I thought of visiting a school to have a dialogue with a teacher on this teacher’s day. In search of school, I ended up finalising on ‘Matoshri English medium school’, Ramnagar in Yerwada.

This Pune municipal corporation school is run by Akanksha foundation of Shaheen Mistry (Rashmi Bansal covered her achievement in book titled ‘I HAVE A DREAM’ on social entrepreneurs) & funded by Thermax, Pune.

I reached the school in the morning session & was impressed to see the colourfull pictures, photos, charts, artwork & craft displayed on the notice board. As usual, I visited the school after doing my homework by browsing through Akanksha website.

So, I knew I have to meet Ms. Archana Rao, a fellow teacher from ‘Teach for India’ an electronics engineering graduate & software professional who choosed to teach underprivileged children at this school leaving a fat-salary job at HSBC. The students of this school are from nearby slums of Yerwada.

Archana took me around the school, showed classrooms & also introduced to other fellow teaches. All the classes were just fabulous showcasing lots of efforts taken by the teachers & students together to make it colourfull & lively. I was greeted by students saying Good morning Bhaiyya (I was pleased to hear Bhaiyya instead of Uncle, which I am more used to now a days). I found all the students busy reciprocating with their Bhaiyya/Didi (as students call their teacher). And all the teachers looked passionately involved in contributing to this noble profession of teaching. One volunteer was busy attending group of students who need personal attention. As Archana explained, Volunteering can be the first step to try, test & confirm your interest before getting into this system of education.

You will not believe, Archana promised a visit to Indian school of business, Hyderabad to 7 top students of Class-II  & she kept her promise by taking them to Hyderabad by flight. Can you imagine 7 children from slum got the reward of flying in aeroplane for scoring well in subjects.

Overall, it was very pleasing & satisfying experience to see the smiling faces & twinkling eyes with hope of better life in future. I thanked Archana for offering a walk across the school & explaining me Akanksha motto of providing better education to underprivileged children. She made my day special on Teacher’s day. Now a days, youth is slowly getting connected to social cause & at the same time enjoying the modernised life.

Back home, I was thinking why my 2 kids are at home enjoying a holiday on Teacher’s day? Why schools declare a holiday on this special day, instead of making students understand the importance of teachers on this special day. In my childhood, we used to enter the shoes of teachers managing the whole school on behalf of them for a day. Don’t you think; schooling is the golden era of everybody’s life?

Luv’N’Luck

UR’s Ni3