Yearender 2021: Meet Teachers who ensured Academic Continuity for Underprivileged Students amid School Closure

Yearender 2021: Education is universally recognised as a basic human right. However, the COVID-19 has been a big blow to education for underprivileged children. Since March 2022, schools were closed in India due to the COVID-19 pandemic and because of that education has taken a big hit. Underprivileged students from rural areas and small towns were facing the major impact as schools turned to online education to fill the gap but most of these children lack digital access to continue their studies. 

When a huge number of children fail to explore their capabilities, India fails on potential future leaders, innovators to take the growth forward. But, several teachers and changemakers have come forward to better this situation, trying to impart quality education to underprivileged children.  To ensure education for all, teachers tried some unusual pars. While some opted for door to door classes, some painted walls in villages for students to continue learning. Here we have provided a list of such innovative teachers who assured academic continuity for underprivileged students amid the closure of schools. 

List of Teachers who ensured Academic Continuity for Underprivileged Students

• Mayanka Sharma  - Mayanka is the headteacher of a government school in Uttar Pradesh’s Chanepur village. She has been awarded National Innovation Award 2020, Utkrisht Shikshak Award. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she ensured the academic continuity of students is maintained. Therefore, she launched a series of initiatives, which in turn transformed her Government School into a Model School.
  Some of her initiatives are - Apki Kaksha Apke Ghar, Wall of Knowledge, Mohalla classes etc. She also worked towards the betterment of society and convinced the parents in rural areas to send their daughters to school, thereby empowering the women.
• Arvind Tiwary - He has developed a school in a remote village in Jharkhand’s East Singhbhum district that looks like a train compartment to inspire students to attend classes. Featuring giant snakes and ladders game boards painted on the floor, the compartment has been designed in such to attract students to attend the school. As a result, the dropout rate in the middle school is now 0 with 269 students being enrolled from classes 1 to 8 at present.
• Anand Kumar - He is a mathematician and also the brain behind a successful, globally honoured programme that provides free IIT entrance coaching to 30 meritorious students from the poorest families every year. A resident of Bihar, he has been helping underprivileged students for almost two decades now. He was also conferred with the ‘Sarabhai Teacher Scientist National Honorary Award 2021’ by the National Council of Teacher Scientists (NCTS) for providing coaching to underprivileged students.
• Uma Pathak - Uma Pathak went from teaching in Aligarh for free to starting the SPS Foundation in 2018. Even during COVID-19, the educator helped underprivileged children by providing access to quality education. Citing that most parents fear sending daughters to pursue higher education in the cities, Uma is solving this problem by improving educational facilities in villages.
• Hariswami Das - The 48-year old has been awarded the National Teachers’ Award this year for being a good educator as well as helping children and their parents look for a new residence after floods hit the area.  He is now working as a headmaster of Shobharani High School of Malda. When he joined back in 2001, the school was facing low enrolment as it is near to the Ganga and is hit by floods every year. He is planning to develop a new school as well for the students of the school.
• Ravindra Thakur  - With the closure of schools during the COVID-19, online schooling became the new normal. To ensure that learning never stops even during these unprecedented times, Ravindra Thakur, an Economics teacher from Govt Sr Sec School Baldeyan, Himachal Pradesh, made more than 170 videos covering the complete academic syllabus of class 12th Economics and uploaded them on YouTube. He also started sending video lectures as part of the "Har Ghar Pathshala" initiative, along with his personalized notes.
• Amudhavalli Ranganathan - The daughter of famous entrepreneur CK Ranganathan, set up Canopo International, a pre-school now renamed as CK Wonder Kidz in 2014. During the pandemic, she aired classroom sessions on local channels and helped students of government schools in Cuddalore, Tamil Nadu, access online classes during the lockdown.
• Annamma Casius  - While COVID-19 restricted the education sector to online classes, coaching and tuitions also took a digital turn. To address this issue, Annamma Casius launched a simple blog that would provide MCQ tests with self-grading and other additional features completely free of cost. The blog is ad-free and requires no registration.
  This site is safe, child-friendly and requires no exchange of money for information. Annamma Casius's attempt at creating a blog post with free quizzes and assessment tests for students from underprivileged backgrounds is a great idea.
• Shakti Patel - He is a primary school teacher at Government High School of Madhya Pradesh was also awarded the National Teachers Award this year for introducing technology in the field of education and providing free notes to children amid the pandemic. He also gave importance to teaching Hindi. He had recorded over 125 educational and motivational videos for the students and uploaded them on YouTube.
• Umesh Khose  - A Maharashtra Zilla Parishad school teacher from Osmanabad has won the National ICT Award. He used 'Information and Communication Technology' through gadgets like television, tab, mobile, and projectors as well as PDFs to ensure students learn in a better way.
• Bharti Kalra - She is the vice-principal of a government-aided school, Sarvodaya Vidyalaya. Bharti Kalra was awarded the Delhi State Teachers’ Award this year for providing as many as 321 smartphones to underprivileged students. She collected the smartphones with the help of her family members and friends and gave them to the poor students so that they do not miss out on online classes amid the pandemic.