President felicitates 45 teachers from across India

A teacher from the Andamans who teaches visually-impaired children, another CBSE teacher from Telangana who teaches her students through a ‘toy lab’, and a teacher from Karnataka who has helped reduce dropout rates in his village in Chitradurga are among the 45 awardees of the National Award to Teachers this year.

President Droupadi Murmu, while distributing the awards, said that teachers build a nation.

“I am happy to see that 45 teachers awarded today have come from every corner of the country. Among them is a disabled teacher and 18 female teachers,” Murmu said.

Among the awardees is Amit Kumar, a teacher from Himachal Pradesh’s Theog who uses Free and Open Source Software based Massive Open Online Courses to teach the children in Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya. Ranjan Kumar Biswas who works at Government Senior Secondary School at South Andamans’ Bambooflat has developed videos on how to use Abacus, Braille script, signature guide, tactile sketch maker, sign language for children with cerebral palsy, paddle wheeler and rollator.

“His innovations such as tactile sketch maker and signature guide and his innovative work for inclusive education to help differently-abled learners has helped them to learn better,” the ministry of education said in a release.

Sunita Rao, principal at the Delhi Public School (DPS) in Telangana’s Nacharam uses a ‘toy lab’ and has worked on developing e-content for the pre-school children, as well as developed an artificial intelligence lab to encourage urban area students.

Umesh TP from the Government Lower Primary School at Chitradurga’s Amruthapura, proactively employed measures to create an attractive school and introduce “many pedagogical practices to maximize learning levels of his students”, the government said in a release.

Murmu said that it is the responsibility of teachers to generate interest in science and research among their students. “Good teachers can make complex principles easy to explain with the help of living examples that exist in nature. Ideal teachers build a nation in the true sense by building the lives of the students,” Murmu said.