Life was smooth until COVID pandemic happened and the lockdown followed.I have been teaching since 2006 when I got a government teacher’s job at a primary school in Khevli village in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh. I teach English and Math to classes one to five. There are 125 students in my school and six teachers.
Life was smooth until COVID pandemic happened and the lockdown followed. I began to teach a handful of rural children under a tree, maintaining all COVID protocol and gradually more and more children joined in.
I made use of the time I spent with them during the pandemic to coach them for the entrance exam into the 6th class in Navodaya Vidyalaya. Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya is a system of central schools for talented students predominantly from rural areas in India, targeting gifted students who lack access to accelerated learning due to financial, social and rural disadvantages.
One of the students I had taught, Suraj Patel, got admission into Navodaya Vidyalaya in 2022. His father did the morning shift in a powerloom and his mother at night. They had barely enough to eat and Suraj was rather frail.
Life was smooth until COVID pandemic happened and the lockdown followed.
A few months after his admission to Navodaya Vidyalaya, when Suraj came home, his parents were delighted. They brought him to me and proudly said how well their son looked now. He had enough to eat and was physically so much more fit. They said as long as Suraj was with them, they could not even give him enough food to eat. But now their son was getting both better education and nutritious food.
When the lockdown was lifted, the number of students coming to me for free coaching dwindled. I hit upon the idea of continuing with my coaching on YouTube, and I have been teaching them online for a year and a half now.
My YouTube channel that started on August 15, 2021, is called Nav Shikshan and it has around 20,000 subscribers from across the country. I coach the students for the entrance exams into class six of Navodaya Vidyalaya. I make time for the YouTube channel after my regular school hours.
I am also preparing students for the Pradhanmantri Yasasvi (Young Achievers’ Scholarship Award Scheme for Vibrant India) and Shreshtha Yojana (Scheme for Residential Education for Students in High Schools in Targeted Areas), that have been instituted by the Department of Social Justice and Empowerment. More than five thousand students are connected to me through WhatsApp. I share notes and videos daily with them, and clarify their doubts.
Many of my students are today in VidyaGyan School, Sitapur, an initiative of Shiv Nadar Foundation, where only 200 students are selected out of lakhs of applicants.
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These are the incidents and experiences that make me want to continue teaching children. When I coach, I do not charge my students even a rupee. I even provide them with all the notes and books they may require.
About my childhood and how I became a teacher, I travelled a lot in my childhood as my father worked for BHEL and was transferred a lot. I was born in 1974 at Lahartara in Varanasi. I studied in Kendriya Vidyalayas in different locations and finally completed my 12th in 1991 in Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh.
I then went on to do my Bachelors in Science from a government college in Angul in Odisha and passed out in 1994. I began to coach children who were in classes one to five in my neighbourhood. I got married soon and continued to coach kids.
But, when my wife decided to prepare for B.Ed, I joined her. I got a B.Ed. degree from Kashi University, Varanasi in the year 2003. I continued to coach the children till 2006, when I got a government teacher’s job at a government primary school Khevli village in Varanasi.
As told to Danish Iqbal, an intern with Gaon Connection.
