Somchand Parikh Award for Best Teacher, Ranjitsinh Disale
Somchand Parikh Award for Best Teacher, Ranjitsinh Disale
I am immensely honoured to receive Rotary Club of Bombay’s Somchand Parikh Award for Best Teacher. I often call myself an accidental teacher. I would like to share some thoughts on education and what people with skills, knowledge, and/ or money can do to make a difference.
The famous words of Malala Yousafzai remind us that a teacher, a pen, and a book can change lives. Motivated by this, I shared 50% of my Global Teacher prize money, USD one million, with teachers. I believe teachers share their life, their knowledge, whatever they have. Since 2020, when I won the Global Teacher Prize, I want to see more Indian teachers getting recognition on international platforms. Today’s presentation shows the number of students expected to go to schools; 5% have
never gone to school, seen a classroom or teachers. This is government data. Others go to school till grade 4 and then drop out. Most of them are girls. Another portion completes their education till grade 10 and then drop out. We don’t have a mechanism to track these students or where they are now.
What can we do as teachers? There is a quote I like to use: 21st century kids are being taught by 20th century adults like me, using a 19th century curriculum based on 18th century techniques.
Your kids or grand kids are students of the 21st century, born with a computer, laptop, mobile
and other gadgets. I teach with techniques invented in the 19th century. There’s a huge gap between my style of teaching and their style of learning. The way I am talking now is the lecture method, an oldfashioned method.
bored, that’s why I made it interactive. I began my career as a teacher reluctantly, on January 5th, 2009. I had dreamed of being an IT engineer and gone to an engineering college for a year, but I dropped out. My father, a teacher, pushed me to join a teacher’s training college.
My initial plan was to go for six months and join another engineering college the next year. But I experienced life-changing moments in those six months. I saw the change teachers can bring for students. Teachers are real change-makers and I experienced it. I realised it was my duty to give
back to society and be a change agent. I began working as a government school teacher at a Zilla Parishad Primary School in Paritewadi (Solapur). My classroom looked like a cow shed with goats and food for cows and buffaloes. My headmaster told me the building belonged to the government, but a politician had occupied it because there was no teacher. I was just 20 years old, full of passion to bring change to society. It took me six months to get back that classroom.
I collected data of the village in terms of educational and economic backgrounds, and I realised the women in my villages are more educated than the males. I thought I should involve them in my teaching learning process. So, I set up three targets – to ensure 100% attendance of all the girls in the village, change the parents’ indifference towards education and improve the academic performance of all the students in my school.
I initiated a couple of projects: a ‘community engagement programme,’ ‘alarm on TV off,’ ‘QR coded textbooks,’ ‘virtual field trips’ and ‘let’s cross the borders.’ I’ll be talking about these nitiatives
in detail. The first was a community engagement programme. When you see problems in society, we try to force change. Child marriage was the problem, so stopping child marriage is the solution. I don’t believe in forcing change on the recipient. I believe in the acceptance principle. The change should be accepted by the recipient.
They should feel it’s better. So, I would call educated girls from nearby villages who had got good jobs and good reputations to come to my classroom and share how education had changed their lives.
At the end of every session, I would ask parents a simple question: Would you like to see your daughter like this girl, or do you want to see them doing the same thing you are doing right now?
The journey to achieve that status goes through this classroom. This is how you change their mindset instead of forcing them to send their kids to school. Then, I set up an alarm on my school’s building. It rings at 7 pm every night, an indication for parents to stop whatever they are doing and sit with their kids. Ask them questions about their day, their class, help them with their homework if you can.
Education doesn’t happen only in the classroom. This raised awareness and responsibility in parents that the future of our kids is not just the responsibility of the teacher but our collective responsibility as well. I’ve been in the same school for the last 13 years and the same initiative is on. I send them text messages in the afternoon reminding them that they are expected to do this in the evening. Those messages with instructions on what they could do helped my parents build awareness of education.
Third, initially, my kids came to school because
I showed them movies on a laptop. We would
sing and dance and then they would go home.
