GUWAHATI : On the occasion of Teachers’ Day, five teachers from the Northeastern region of the country have been conferred with National Teachers’ Awards for developing innovative teaching techniques among students to accelerate their learning experience.
Rahul Sankar Chatterjee is a Lecturer from Meghalaya. He teaches at the Shillong Jail Road Boys Higher Secondary School. He is known as an extremely creative Physics teacher. Chatterjee has also introduced a set of innovative methodologies to teach Physics that have helped students hone their Physics knowledge. These methodologies have also been disseminated elsewhere through teacher training modules. Apart from re-equipping the school laboratory, developing new experiments and quizzes, he has also designed concept-based videos for students of Physics.
Assam’s Goutam Dev Sarma, Rahul Sankar Chatterjee from Meghalaya, Archana Gurung and Lomas Dhungel, both from Sikkim and Sanjay Das from Tripura have been named as the recipients from the Northeastern region for the coveted National Teachers’ Awards. President of India Shri Ram Nath Kovind today virtually presented the awards to the teachers.
Goutam Dev Sarma teaches at the Govt. H.S. And M.P. School in Kokrajhar district of Assam. Shri Sarma teaches Mathematics and Science subjects and he has been credited for making these subjects easier to learn. His work is seen as an inspiration. Beating all the challenges, including physical danger due to a challenging socio-political context in the area, he has set up a science laboratory and developed low-cost tools with the aid of a grant from a central government scientific department for the students. Shri Sarma has also innovated multilingual teaching methods as his students are from at least three different language backgrounds. His personal rapport with the local community has ensured a higher enrolment and participation in the school. It has further helped in making science popular through fairs and projects.
Lomas Dhungel has introduced poetry, storytelling and art to teach geometry, algebra and mathematical concepts. The Maths teacher teaches at the Government Senior Secondary School Makha in East Sikkim. Apart from his novel methods, he also has an understanding of nature in the teaching of Maths through stability and symmetry. His activities are considered extremely child-friendly, due to which, his students have also shown improvement in their acquiring skills.
Archana Gurung, Principal of Government Senior Secondary School Jorethang, Daragaon has also brought laurels to Sikkim’s education circuit by bagging the National Teachers Award. She has been making efforts to turn her school into a safe and joyful place for students. She has brought in innumerable confidence-building exercises for the students and has worked hard with the community to upgrade the school’s infrastructure. She also introduced Zumba dance and a school band to engage the children while at the same time introducing a system of attendance five times a day to bring down truancy in the school.
Sanjay Das, Assistant Headmaster of Tilabazar HS School, Tripura is an active and enthusiastic teacher of Science and Mathematics. He has innovated interesting hands-on and ICT based pedagogies for the teaching of Science and Maths to his students and has successfully enhanced their interest as well as learning outcomes in these subjects. His good rapport with the local community and para–military organisations deployed in the area, aided in mobilising resource support for the school in terms of a midday meal dining hall, joint benches/furniture and computers for the school.