Teachers' Day: When passion brings lessons to life

Four-year-old Pooja enjoys going to the anganwadi near her home in Gajapura village in Kudligi taluk, Ballari district. In the anganwadi she attends, not only do the lions, bears and tigers from her lessons come alive, she also plays, sings and dances with them. At the end of each day, she is quite eager to go back home and narrate everything she saw and learnt to her mother.

Pooja is among 50 children in the age group of four to six years who go to this model anganwadi helmed by Vasanthamma B. The children here have ready answers to questions on Mahatma Gandhi’s role in the freedom struggle, the significance of the Indian National Flag and several other topics.

Though physically challenged with a non-functional hand, Vasanthamma prepares colourful charts, pictures and other models to make the weekly lessons on vegetables, fruits, flowers, animals, national symbols etc., more interesting. Through a variety of creative activities, she captivates the children’s attention. While teaching numbers, she makes use of everyday objects like beads, seeds, toffee boxes, spoons to practically demonstrate addition, subtraction, and other elementary mathematical operations, to help children grasp a concept better.

When asked if she finds it difficult to handle the class, she smiles and says, “When one is passionate about doing something, then one will have the strength to overcome any difficulty. As early childhood education is fundamental to the development of children, I work towards strengthening their basic concepts and increasing their general awareness.”

“When primary school teachers tell me how my wards are doing well in school, I feel satisfied and motivated,” she says.

While Vasanthamma buys dolls and some other items, she generally makes use of scrap and other waste material collected by both her and the children to demonstrate while teaching.

Each child is given a cloth bag which is hung on the wall. These bags contain their drawing sheets, worksheets and other materials collected by them. The children are made to recreate their observations of the clouds, village scenes and surroundings on their drawing sheets, which they then put inside these bags. Through this, parents who visit the anganwadi will get to see their children’s progress.

Vasanthamma also tells the parents the importance of educating their children.

“My daughter has learnt many things and is always keen to tell us all that she has learnt. Apart from regular classes, they are also taught about other issues such as the need to keep the surroundings clean, segregate dry and wet waste etc. Through this even parents are becoming more aware,” says Prakash T, Pooja’s father.

When Vasanthamma had joined the anganwadi seven years back, there would be only around 20 odd children. But now, the number of children sent here has been increasing, as people in the village are gradually preferring to send their children here instead of admitting them in private schools.

“This anganwadi is considered as a model centre here and has been recognised at the state level too. Anganwadi workers from other centres come here for training and learning purposes. In fact, we plan to introduce this method of creatively teaching in all the anganwadis of the region,” says Durgamma D B, supervisor of 36 anganwadis in Kudligi taluk.