Two National Award-winning teachers and one Sikksha Ratna award-winning teacher participated in a discussion on the 'Role of teachers in the development of students residing in marginalised society' in a Webinar organised by Field Outreach Bureau Chuchura and Field Outreach Bureau Medinipur jointly yesterday.
Participating in the discussion, Misha Ghosal, national awardee for 2020 shared her experience of working as headmistress of Dhanapati Toto Memorial High School in Alipurduar's Totopara, Ghosal said almost single-handedly changed the scenario of the school.
She has started e-classes, smart classrooms and stressed on joyful learning. Her application of innovative music therapy has evoked immense response from the students. Not only that, but she has also stressed upon extra-curricular activities like music, drawing, playing etc for all-round development of the students and made one thing sure that not a single class remained unattended by the teachers.
The headmistress, though not being from the Toto community herself, learnt Toto culture, their habits, their likings, their music, folk culture, their dance, food habits and other things to mingle with them and to understand them and her efforts have ultimately started bearing fruit.
The school has started class XI-XII this year. The math's teacher is putting up an all-round effort towards fulfilling her dreams of building a school to be reckoned with respect and admiration.
Another participant a national award-winning teacher Dr Kalimul Haque, the headmaster of Nepalipara Hindi School in Durgapur, West Burdwan, said that the national recognition is a booster for him, as it would act as a stimulus to devote much more time and energy for the betterment of the school and the students.
He practically revamped not only the infrastructure of the school but the image of the school too. "When I joined this school in 2010 the infrastructure was very poor, it had only 10 class rooms and 19 teachers. Now it has 57 classrooms and 34 teachers, not only that now the school has a computer lab with 40 machines, 5 smart classrooms, cultivation using hydroponics method has also been taken up as a pilot project," said Dr Haque.
Apart from the support of the Asansol-Durgapur Development Authority (ADDA) and DSP, SAIL, local people, business organisations through its CSR fund and individuals from all walks of the society contributed to refurbish the school either in cash or kind.
The acceptance of the school has also increased among the students with each of the passing years. Siksha Ratna awardee teacher of Sundarban's Basanti High School, Amal Nayek said how he brought water connection to his school and started a library for the benefit of the students.
He also built a convention hall in his school so that large number of students could gather for programmes and lecture sessions. He discussed in details about his effort as a social worker to stop child trafficking and child marriage in the remote areas of Sundarban.
He said as the villagers of that area is very poor hence trafficking and child marriage is rampant but he and his group of students regularly try to sensitize the villagers about the menace and try to do the needful. According to Shri Nayek teacher's responsibility don't end just with the teaching but they have lots of other things to do for the society and especially for the marginalized people.
He informed that he through his organization Champa Mahila Society has taken numbers of programme for women empowerment and benefits of the widows and children's of tiger victims. He also runs a special school for the dropout students so that they get interested in returning to main fold of learning. The webinar was conducted by Sandipon Dasgupta, FPO, Chuchura and Sudipta Biswas, FPO, Medinipur.
