NEW DELHI, Sep 5: Gamchi Timre R Marak from Meghalaya on Monday received the National Teachers Award 2022 from President Droupadi Murmu along with six other teachers from the Northeast.
Marak is among the 45 teachers selected for the award from across the country who were honoured at the Vigyan Bhawan here.
She was awarded for her contribution as the head teacher of Educere Higher Secondary School at Samanda in East Garo Hills district’s Williamnagar.
“I am really very happy. This is a hard-earned honour and a lifetime achievement for me,” Marak said while sharing her story of shaping lives in a remote place.
Giving an account of her journey, she highlighted the role of education in moulding Williamnagar from its underdeveloped past to the developing present.
“Our area was backward and the people were poor. Very few were educated back then. My husband and I decided to shift to this place after he got a government job. We had two options to choose from and Williamnagar was one of them. Since Garo Hills needed us more, we chose this place,” she said.
“The people really needed to be educated. The area had to be developed. Since I was working with NGOs, people started looking up to me. They wanted me to be a teacher and I finally decided to open a school,” Marak said, recalling the lack of school and study culture when she started the school.
As the head teacher, she introduced soft skills in the curriculum for the overall development of the children. “I conducted youth counselling wherein experts came and interacted with the children. I invited youth counsellors to make them aware of concerns such as mental health, etiquette, HIV, drugs, etc.,” she said.
Marak started the concept of “whole brain learning” to train the right as well as left brain to hone the children’s academic as well as fine art skills. Her mantra in guiding children is to understand that every child has different needs. “Understanding a child’s mental makeup is very important to be able to properly teach them. I try to make our school a need-based one and not just about the academics,” she said.
The other six teachers from the Northeast who received the prestigious award are Sidharth Yonzon and Mala Jigdal Dorjee from Sikkim, Santosh Nath from Tripura, Meenakshi Goswami from Assam, Nongmaithem Gautam Singh from Manipur and Mimi Yhoshii from Nagaland.
