Two Madhya Pradesh teachers to get President's award in September

BHOPAL: Two teachers of the state — from Tikamgarh and Chhindwara — will be felicitated with the President's award on Teacher's Day this year for their contribution to education and improving the condition of government schools in their districts. Sanjay Jain of Tikamgarh and Mohammed Shahid Ansari of Chhindwara will be felicitated for their efforts to impart education through community participation.TOI spoke to the two exemplary teachers about their achievement.
Sanjay Jain, who was teaching in a middle school, realised that the students were having a lot of problems with math and language subjects when they reached class 6. So he got himself transferred to a primary school to help students strengthen their basic skills in Hindi, English and math. “In 2008, when I joined the Government Girls Primary School, Dunda, Tikamgarh, I saw that the attendance was less than 25% and that some goons had made the school their hangout for drinking and gambling,” said the 45-year-old Jain. “So I motivated some welloff people to donate furniture and mats to the school. Then I got some locals to paint Hindi and English alphabets and numbers on the walls and on the stones where students played. This helped them learn while playing, and they started getting better at studies. Then some NGOs came to help us with digital education, providing me a laptop to help the children further. Now the attendance of the school has increased to 95%,” said Jain. Jain also purchased terracotta planters and started giving them students to take care of their own plants. As the saplings grow, they are planted on the school ground..
Mohammed Shahid Ansari excels at teaching kids to love math. Having been a teacher at the Government Higher Secondary School, Khirsadoh, Chhindwara, since the last 14 years, Ansari has removed the fear of complicated theorems of math and science from his students’ hearts. He uses practicals to explain the most complex math theorems to help students understand them better.
“I use LED bulbs to teach students about circles and calculating the radius, diameter, circumference etc. For higher classes, using the ludo dice, I teach them permutations and combinations. This helps the students understand the concepts better and they see that it has a practical use and is not just theoretical,” he explained.
Ansari has also made a projector from an old LCD television, allowing children to watch educational videos in school. He also tries to bring children closer to nature by helping them understand the life cycle of plants and making compost out of the fallen autumn leaves. “In a small village like Khirsadoh, students don't really like to read and revise from books, so you have to show them everything to make them understand. For this, I also make small videos, explaining some theories, and science concepts, that they can watch on their phones. I made class-wise WhatsApp groups back in 2018 so that the students may watch the educational videos after school,” he said.