So, they came for the entertainment. When
I saw the number of students coming for the
movies increase, I changed that entertainment
part slightly, into edu-tainment. The idea was
that instead of watching Shah Rukh Khan,
they would see me as their Shah Rukh Khan. I
recorded videos and showed them on the laptop,
saying, this is how Shah Rukh Khan will explain
the internal parts of the body, Newton’s law of
motion, etc. So, entertainment played a crucial
role in enjoying learning.
Then they wanted to see the videos at home. I
tried but devices would not support file formats
and so it was not working out. Once, in 2014, I
saw a shopkeeper using a QR code. Nowadays we
all use QR codes but in 2014, I didn’t know what
that was.
So, I asked Google; Google is a very good friend
of mine, maybe yours, too. He’s very cool, calm,
and patient. Soon, I realised that QR codes have a
lot of potential and I can use them for my teaching
and learning. I created 27 different QR codes
in 2014 for my students, embedded my digital
content on to them, printed the QR codes on to
A4 sheets and pasted them into their books.
In just three days, my students had scanned all the
QR codes. But, because they had scanned each code
multiple times out of excitement, it did not work.
I realised I would have to invest money to improve
the system, but my salary was just Rs 3000.
I reached out to the local Rotary Club which
donated Rs 7,000. I purchased a one-year
premium pack of QR code software and created
300 QR codes for students in around 300 schools.
We did a pilot for a year and students and parents
really liked it. I proposed to the government of
Maharashtra to use QR coded textbooks. They did
so. Right now, every student in this country in a
government school is using QR-coded textbooks.
Fortunately, small-scale innovation has helped
millions of students in India. This was recognised
by Microsoft in 2016 as one of those 300 innovative
ideas in education all over the world.
I got a chance to meet Mr. Satya Nadella, the
sitting CEO of Microsoft, and he has featured
three people in the world in his book, Hit Refresh.
I was fortunate to be the only Indian mentioned
in his book.
In Toronto, I was invited to deliver a speech to
my fellow teachers from all over the world. There,
I learned about virtual field trips, a very unique
learning and teaching style methodology. Virtual
field trips mean travelling to many countries and
seeing how the world looks without leaving the
classroom. In the last seven years, my students
have travelled to around 17 different countries.
They used to send gifts to their friends in other
countries and celebrate festivals together.
Our students have virtually seen the seven
wonders of the world. For example, I would call
my friend in Paris, and say, “Hey, can you go to
the Eiffel Tower? My students want to see how
it looks.” My friend goes there, and we will do a
Skype call and the kids will see it and explore it.
We went to an undersea water lab in the UK where
the government is researching how life looks
under the water. Scientists from the underwater
lab talk to my students and my students ask
them the questions. This is how learning should
be. Instead of just Ranjit, a teacher, being their
source of knowledge, I want my students to find
their source of knowledge from more than just
one teacher. I don’t teach them what to learn;
I just teach them how to learn, right? Because
information is everywhere nowadays. But you
need to teach them how to learn. They will decide
what to learn.
I use these techniques quite often without leaving
a classroom. It’s better because my students have
their virtual passports. They make a note of what
we did, where we went, how much distance we
have travelled.
In 2017, I was reading a Global Peace Index report
and I found out that countries like India, Pakistan,
Israel, Palestine, or Iraq, Iran, spend millions of
dollars on military. If they had invested just 50%
of those million, trillion dollars, on education,
they would have found better solutions. Inspired
from that, I initiated a project called Let’s Cross
the Borders, which invites teachers and students
from conflict-zone countries to sit together
virtually and discuss six topics.
In the first week, we assign peace buddies. Indian
students have peace buddies from Pakistan etc.
They get to know each other, exchange contact
details, and become friends. We need to teach
our students how to tackle violence or conflict
non-violently. This is what Mahatma Gandhi has
taught us. Without a bullet or gun, he showed
the world a principle of non-violence. We need
to relearn it and teach our kids to find a more
peaceful way.
In the second week, students discuss why we are
fighting. So, Indian students talking to Pakistani
students; it’s magic. Indians say we are fighting
for Kashmir. They say, we are also fighting for
Kashmir. Then I ask them to just measure the
area of Kashmir. They will say, for example, a
thousand square kilometres. Okay, just imagine
Kashmir is not a part of India or Pakistan. really contributing to our development? They
said, “No.” Then, why are we fighting for just a
small piece of land? Then, they realise it’s not a
real cause of fighting and we don’t need to fight.
In the third week, Indians and Pakistani hardly find differences.
The purpose is to give them an opportunity to learn, at the very beginning of their lives, that they need to build a better world for tomorrow. In the fourth week, they read two chapters from Hit Refresh where Mr. Satya Nadella has talked about how we can build empathy and compassion for others. In the fourth or fifth week, we invite teachers from peaceful countries like Austria, New Zealand, Finland to share their experiences. What does peace mean to them and how it helps them grow, leading to good cities and good human beings.
In the last week, students become a part of our peace army. One of them is elected a colonel of the army. The colonel will lead the peace army and share their learning in schools. They do peace-making or peace-building activities. They celebrate the International Day of Peace. They also want to continue their friendship because ultimately, for a six week-long project, they have a good relationship with each other. This is how I teach my students.
Last year I was awarded a Fulbright scholarship by the US government. Rotary tends to spend more money on education in classrooms but if you get a chance to create such a classroom in Mumbai or anywhere in your territory, just look at how the classroom should look because US people put a lot of money into education. This picture is of a government school. I taught third and fourth grade students there for six months and is a great example of how the classroom should look. You may have seen these classrooms in private schools, but if students from rural or underprivileged families get access to these infrastructures, the result will be better.
ROTARIANS ASK
Do you think teaching parents will also help?
Yes, a parent’s education is not given importance but, in every phase of education, we need to educate parents because they need to realise that they teach their kids the way they learned. For example, in my home, my kid is three and a half years old, and my wife tends to teach him a lot of things. I used to tell her not teach him so many things. He will learn gradually. Just teach him how to sit, eat, behave, and talk to people. These are the things we need to teach them.
Instead, parents believe that we need to teach them Newton’s law of motion because we give marks for that. We don’t give marks for how you drink water or sit in the classroom. Instead of focusing on knowledge-based parenting, if we educate parents on how to understand their own kids, it’s very important. Everyone in this world is unique. Every kid, every student in my classroom is unique. He has a different style of learning, talking, and thinking. Indian parents try to compare their kids with others and that’s where we fail.
My elder brother ranked 20th in the state board when he was in 10th standard. In the 12th, he was ranked 12th. I was an average level guy, but my parents never compared me with him. Because they knew that this guy is different from his elder brother. And this is what a teacher’s mindset looks like. It’s very difficult to teach parents these skills nowadays that you don’t need to compare your kids. Just understand his interest areas and where he would like to explore better opportunities. So, your question was right, we need to educate parents more than kids in the school.
Do you also give time to inspire other teachers?
I am fortunate that the government has allowed me to do these things. About 20% of my time every week goes to my classroom and students and around 40% is spent mentoring teachers. We initiated a project called Super 30 Teachers, where we have selected 30 teachers from every district. We do mentoring and inspire them to do things better, the way I did. That project is still going on.
That’s why I said, Ranjitsinh Disale is not enough to change the world or India. We need more and we are in the process of creating them.What can be our role as the youth to promoteyour cause and make a difference in kids’ lives, et cetera?
I’m happy to see young minds or young people here from Rotaract. The thing that you all bring to table is that you have a diverse mindset from different backgrounds. The experience that you have, try to share that with students from underprivileged families: how to build businesses, how to be entrepreneurs.
I am now designing a programme curriculum for entrepreneurs at the school level because I see the potential. The government is not going to give jobs. And you have to be a job giver, not a job seeker. So, the youth’s role is to become problem solvers, not just disseminate information.
Try to apply your learnings for the betterment of society. Climate action, climate change is a rising problem in society. You are different from our generation, right? So, you will not just run your family business. You will create new businesses to solve the problems faced by society. My expectation from youth is to be a problem solver. Maybe a small problem. I solved a very small problem: my students were not coming to school. I engaged them, introduced the technology and they are now coming to school.
Very small problem. But the impact on the lives of every student is phenomenal. So, if you try to solve any problem in the society in which you are living, that will be a great contribution to the development of the country as well.